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.
"Again." They spoke in unison, their voices echoing in the training hall. One of her shifted slightly more to the left, while the other took a step backwards. They formed an oblique angle with their student, one behind and to the right, the other slightly to the left of forward of the blindfolded girl in the center of the ring.
T'Soni had broken two staves already, and now held one made of something Joru called 'bronzewood', which was a rich, ruddy color, with close-set grain of alternating coppery and pink tones. They'd learned to avoid getting struck with that one very early, when an errant swing caught one of her on the shin.
"I am ready." T'Soni's tone was nervous, and with good reason. She held the staff in both hands, slowly tipping it over and around again. They'd seen Joru use something similar when she held her own weapon.
They let her stew in her nervousness for a while, before one of her stepped silently closer, and the other fired off a quick, powerful blast.
T'Soni stepped to the right to avoid the biotically-enhanced kick that would have shattered her knee, turned the staff to intercept the Warp and deflect it harmlessly into the ceiling, which was already chewed and pock-marked from similar such deflections.
"Good, your situational awareness is improving. You would've had a nasty limp if we'd tried that last week." She smiled and pulled back away from the still-nervous young woman. "You may remove the blindfold, Ms T'Soni."
The T'Soni slowly did, revealing those striking electric blue eyes. The glistening-black of her sclera glistened in the light of the training stadium, and the vivid blue of her irises tracked first one, then the other of her with uncertain attentiveness.
One of her gave a soft smile and nod as the young darastrix glanced between the two of her. She'd learned by now, not to sneak up on T'Soni, she was a twitchy girl, especially after a sparring session, but goddess, the aura she radiated...
"That was a fine display." The one of her nearest T'Soni gave a tender smile. "You're getting better at sensing where I am."
"And also where I am aiming too. That bounce was almost perfect. If you keep up that attention to detail, you'll be able to control the direction of a biotic blast without so much strain." Her other self sauntered closer, a little sway in her walk as herself gently took the staff from the young, dark-blue scaled woman.
"A good warm-up." T'Soni arched her back and stretched, offering her a view that most Matrons would kill for. "Now, are you ready for the dance?"
Both of her grinned as one set the staff aside and her other self tapped her omnitool. The wide, circular stadium was set up for a crowd of tens of thousands, but with only the two of her, and T'Soni here, it was a vast and empty space.
She wasn't entirely sure how Matriarch T'Soni had secured the biotiball arena for their sparring sessions, but twice a week, when it was empty, she and Liara came here to practice and train the latter.
One of her smirked and started stretching as the other sauntered back to the center of the arena. "Remember the rules, Ms T'Soni."
"Don't worry, I never forget: No maiming, no killing, and no cannibalism." The dark-skinned asari-ish woman flushed a little. Her simple, tight-fitting top and pair of specially-made shorts covered her from high-thigh to her waist, and held her generous bosom in check, baring her midriff, with its sleek, delectable abs. The light-grey fabric contrasted wonderfully with the young woman's dark scales in a way that stirred her libido, but this was neither the time, nor the place. "I still can hardly believe those have to be actual rules for me."
"They're there to help prevent a repeat." She was clad similarly, though her outfits were in contrasting light-blue and light-grey, to help T'Soni distinguish which one of her was which. She'd found that to be an interesting part of her new life, actually. Most singletons preferred to know which of her they were talking to, though honestly, her selves were interchangeable "Ready?"
She'd finished stretching, working out the kinks from both of her selves, and stood a little more than arm's reach apart from herself, giving T'Soni a soft, neutral gaze.
The Asari-Darastrix hybrid nodded a single time, charging her biotics with a blazing aura.
Each time Liara did that, her resistance caved a little more. She yearned to just touch that glorious aura, to feel such scintillating power, to taste and touch and plunder and-
And she was drooling again, damnit! She wiped her mouth with one hand, as her other self blasted into a Charge. The first time Vasir had seen her do that, it had prompted a three-hour screaming lecture on how best to not plaster herself over the wall, and an intense training session to make sure she would know how to actually perform the technique without killing herself.
Now, she slammed into T'Soni with one of herself, as the other sprinted sideways, sending a Throw hurtling swiftly after herself.
It was always eerie to see how swiftly T'Soni responded; nimbly dodging with a subtle flash of biotics to one side, out of the way and countering with a Throw Field with a mere flick of the wrist even as her charging self slammed past where T'Soni had just been.
The Throw had no noticeable effect on her charging self, but it did make her other self counter with a Throw of her own, angling it over the blue flash of her charging self, even as she skidded to a stop when the charge ended.
T'Soni was already in motion, her movements as lithe as a dancer, even incorporating her tail into the little pirouette as she spun past the Throw and countered with a Lift, while simultaneously catching her other self in a Pull field.
She'd not known T'Soni could dual-cast like that, that was a very advanced technique! Dual-casting required that the wielder hold herself in such total control that she can activate only half the normal eezo nodes of her body, requiring incredible efficiency and control over her body. Not only that, but to do so with such unconscious ease that she can then use the unused half of herself to perform a different, but still half-cast technique at the same time, while maintaining concentration on both effects simultaneously.
It was a feat that only those who had spent a lifetime honing their biotics ever truly mastered, and it was a rare handful of Matriarchs who knew the technique in the first place. Matriarch T'Soni must have gotten additional tutors for T'Soni over the past year, and the fact that she was able to dual-cast at all, let alone with such fluid grace, after less than a year of tutoring was astonishing! She'd have to remember that for later.
T'Soni's skill at biotics had begun rather middling. While Matriarch T'Soni had clearly kept her daughter in training, and T'Soni was quite capable of some advanced techniques when they'd first sparred, the young darastrix now had surpassed her wildest expectations for the young woman's growth. T'Soni was faster, more sure in her casting, possessed vastly more power, and deep wells of stamina that even she, with her dual nature, couldn't keep up with. Some of that was due to T'Soni's status as an Eezo Dragon, something she wasn't quite certain about, but which explained a great deal of the young woman's potential.
Her scales were solid crystals of element zero.
With being literally sheathed in the mystic crystal, it was little wonder that T'Soni possessed vast potential power, she had literally dozens, if not hundreds of times the mass of eezo of any other biotic in the known galaxy! The fact that she hadn't imploded under a biotic accident was something that she thanked the Goddess for on a biweekly basis by now, because T'Soni was a treasure to teach. Of course, she hadn't been the Matriarch's first choice. As the emergence of T'Soni's biotic power became obvious, her mother had naturally sought out the finest teachers and experts from across the Asari Republics. But even the combined centuries of experience of the masters were greatly, hilariously, outclassed by T'Soni's ridiculous level of power and instinctive skill. The reason that she had proved different was all due to her dual nature, inhabiting two bodies with one mind, an unparalleled synergy of teamwork that no other asari could match.
She broke the Pull field with one self and dodged the Lift with the other by blasting into a biotics-assisted leap, angling not towards T'Soni, but towards her other self. The Charge blasted out of the arena floor at an upwards angle to intercept her high-flying self, then redirected itself back down towards where T'Soni was sprinting towards one of the obstacles on the biotiball field.
The darastrix flowed up the side of one of the pillars, a solid stone construction as part of the biotiball field. One two three four steps and she was up, having run up the side of the six meter tall obstacle. Her Charge slammed into the base of the obstacle as T'Soni was already leaping from its top with a biotic-assist, blasting a crater into the top of the stone slab as she sailed into a full-body slam against her other self, helplessly in the grip of gravity.
They landed in the water, her one self struggling to free herself from T'Soni's tight, iron-hard grip, while her other self sprinted around obstacles towards the water. She could hold her breath for quite some time, but each of herself held her own breath. As united as she was, metabolic processes were still segregated to each of her selves. The waters around her and T'Soni roiled with biotic discharges, until the dragoness got under her, and she broke loose.
It was all she could do to slam up as strong a shield as she could, as T'Soni dual-cast a pair of Shockwaves straight into her at point-blank range.
Her self boomed out of the water and smashed into the room far overhead, even as the shockwave blasted the water free of that part of the biotiball court. T'Soni was up and out in a flash, only to get hammered by a Throw from her other self, before she sent a gentle lift to catch her now knocked-out half before she smashed back down to the floor a good dozen meters below.
T'Soni was still barely more a century old, still in the prime of a mere Maiden. And yet, every spar with her always took the very best just to keep up, testing the limits of her new self with two bodies in every way. It was as terrifying as it was invigorating.
She gently lowered her other-self to the bleachers to one side of the biotiball arena while simultaneously dodging first a throw, then a pull from the unrelenting darastrix. Getting her other self to safety took priority, and the game didn't end until either T'Soni was knocked out, or both of her were.
"It is time to finish this." The asari-darastrix hybrid never hesitated to act, conjuring a Singularity on each side of the twins. The immense energy required to dual-cast Singularities, made her flare with the black-silver-blue of biotic light, her stance confident as she held the twin singularities in tight control. Despite the whirling aura drawing her towards both artificial black holes, she felt only a minor tug, before T'soni clenched her fists, and both Singularities detonated with stunning force, hammering her to her knees.
She was panting quietly in the aftermath when her student stepped forward and offered her a hand. "I hope I didn't injure you with that one? I've been trying to incorporate twin singularities into my repertoire"
"A bit." She winced as her knees popped. She'd been driven to them with enough force to require T'Soni's assistance in getting to her feet, hanging onto the younger woman's hand and glancing about for her other self.
There she was, just sitting up, and with a splitting headache that made both of her wince. "You really hammered me there. Both with the shockwave and the singularities."
Liara was still glistening with that rich biotic aura. She glanced down at her hands, watching the glistening aura flicker and flow around her fingers as she flexed them. "I still can't say how much I've come to enjoy this, or how strong I've actually become. It used to be that I could barely cast a Singularity for more than ten seconds without an Armali biotic amp, but now I barely feel a thing!"
"Well, you have been training for almost a year now since your reawakening, Ms T'soni." Her one self rummaged in the bag she'd left on the bleachers, grabbing a pair of bottles and a smaller package. She popped two pills into her mouth and sucked greedily at the nutrient-rich restorative drink as she slid over the banister and dropped to the floor of the arena. A quick Throw tossed her other self the spare bottle and package, and she also partook of the restoratives and painkillers. "I would have expected remarkable improvement from a rock under the regimen the Matriarch has placed you under."
"For that, I'm most grateful." T'soni gave a respectful nod. "My skin is coated with miniature eezo crystals, and I am a walking biotic bastion with more power than I could handle at the start. Not to mention that I had to learn to keep my new 'urges' in check."
"You've been quite good about that, Ms T'Soni." She smiled and nodded with her other self, then winced slightly at an ache in that self's neck. "I haven't noticed anything amiss at all, save perhaps for increased appetite."
"Uh, y-yes, that too." Liara nibbled her lip bashfully as she put a hand to her toned stomach. "And I am afraid that I have worked up quite an appetite after our spar."
"Oh. Are we hungry then?" Both of her smiled as she slid her arms about her waists, posing a little for the bashful, beautiful darastrix. "Is there anything... or anyone, that you would like to eat?"
Liara's eyes, so bright and alive, those eyes... They widened with surprise as she stuttered a little. "I-I w-was meaning it's time for lap, I mean lunch! Oh Goddess..." Her face sunk into her palm, and she shook her head, her sleek, glistening-black horns, so much like an asari crest, gleaming in the lights far overhead.
"I think we can help you get your fill, with plenty of dessert." One of her spoke as the other turned to her other self. One hand caressed her hip, the other dipped down the front of her shorts and made both of her give a quiet sound of pleasure.
She turned, mouths kissing, tongues meeting in a soft, humming kiss, before breaking it with a soft gasp, one of her selves kissing tenderly down the neck of the other as that other turned to give Liara a tender stare. "Do you think the two of me can satisfy a dragon's appetite?"
Liara, no longer 'Ms T'soni' in her mind gaped at her with astonishment at such a flagrant display. Still, she'd had no luck so far in subtler methods, and this way at least she didn't have to get close to Liara's...intoxicatingly strong biotic aura. Her mind seemed to melt under the young dragon's aura if she got too close, with either of her selves, the desire for her was so powerful...
And then the girl turned and a blue-biotic bolt blazed across the arena. Liara was gone. Again. She gave a deep sigh of frustration, and growled with one of her selves, as the other winced a little and touched her belly where Liara's shockwaves had impacted.
Perhaps now was not the best time to pursue romantic interests, no matter how desirable the prey.
Oh well. She'd relish helping the new dragoness out of her shell. One day...
For perhaps the first time, the stars of the vast cosmos bore witness to a panicked dragon fleeing like a bat out of hell.
Liara T'Soni burst into her private quarters and promptly sealed the door. She panted heavily and braced herself against the door, her eyes frantically glancing about in terror.
"By the Goddess, that was too close!"
She leaned back against the door and gasped for a moment or two, feeling the rapid thud-a-thud of her heartbeat slowly settling down to a more normal rhythm and pace.
It took a minute for her to slowly get her breathing under control as well, using a mnemonic trick that Joru had showed her, of taking a deep breath, holding it a beat, then letting it out slowly. It calmed her, as it was meant to, and she started fumbling at her waist to peel off her rather disgusting workout clothes as she stepped over to the showers.
She was going to need it; the twins kept pushing Liara to her limits in more ways than one. And it was hardly what she needed now that her life had been irrevocably changed.
She shivered slightly as she tugged the shirt off over her head and tossed it through the small, square opening into the laundry system. The shorts followed next as she stepped into the shower, and set the water as she preferred The soothing-warm cascade flowed over her as she stepped into the private shower stall, and rested her forehead against the wall for a moment.
How under all the suns had her life changed so completely, and so rapidly? First her entire dig team had been slaughtered on Therum, then her abduction, torture and even her own death on Virmire. And now this.
She turned her gaze to the shower's mirror, a stranger looking back at her. While she had always been something of a shy introvert, Dr. Liara T'Soni had always been proud of her race and even felt pity for those who were unfortunate to be born as something other than asari.
But now Liara was not even that.
While the contours of the face in the mirror were those she remembered, the dark-blue scales were very different, and her eyes... So eerie. She couldn't suppress a slight shudder and looked away, turning up the heat again and closing those startling, unsettling eyes.
Her hands flexed slightly as she let the water gush over her, warming her and soothing her in equal measure. Talons tipped her fingers now, easily two centimeters in length if not more. Hard, sharp, she'd actually drawn blood when she tried to pinch herself to see if she was dreaming at one point. And even that...
Her blood was dark, so very dark now. Dark as her scales, dark as her eyes. Dark blue so deep it was almost black.
She shuddered again and turned up the heat a few more notches. Liara bit her lip, carefully, as she'd learned how sharp her new teeth were, as she nervously clutched the sides of her arms and slowly looked over her shoulder with dread. No matter how many times she beheld the alien sight for the past year, Liara still could not get used to the fact that she now bore a tail.
The long, thin appendage, no bigger around than her wrist where it emerged from her hips, and tapering down to a point only a couple fingers in width, it swayed unconsciously behind her, helping her balance, though she could manipulate it if she focused on it. It was weird doing that though, and mostly she just tried to forget it existed.
A quiet whimper escaped her and she looked away, shutting her eyes and cradling her face in her hands before turning it up to the warm water gushing from the faucet.
A Goddess-damn tail! Even the krogan didn't have tails like this bloody thing! A particularly morbid voice in her head asked if she now had more in common with the krogan than asari. Savage, brutal, battle-hungry, and few qualms about whatever, or whomever, they might eat!
By Athame and all her Saints, that thought terrified her more than having a tail. After all, her changes were not limited to the physical.
Her biotics were...quite frankly, beyond anything she'd ever heard of. Her well of power didn't seem to have a bottom, she felt as fresh and energetic now as she had before the spar started, despite having used quite advanced and normally draining techniques. Not to mention the raw power she could command now...
Liara still winced slightly each time she remembered her first attempt at using a Warp after her transformation. The ball of black lightning had gone through the melon like a buzz-saw, then through the backstop, and deep into the reinforced wall behind, leaving a huge gash in the hardened duranium. Her mother had given her such a scolding look afterwards...
But her newfound biotic power was almost nothing compared to how amazing some of her other internal changes. During her mother's many routines tests to assess her new 'condition', Liara discovered that she had apparently received a noticeable increase in her IQ. She had benefited very handsomely from that one over the last year.
Things just seemed...simpler to her now. It was eerie how seemingly insoluble problems with their answers just out of reach that had vexed her for decades before seemed to open up and reveal their hidden secret nuance free for the taking. She'd gone back over her notes from her doctoral thesis and while most of her points were salient and sound, she'd been appalled at her lack of understanding in other areas. And that even some of her mentors never saw those faults either was especially disconcerting for many reasons.
It did have its downsides, though. Once she'd gotten back into reading over her old notes, new connections and possibilities had called to her, and it had taken nearly three days before her mother staged an intervention to drag her out of her private chambers and force her to eat. (On second thought, it was little different from how she had always been addicted to her studies). She'd been deep in a meta-analysis of certain historical and folkloric accounts involving dragons of various sorts from numerous cultures, and while not her exact field of expertise, it had made for fascinating almost enthralling deductions.
She broke that train of thought as she realized it was gathering steam, and turned her face away from the rushing water again, giving a soft whimper. Her intellect increasing wasn't the only sign of deep change to herself, though, oh no. If that had been the extent of her change, she could at least argue that her 'self' was still her. Still Liara T'soni.
But even that had been taken from her. She was self-aware enough, especially with her heightened intelligence, to notice several rapidly growing changes in her own personality and psyche. Some made her feel like a Matriarch, while others were what made her feel like a krogan.
She was more prone to anger, for one thing. Things that would have had her slip into sadness or melancholy earlier provoked a wild surge of irritation instead which could quickly enflame her into anger. She'd destroyed one omnitool already when in a fit of rage over some article that was so clearly asinine that a blind grox in a thunderstorm on a black night should have been able to see all the glaring problems with it. And when she'd posted an exacting critique of the article, she'd been banned!
A quiet crick made her loosen her grip and wince at the scratches her clawtips had dug in the wall. At least they weren't deep enough to require fixing this time, she was getting better. Better than completely suppressing her desire to eat someone.
But as harsh as most of her changes were, those were not even her most embarrassing.
Liara was never vain, but she understood she passed for attractive among her people. She had mostly been slender and lean, but now it seemed like her transformation had been determined to make her outright curvy and voluptuous after the toning and muscular development had run its course. She had a body that could easily land her on the cover of Fornax!
The water flowing over her slid down her body, trickling over her long, sleek legs. She'd always been a tall girl, for an asari. Slightly shorter than her matriarch mother, and not quite as tall as her father. Now, she towered over both of them, and most of the new height was in her long, sleek, finely-muscled legs. Legs that anyone would drool over.
Her thighs flared just enough to meet her hips, a soft and supple curve flowing to her trim, hourglass waist and flat belly. She knew from her examination of her tail that her back was well-muscled as her front, much to her chagrin. She'd caught several of her mother's commandos staring after her as she walked, making both her and the commandos she'd caught blush bright purple.
And oh Goddess, the most noticeable change was her breasts. Before her transformation, the asari archaeologist was a modest B-cup, as the humans termed it. Modest, even slightly on the generous size considering her age and activity level. And because she was still technically a virgin who had yet to meld with anyone, she hadn't had any swelling to increase her initial size.
That, had changed. DRASTICALLY.
Liara was still only a Maiden at the young age of 106, but now she was already a large D-cup! Her father was no help at all, still teasing her about 'finally inheriting her mother's incredible rack.' Liara still felt no pain, not even a twinge of the backaches that occasionally plagued her mother, but she was sporting matriarchal-sized packages now. Full, firm, round, and sleek, her orbs hung at a very pleasing angle, dappled with her dark-blue scales, and capped with dark peaks that made clothing a hassle at times, as even a light shirt would stiffen them to hardness.
And that was another thing: they were so sensitive! Against her better judgment, Liara unconsciously lifted a finger to stroke the side of her breast.
She gave a soft keening sound, trembling as her knees buckled slightly under her and a dash of warm water splashed across her face. She pulled her hand away, whimpering and panting, with her head down to let the water cascade over her horns and the soft folds at the back of her neck. She really had to stop doing that. She had already embarrassed herself enough in her mother's own house on several occasions.
Liara still remembered that one morning she had ventured out of her room and strode through to the dining hall, unsure of why so many were staring at her with a surprised yet hungry gaze until Aeythta sat next to her and said, "Hey kid, you're giving everyone a show that you'd normally have to pay for."
Liara had looked down and saw to her horror that she was completely and utterly naked! She'd been so warm and comfortable, that she'd utterly forgotten to get dressed! She'd been so mortified that she'd fled back to her chambers and stayed their for most of a week. That was the worst of them, but she'd occasionally forgotten to get dressed again after using the showers, after one of her training sessions with the D'Vati twins. The first time she'd done that, she'd begged her mother to allow her to stop the training, to no avail.
Horrifyingly enough, that wasn't even the worst part. No, one of the most bizarre and frightening changes to Liara's life was how her own people reacted to her presence. She was no longer truly asari, she was a freak and a monster. She had fully expected to be treated with scorn, disgust, and even fear, shielded only by her mother's vast influence. In fact, such a reaction would have been far easier to deal with. While most humans, salarians and turians reacted this way at first, the reaction from her fellow asari was downright disturbing:
She was lusted after. She saw the way her fellow asari reacted to her, the way their eyes widened, their lips parted, and a speculative gleam came into their eyes. She was far from confident in social interactions, but even she couldn't fail to recognize the intense interest that almost all other asari experienced in her presence. And she even had some idea why.
Her people were natively biotic. It was part of their shared biology, nearly everything on Thessia had biotics to some degree or other. Many birds had long-ago learned to fly using wings that were aerodynamically unsound, using biotics to lift themselves. Many fish used biotic discharges as threat displays, an attack form, or even to find mates.
Finding mates. That was part of her current problem. Asari had organs that detected and analyzed the ambient dark-energy field around her at all times, measuring and analyzing minute fluctuation in her own biotic field. When another biotic field came close, such as another asari, she instantly gained some understanding of the relative power and skill level between them, something that was almost constantly in use by her people, baked into the biology, as it were.
Most asari were utterly unprepared for the strength of her own biotic aura, and due to her species' penchant for the new and unusual, and their understandable desire for a strong mate, it was almost inevitable that she, with her eezo-crystal scales, would generate such a powerful biotic field even at rest, that any asari that came close would find her instinctively and inexplicably attractive.
Liara sighed in resignation. Unlike most Maidens, she had had little interest in romance. She was an academic at heart and was always far more interested in her studies, receiving her doctorate at the young age of sixty. Still, she had dabbled in a few sexual exploits over the years. It was very enjoyable as well as a wonderful form of stress relief, but she had never melded with anyone. Her work was far more fascinating anyway. But more importantly, Liara never felt the same interest most asari did in other species. She admired them of course, but when it came to intimacy, Liara T'Soni strictly preferred the familiar touch and harmonic euphoria that could come from only from another asari, and even then only from fellow shy academics. No other race could possibly compare. What a cruel joke it was that only her fellow asari now chased after her in such a frightening manner!
Was this really her life? She could barely recognize it! And her heart sank at the thought that her changes were only just beginning.
Liara gave another quiet whimper, which quickly grew into sobbing, muffled as the water cascaded down around her altered body, as quiet wracking sobs tore through her.
Her old life was gone. She would trade her last hundred years just to have it back.
The creature in the mirror was a complete stranger. She didn't know who she was anymore.
The planetoid drifted around the feeble, dim-red star at a distance that would be downright chilly for anything other than helium-based lifeforms. As it was, the airless planetoid was barely large enough to have differentiated itself during the formation of the star system, who knows how many billions of years ago.
Long ago, it had been hollowed out for whatever minerals it might have possessed, those long-ago prospectors leaving behind only the useless slag. Well, not quite useless.
The station was built almost entirely inside the ancient mined-out planetoid, with only a few small comm towers jutting out of the surface, and a disguised landing pad leading to the base's sole shuttleport.
Inside, the base took up more than 1/3rd of the internal volume of the small blob of rejected slag, comprising of laboratories, dormitories, no fewer than three different cafeterias, five lounges, an actual bar, and of course, the cloning vats.
Those were vast and intricate, the best technology that the galaxy had to offer and that money could buy. State of the art salarian designs, with human ingenuity and innovation applied to make them far more than they once were. The vast majority of them were unused and had been for years, but the capacity was there. They could churn out division-sized forces in months, if the facility was fully operational.
But it wasn't. It was stuck trying to figure out why one particular sample kept producing duds. Immense progress had been made over the past year, but for the past week Project Gemini had hit a roadblock, spinning its wheels and going nowhere.
Which was something Maya Brooks could relate to!
For the umpteenth time, she mentally cursed getting stuck with this horrible assignment Project Gemini was a slow, overpriced science project with aims that were frankly insulting to humanity. Worst of all, not only was Maya forced to actually contribute to it, but she was delegated to the most mundane role that practically mocked her potential.
The office was plain to the point of ruthlessness. Four plain, unadorned walls, each the unpainted matte grey of the station's stone architecture Plain, dirty-white flooring covered the stone floor, though it hadn't been dirty-white when Maya had first been installed in this office. Interned here.
The desk was precisely aligned with the walls down to the millimeter, perfectly squared off, boxing her in, almost. The desk faced the only door into or out of the office, or cell, take your pick. It contained a single comp-station, with data-links to the mainframe, though with access-limiters installed to prevent her from going snooping in the more sensitive areas. She only knew about them because she'd gotten bored one day about three weeks into her confinement on Sentry Station, and done a little unauthorized digging.
She'd gotten a disconcertingly thorough reaming from Miranda for that stunt. It hadn't been berating her, she'd been critiqued, her methodology for hacking through the firewalls teased apart and shown to be fundamentally flawed in a way that was both belittling and deeply shaming. And not once had Miranda either raised her voice or shown the slightest bit of condemnation for her attempted unauthorized access.
It made her feel so very small. She hadn't tried to hack her way into anything juicy ever since.
That didn't mean she hadn't gone for little excursions here and there, but never anything secured. She'd actually reported to Miranda about Jameson's porn stash, the one with several clandestine shots of Director Lawson herself, which had apparently taken Miranda by surprise. She'd looked rather peeved, and actually thanked Maya for once. Jameson had vanished two days later. She never found out what happened to him. No one did.
But it was only a trivial consolation. Maya could still hardly accept the idea that the Illusive Man sought a small army of shock troops and elite operatives cloned entirely from alien DNA. And not just any alien race, but the goddamn Darastrix! The one who infiltrated humanity and then got the Normandy handed over to an Asari Spectre's command!
She sighed violently and leaned back in her chair, rubbing her eyes with the heels of her palms. The chair, while ergonomic and form-fitting, was still branded with the Cerberus logo on the back, as was the door itself, as if Maya could ever forget who she worked for.
'At least Cerberus stands for something.'
Those were the words she had overheard when she was but a child, and she had internalized it ever since. Everyone in this galaxy used one another, but at least Cerberus was doing the right thing to preserve and empower humanity while the Alliance bureaucrats did shit. Even after humanity became heroes at the Battle of the Citadel and joined the Council, the Alliance threw it all away by choosing Anderson. Maya once thought that as a military war hero Anderson would go far in seizing every advantage over the aliens to secure humanity's rightful place. But after a year, it was clear he had no such intentions and instead sought idealistic cooperation with them. What a delusional, over-the-hill wash-up . Anderson was an insult to everything about humanity.
But now Maya wondered if Cerberus, or possibly even the Illusive Man himself, was falling prey to the same trap and losing sight of what they stood for. Had gaining a Council seat softened Cerberus' old sense of vigilance, of proving their mettle through the unparalleled qualities exclusive to humanity? Were they truly relying on the strength of aliens instead now? Like with Project Gemini?
She nearly started when the door snapped open without preamble. Nearly, she'd had enough training and practice to prevent the involuntary jerk from making it farther than removing her hands from her eyes.
Director Lawson strode into her office, resplendent in her sleek, white-and-black catsuit, the one with the pointless built-in heels. Maya had always thought that to be a silly affectation of Miranda's, but not something she wanted to fight the Director over.
"Rasa. Have you finished with the latest update to the clone-imprints?" Miranda's voice was sweet and supple, much as she herself was.
Some women had all the damn luck. Much as Maya and some others wanted to believe Director Lawson was the type of ambitious floozy to sleep her way to the top, her genius intellect and high-maintenance attitude proved she was anything but. Miranda Lawson was without a doubt the sharpest and probably most capable agent in the entire project. Her talents made her the Illusive Man's right hand, and she knew it. She flaunted her beauty and superior skills without actually rubbing it in, and took great pride in her work. Of that much, Maya could definitely profile about the woman.
It's what she was stuck doing here anyway.
"Neural Imprint Program X41822-N, as per your request." Maya managed to get the words out without gritting her teeth. "I finished it about half an hour, and was just double-checking with a second data run to make sure it's solid."
"Very good." Miranda's cool tone gave the words the semblance of a lie as she took the datapad and glanced over it. "No, we discarded subset A-A 31-Theta, it produces an unacceptable level of deviance when applied with X-J 87-Beta."
"Why? What kind of deviancy? I thought Theta's patterns of enhanced memory retention were quite favorable for the subjects." Maya frowned as she brought up the raw data again.
"They are, in moderation and in conjunction with other moderating influences. The A-A subset has no such limitations, and the interactions with the Beta subset would tend to generate extreme sociopathy, if not outright psychopathy, and at least exacerbate sadistic tendencies" Miranda shot her a 'you should have caught that' look, pursing her lips as she flicked through the datapad's readout at lightning speed.
"Duly noted." Maya flatly responded. Why was she even needed if Miss Perfect Lawson could do these profiles? "That reminds me, do we still have no idea why the subjects look nothing like a seven-foot dragon body builder from Badass Weekly?"
'Do you still have no idea?'
The Director's lips tightened for a moment in a frown, before she gave a faint sigh and perched on the corner of Maya's desk. "At present, no. The working hypothesis is that her vastly different phenotype is due to external environmental factors that we can't replicate, but that is just speculation as of yet."
They've managed to produce clones that had some darastrixian features, but none of them lasted very long. They usually succumbed to massive system-wide auto-immune disorders as different portions of the clones' anatomies warred with each other on a microscopic level.
So far, the only viable clones have been extremely petite, cute almost. Slender almost to the point of thinness, and no more than 142cm in height, weighing less than 50kg. Dark, almost blue-black skin was mirrored by silver-white hair. They possessed no body-hair at all, only eyelashes, eyebrows, and scalp-hair. The irises were an eerie crimson-red, which still unsettled Maya slightly.
"Well, as for Subject Scorpio," Maya opened her drawer and withdrew an OSD, which she slotted into her terminal. "I have a few imprint theories and proposals you might want to consider."
Project Gemini's original goal was create entire platoons of elite shock troopers, but given their failure to produce clones of the darastrix, they've been re-tasked with another mission. Their goal was now to produce the galaxy's most elite operatives, unlike any others in the galaxy. But above all else, Subject Scorpio was intended to be their pride and joy. With the most careful calculations and the finest cherry-picked enhancements, Scorpio would be the finest covert operative in the galaxy. Superior speed, agility, flexibility, intelligence and combat expertise. Furthermore, Scorpio would unlock the path to even greater soldiers, to become the standard template for all creations to come. Asari commandos, Salarian STG and Turian Blackwatch would be made obsolete antiques. The future of covert operations. The crown jewel of Project Gemini.
But Maya only received a rebuke for her efforts.
"It's too early to discuss Subject Scorpio yet." Miranda slid easily to her feet and shot Maya another of those infuriating frowns. "We have yet to make it past the drawing board. We're still months, if not years away from being able to produce Subject Scorpio with all the desired modifications and imprints uploaded correctly. You're overreaching your duties, Rasa. Again."
"With all due respect, Director," Maya barely managed to keep the scowl off her face, "I was assigned here to design neural imprint profiles to advance the progress of Gemini. There are ways I could accelerate that progress. If I could accompany one of the clones during training, or even as a handler for a live mission, I could design —"
"Out of the question." Miranda's flat rebuke brought her up short. "You have access to the telemetry from our test deployments, that will be sufficient."
"I respectfully disagree! Profiling produces far better results when assessing the subject's performance in person. And I have more than ample training for field work."
"Rasa. For the seventh time in three months — and yes, I keep track — I will remind you that the Illusive Man has placed you on indefinite suspension from any field assignments, including as a simple observer." Miranda's face hardened into a scowl, all the more fearsome for her beauty. "Your face and genetic profile has been permanently flagged by the Spectres along with every military organization and law enforcement in the galaxy. Your anonymity has been compromised. And from my own assessment, so is your judgment."
Maya bristled. "My judgment?"
"I read your mission profile before you even set foot on my base, same as I do for all personnel." Miranda answered coldly and clinically. "You were trusted to scout out one of the most technologically advanced platforms in the galaxy, and you only employed your standard precautions. You were allowed to review both of the Cerberus projects that studied the AI and its body respectively. If you had properly consulted with the minds involved, such as myself, I could have informed you just how capable our lost asset truly is. And just how suicidal it would be to investigate any lead on it in person, especially since we all know that this AI was able to effortlessly purge the entire Geth armada. Even Kai Leng had the sense to conduct his part of the investigation at a great distance. You, however, didn't take the threat seriously and you disregarded vital intelligence because you thought you didn't need assistance. As a result, you were nearly captured and almost got Cerberus compromised. So no, I do not trust your operational judgment."
Maya's vision swam red. She started to get out of her chair to let the Director know exactly what she thought of her assessment and where she could put it. But at a startling speed, Miranda's hand shot out and rested firmly on the smaller woman's shoulder. Maya's eyes bulged as her entire momentum was abruptly halted mid-stand. She couldn't even budge. What the hell? She wasn't even pressing down, but it felt like Maya was pushing against a reinforced steel wall! How did such a pristine woman who looked like she never worked out a day in her life have such freakish strength? What, did Miranda Lawson live at the gym?
Her mental rant was stilled by the cold stare from the Director; the look of forbiddence in her green eyes was more than a little chilling. Her voice did not rise above the conversational, but the ice that flowed from it almost coated the walls in frost. "You are not to argue this point, Rasa. Or 'Lilium', if that's your alias now. I have spoken the final word on the matter, and consider this issue closed. Am I clear?"
"...Crystal. Ma'am." She hated having to say those words. She hated meaning them. But she didn't dare say anything else. She didn't dare mean anything else.
"Very good." The Director lifted her hand, dismissing the issue as if it, as if Maya was of no consequence. "I will review your latest reports. In the mean time, we have sent two units out on covert missions. Low-value targets, chosen for absolute secrecy in the event of a miss-chance. The telemetry should be linking into your terminal shortly. I want your analysis on my desk by zero-six-hundred tomorrow, am I understood?"
"Yes, ma'am," she answered with resignation.
The Director gave a curt nod and swept out of the room, her sleek catsuit making absolutely certain that Maya had a good view of the roll of her curved hips. The arrogant, smug show-off.
The door slid closed and shut with a soft, electronic chirp.
"Bitch." She didn't even say it that loudly, barely more than a whisper.
What Maya didn't know was that Miranda's hearing, like everything else, was engineered to perfection. Three seconds later, the glowing-green icon of the door turned orange. Locked. Damnit, the Director didn't even trust her that much?
Maya stared numbly at the sealed doorway for nearly four minutes. Then she snarled and threw her coffee mug at the wall, shattering it into a dozen pieces.
Damn it all! The Director, the Illusive Man, all of Cerberus! They had hamstrung her! Every transfer request and maneuver for recognition denied! They had trapped her in this dead-end job that she never wanted and all for goals that flew in the face of everything she had thought Cerberus stood for.
Honestly, she had been taught to expect that long ago. Unbidden, the last words of the original Maya Brooks from twenty years ago floated through her mind.
"People can't be trusted. They will always find some way to disappoint and betray you. That's just life. And that's why it's always best to trust nobody but yourself."
She was right. Damn it all, she was right.
So be it. As the rest of the day past, she came to a new resolution. If Cerberus thought they could just leave her high and dry like this, then she would repay them the same way she had the original Maya Brooks: By shooting them in the back, and then take what she needed from them.
For now, she would bide her time and play along by playing the good little soldier. She would throw everything into her work until the right tool was ready for the taking. She would play the part of the beaten operative resigned to the sanctuary of her work and contributions. She would make herself indispensable in the way that the Director wanted. The perfectionist bitch was often easily distracted by results that matched or exceeded her high expectations, to mistake dedicated efficiency for obedience. All while laying the groundwork of her revenge, her golden ticket.
Maya eyed her earlier datapad for Subject Scorpio. Yes. There was so much that she could do with a powerful clone under her thumb. She would make Scorpio into something better, something truly loyal. Something better than the Darastrix. Something worth standing for. She would show the Director and all of Cerberus that she was not some blind puppet, but someone capable of forging her own destiny.
She would show them all.
Andrew Kinkaid, known to some as Andy, to others as "that rat bastard", and to a very select few as "Operative Murat", helped lug the bag up onto the odd stone plinth set up on the sub-deck of this very neat, trim, fast, and sneaky little ship that the Broker had set up for him, and wondered how the fuck things had gotten to this.
No, he didn't not really, but it was a good line, and damnit, he needed something to take his mind off what was going to come next.
He'd started life as a reasonably bright kid back on Earth, which meant getting into a gang early, but not so tightly that he couldn't jump ship if and when they got smashed by a bigger one. He did good in what little schooling was still available, navigated the shark-infested waters of his hometown with ease, and got picked out by an Alliance recruiter as a kid with potential. Andy thought so too, and when the recruiter made him an offer, he hadn't hesitated to get out of that cesspool, and damn his former buddies in the gang.
Tough luck, no hard feelings. Just business.
Just like what he'd been doing in the Alliance had been just business.
He'd come up through the ranks, but got quickly kicked over to the intelligence branch. Espionage and counterespionage, spying, that sort of thing. He'd been good at that, and he still looked back on those days with a bit of fondness. Even so, it had been just business. And in that business, getting overly attached to your employer was a good way to wind up dead.
After five years, he'd cashed out, and gone looking for other work. He tried C-Sec for a while, but while the paycheck was good, much better than he had expected, they were so mired in red tape and rules & regs that they could barely do anything. That wasn't for him, and he'd bowed out after only thirteen months of that shitshow. He had gotten his private investigator license at the time, though, just making sure to dot all the Is and cross all the Ts, making sure that whatever came next, he could at least fall back on what he was best at.
Two weeks of barely any income later, chewing through his nest-egg he'd built up as a C-Sec officer later, a client showed up with a fat, shiny paycheck. Only one problem. The Broker doesn't take 'no' for an answer.
Not that Murat wanted to say no, not with that many zeros in his salary, nor with the added perks that came with being part of the biggest intelligence organization in the galaxy, bar none. If the Broker wanted intel on a guy, Murat didn't question why, he just got to it, and made sure his data was accurate before sending it up the chain. He'd done well with the position, twelve years in and no complaints. But now...
He unzipped the bag, disclosing the damaged, but still recognizable face of the turian corpse inside. A reek of decay wafted out of the bag and Murat was very grateful for his helmet. He'd taken to start doing these with it on, both for security purposes (it's damn hard to ID someone who's features were hidden behind a flat-black visor), and because the stench sometimes made it almost impossible to do his new job.
Still, the benefits were delightful, and his new position in the Broker's network was a major step up from being a simple spy. He got nearly carte blanche to carry out his orders, nowadays, instead of having to figure shit out and pay for it out of his, admittedly obscene, personal salary. Now, he'd be told 'go grab this person', he'd do a little search, figure out a plan, and report back with what he needed, which was almost always delivered promptly.
Take this instance. He'd been told to nab a retired Turian Blackwatch operative, discharged from that organization three years ago due to a bad injury. Left leg broken in six places, and despite the best the doctors could do, he'd walk with a limp for the rest of his life.
Well, he certainly had. They'd made a study of him, figured out his habits. He liked to stop in at a pub once or twice a week, but never on a schedule. Some weeks he'd turn up on Saturday, sometimes on Sunday, most often one of the weekdays, probably in combination with one of the week-ends. He worked as a personal trainer in a local gym, helping those that were still uninjured to keep fit while he himself was old and washed up, and wasn't that a perfectly typical bloody turian thing to do.
It hadn't been easy getting the dextro-poison dosage right, they'd had to do some quick shuffling and preliminary ops to figure out his body-mass, because that foul stuff was devilishly tricky to handle, especially to make it undetectable in an autopsy, but in the end, they'd got him. They caught a lucky break that made appearances even easier once some random drunk started a fight. They couldn't have asked for a better opportunity. A bar fight gone wrong, an old soldier's heart giving out, police and paramedics called, and the old veteran being raced off in an ambulance. Only, the ambulance's lights had shut off about halfway to the hospital and it had taken a different route.
A route that led, through several changes of hands, directly to this bizarre tableau The helmeted human gazing down into the unseeing eyes of a turian corpse. A corpse laid on a stone bier, roughly waist-high.
The stone was dark, but not quite black. It tapered slightly from the base to the upper surface, wider at the base, which made it a bit awkward to get the corpse onto it. Ghoulish carvings decorated the side-panels of the three-meter-long, meter-and-a-half-wide monolith, the rim of its basin-like upper surface raised a few centimeters above the slightly-dished surface of the bier itself. That rim was glowing now, faint, but noticeable in the dim light. He didn't like having the lights up when he did this, it was creepy enough as it was.
For the past fourteen months, Operative Murat had been given command of a highly advanced ship that came with this unique 'device'. It's origins and design were completely unknown, it didn't look like any form of technology Murat or any of the crew had ever seen, even from the Shadow Broker's network. But it was the centerpiece of their entire operation. For over a year now, Murat and his crew were tasked with fetching the bodies of specific individuals the Broker wanted information from. But this was never about kidnapping and enhanced interrogation to force valuable secrets out of them. Sometimes they were to retrieve someone that had died within the week, but most of the time they were to covertly assassinate their target before loading the body.
Either way, their directive was always to collect a corpse.
Operative Murat cleared his throat and suppressed a shiver as the corpse's eyes opened. They were normal turian eyes, freshly dead ones. No, he'd been dead for two or three days by now, and despite being kept in as good a condition as was feasible, he was more than a little rank. Murat always hated when they did that, opened their eyes at him when he started, especially the glint of blue fire in their sightless pupils. They'd done this to a number of victims over the past six months, once he'd been assigned to this particular duty. He'd replaced some asari chick who hadn't been able to handle it, but he was made of sterner stuff than one of those wishy-washy fishgirls.
There was much to gain from this particular one. Of course, Murat made sure to have the former Blackwatch operative's possessions searched. He wasn't a fool. Sure enough, they found three recording devices. The turian may have been retired, but you couldn't take proper training out of a soldier, let alone from covert operations.
He checked his omnitool and started the timer, hunting for the first of the questions that the Broker had sent him to ask this particular corpse.
"Alright, questioning of Prisoner #83391 has officially begun. Confirm, are you former Blackwatch Major Pallandis of the Turian Hierarchy?"
The corpse's jaws worked, the mandibles flexing, and a harsh, buzzing voice emerged. "Yeeeessss."
Murat nodded and entered a note. That was one question down. The device would only work for approximately twenty minutes, and could only make the corpse answer a total of ten questions with complete honesty. "How many years did you serve with Blackwatch?"
The corpse's dead jaws moved again, the gleam of blue fire in its eyes unwavering, not even flickering as he flashed a light over its face. Eerie. "I was a Blackwatch operative for sixteen years, three months, eight days, seventeen hours, and six minutes."
Just as Murat opened his mouth to continue, so did the corpse. "And eight seconds."
The operative's eyebrows went up. The dead kept proving extremely literal and accurate in their answers. A little odd, but obviously very welcome. Murat added the note alongside the recording, verifying that their man was a true veteran of Blackwatch and almost confirming their suspicions that he would have the top secret intel that the Shadow Broker was looking for. If not, he could tell them who did.
"Were you involved in any highly classified covert operations on Tuchanka?"
"Yeeeeesssss." The same buzzing, croaked answer from a throat gone hard and rough from desiccation
"How many operations to Tuchanka were you involved in?"
"Siiiiixssssss." The turian corpse's eyes never blinked, just that slight flicker of blue fire in the dead eyes as it answered the questions it was asked.
Murat's eyes widened, and then he smiled. They had managed to uncover hints that at least seven operations had taken place in the last ten years. For this deceased operative to have been involved in as many as six, this was even better than they had hoped. For several decades, the Shadow Broker had noticed the Turian Hierarchy was conducting covert operations on Tuchanka every few years, but the Broker suspected it had been going on far longer than that. Honestly, it was hardly strange that the Turians would be keeping an eye on the Krogan just like the STG who maintained a constant presence in the system. But what was unusual was how the Broker's sources inside the STG never heard of any such operation; their people monitoring Tuchanka never even noticed anything. Even by Blackwatch standards, the Turians were very rarely this secretive. The Hierarchy was up to something that they didn't want the Krogan or the Council to know about.
"How long has the Turian Hierarchy been dispatching these routine covert operations to Tuchanka?"
"Sssssince shhhhortly affffter the Armissstice at Galvak'norrr." The corpse did not breathe, but the words were still forced from the voice-box anyway.
Murat was barely able to keep his excitement professionally bottled. Even if he hadn't researched everything he could find about Tuchanka for this job, anyone with a decent education knew that the Armistice of Galvak'norr had officially ended the Krogan Rebellions after the genophage was deployed almost 1,500 years ago. The Shadow Broker's suspicions were right, this was it!
And now for the big jackpot. The answer that his boss had been searching for for decades, and no doubt of the greatest secrets of the Turian Hierarchy.
"What was the primary objective of these operations on Tuchanka?"
"Routine munisssssionss checksss on Ordinance Zero-Takan-Five, to maintain sssecrecy and functionality."
Murat's brow furrowed. "And what is Ordinance Zero-Takan-Five?"
"A high-yield fusion warhead, hidden in the Dekharn Plateau region. Estimated yield as of lasssst mission check: 1.68 gigatons."
Silence, the room went as deathly quiet as the corpse itself. The other three agents in the room were just as stunned as Operative Murat was. A bomb? The turians had planted a bomb on Tuchanka? An explosive of that magnitude was a guaranteed continent-buster, and likely to devastate the entire planetary atmosphere, making it uninhabitable even by krogan standards! By the stars, this information was monumental! Murat took several breaths to steady himself as his mind raced, frantically logging more notes. He had to focus. For a secret of this scale there were so many questions now, but they could only ask three more. Better make them count.
"Alright then. Confirm, why exactly did the Turian Hierarchy plant a such a massive live bomb on Tuchanka?" Truthfully, the reason was obvious but everything had to be completely verified.
"To contain any resurgent threat by the krogan. With Tuchanka their only source of breeding females, it was hoped that in the event of an uprising, the Ordinance Clusters, coupled with orbital interdiction, would end the threat before they could get off-world." The corpse's voice, though still raspy, was getting looser, and less raspy as it talked. Murat knew it was a bad sign, though. It meant that the corpse's larynx was starting to decay.
"Clusters, clusters... Just how many bombs did your people put on that planet?" Murat's guts were twisting a little.
"Original deployment records are classified." The corpse spoke something else, but it was garbled. "...last mission, six thermal-lance gravitic-implosion fusion devices were in place to trigger super-volcanic reactions when activated."
"My god, they're ready to kill the entire planet..." One of the other operatives spoke out of turn, earning a glare from Murat as he frantically gestured for silence.
There were at least a dozen other questions Murat wanted to ask, but he could only ask one more. One that would point their intelligence network at another lead, to find a paper trail "What is the name of the turian officer that assigned you these missions every few years?"
"Watch-Commander Anduris Vesarrian, Fifth Blackwatch Regiment, Tuchankan DMZ Command." The corpse's eyes flickered, and the eldritch blue glow of their pupils died away, as suddenly as it had appeared.
Murat's shoulders slumped as their source faded away. It would take another week before the device could make it answer their questions again.
"Prep the body for Alpha-Priority stasis. At this time, he is our most valuable cadaver for more information." The operative began to chuckle as elation filled his veins. "Hehehe... The Turians have planted controversial explosives across Tuchanka. Holding the Krogan's entire planet hostage without them even knowing it. Get the QEC communicator fired up! The Shadow Broker will be so pleased to hear this one! My god, this is the mother of all gold mines!"
Birds chittered in the distance and sun glinted into his eyes, waking him from a sound sleep. He grabbed at the stick next to his bed and slowly levered himself upright. In a second or two he got to his feet, pacing slowly about his single-room shack as feeling came back to his legs.
He was still getting used to having them back again, the originals, or as close as makes no difference. Each morning, he still needed a prop to get upright and onto his feet, but once he got moving, got the blood pumping, he was fine for a good long day.
Which was good, because today was a grain day. He hated grain days, but he had to eat proper
Grain days were every fifth or sixth day, thank the spirits, instead of every other day like fish days. He liked fish days.
He was only limping a little by the time he finished his morning ablutions and headed down the beach towards his boat. He'd carved it from a log a long time ago, and it was starting to show its wear and tear. He'd need a new one soon. Luckily he'd already spotted a tree near the edge of the timberline that was big enough and just about dead anyway. He'd be able to get a nice new boat out of the trunk and the branches would be useful for kindling. He didn't know what kind of tree they were, but when shredded and torn open, the finer branches made excellent kindling.
He pushed off and took up his oar, carved from a harder tree than his boat, so it had lasted pretty much intact. There was one splintery bit, but that didn't bother him too much. The ride across the lake to the north shore was fairly uneventful, though he noted a good few spots where the fish were biting. Still, today was a grain day, so he'd toss in a line later.
He'd not even needed to till the fields, they'd been growing with wild grains ever since he got here and took a good look around. Some of the trees up past the timberline had good fine fruit and he'd cleared a nice wide swathe around his shack of timber in the process of constructing it. There was now a start on a nice little orchard in his back garden, along with several plants he'd been given seeds for when he began his journey. He'd nearly lost those seeds several times during his trek down here, but he'd kept them safe all the same, and now a nice, rich kava-root vine was growing along his back garden wall, as well as several other herbs and vegetables.
All part of a balanced diet. Now if only he had something to make gathering the grain easier.
Ehh, it kept his mind occupied, and being this tired would keep the nightmares away when he went to bed.
Hopefully.
He spent most of the morning finding a patch that was ready and ripe, then harvesting it all with the old, but still serviceable knife. He hadn't even needed to sharpen it since she gave it back to him, which was a plus. He didn't want to have to hunt around for a stone tough enough to use as a whetstone. Bundling it up, he brought it down to the shore, where he spread out his grass mat and began carefully stripping the ripe grain from the stalks. He'd burn the chaff for his evening fire and spread the ashes where he'd picked today in the morning.
He looked up and sighed, glancing across the lake towards the island in the center. He'd been there out of curiosity once, when he first got here, thinking to make camp there, but decided against it. All the trees there were huge things, thicker around at the base than his entire shack. Being on the edge of things... suited him.
And so, with the sun going down towards the western rim of the vast bowl-shaped valley, Saren Arterius packed up his load of wheat, and headed back across the lake to his shack in the distance.
It was a good life, a simple life, but it was a life he'd never expected. Even after what he'd done, what he'd nearly done, he hadn't been expecting to be allowed to live, let alone in such an idyllic setting.
It was still a prison, he knew that, but he was content with it.
He only wished the dreams would stop.
But all the same, he also hoped they never would. He didn't want the torment to stop. Because he knew he deserved it.
Saren knew what he was. At first, he wanted to find the means to curtail the human's progress, to remind them of their place. Then he discovered that none of that mattered in the grand design of the Reapers. Sovereign indoctrinated him into its puppet and made him try to hand over the keys to the galaxy. And he came so very close. Endless war, torment and spirits knew what else the Reapers would do.
One could argue that he was technically not responsible for all of his terrible deeds. That he never had any control over his actions in the face of a god seizing control of his mind and stripping him of free will. That thought gave Saren a sliver of consolation, that his fall from grace was inevitable the moment Sovereign touched his mind. But he knew better. Even if it had been inevitable, Saren still remembered that somewhere along the way, he had truly accepted the futility of it all and never once tried resisting Sovereign's influence.
Saren had surrendered. He gave up. He quit.
And that alone made everything they said about him true. Saren Arterius was the greatest traitor of the Turian Hierarchy in over a thousand years. His people were meant to be the protectors of the galaxy, but he had betrayed his sworn duty to Palaven, and Palaven's duty to the Council and countless worlds.
He was a disgrace to every Turian that ever lived.
And yet he still lived. He hadn't thought he would, at first. Hell, he'd tried to take his own life several times at the start, but could never quite do it, not after that first disastrous time. But that was before he'd been purged. Before he'd been cured.
He still didn't believe her that he was free of their taint, but he was content to stay here, where the voices couldn't reach him. Far, very far away from the Tower where she'd kept him at first, where she'd calmly and surgically removed his implants, with the assistance of a team of turian doctors who would have had no compunction of slitting his heart open or leaving him with a time-bomb in his guts.
But they hadn't. They hadn't been that merciful. And when he was little more than bleeding half-dissected meat on the table, she'd stepped in, and the true agony had started.
He wasn't sure how long it had been how long he'd laid there, screaming his lungs out until his vocal cords were little more than limp string. But by the end of it, he was half-mad with the relief from the mind-searing agony.
Throughout all of it, she had been there, watching with those cold, flaming eyes. Watching him writhe as his arm regrew, holding him down so as not to damage the new flesh as it took root and grew like a fast-forward tree, until a new, unscarred arm lay at his side instead of a torn and blooding stump. The same had happened for his leg, and that was worse, but the worst part was feeling his brains being slowly regrown around the hole that tearing off his replacement crest had left.
That had been by far the worst part of the Regeneration spell.
He did not deserve mercy. But if there was one mercy from the universe that he was truly grateful for, it was that the whispers were finally gone. A entire year of blissful quiet.
A year to be alone, where he couldn't be made to hurt anyone else. That thought made him smile.
He'd left his gun back at the Tower. She'd left it with him, but he hadn't taken it. He didn't want a reminder of what he once was. He had taken his old service knife, because that reminded him of his time before the Spectres, before he started to fall. Before the Reapers.
He'd been young back then, so full of naivety and belief that if he could just root them out, he could slay Evil and rid the galaxy of it forever. But Evil doesn't work like that. He knew that now, knew it very well. Much to his cost, and that of everyone in the galaxy.
But at least now, whatever was next for him, his mind would always be his own.
He was enjoying the soft sounds of the lake, watching the bobber on his makeshift line far out on the lake, and relaxing after a hard day's work. His fire was going hot nearby, the skillet and a bubbling mass of crushed grains mixed with water and vegetable juice was simmering beside one of his earlier catches when a shadow momentarily passed over him.
His guts churned inside him, as there was only one being that could make that sort of shadow. He got to his feet, wincing a little at a pain that wasn't entirely real, and drew in his line. He'd actually managed to catch another fish, which was a plus, as the darastrix winged over the lake, resplendent in the setting sun, glimmering gold off her dark scales.
He'd gotten the second fish unhooked and gutted before she came in to land, and added the splayed flesh to the skillet over the fire as she ambled towards him. "Hello, Saren. It's been a while."
"Get the QEC communicator fired up! The Shadow Broker will be so pleased to hear this one! My god, this is the mother of all gold mines!"
The operative switched off the receiver, sending a remote signal to the transmitter, planted in the now-dead turian's clothing. It fried itself quietly, destroying all trace of anything recognizable and leaving behind only melted bits of plastic and some light metals. Of course they found only three of the tracking devices he had planted on the turian during the bar fight he started. There was something psychologically reassuring about the number, people always give up after finding three bugs. They did not think to look for a fourth.
He stood and gazed out the viewport of the cabin he had rented under the name Kasimir Essom, a middlingly-successful captain of a cargo freighter, enjoying a rare vacation across the galaxy. It was a good enough cover story, and would explain why he was in so many varied places.
A soft sigh feathered the metaglass of the viewport with a soft rime of ice, and was followed by a quiet chuckle. He tapped his omnitool to be certain the recording was sound, and copied the recording to an OSD.
The Illusive Man had made his instructions clear. He would find out why the Broker was so desperate to obtain intel on Blackwatch Operatives, and return that information securely back to Cerberus headquarters.
Kai Leng was not a man to leave a mission incomplete.
He racked the slide and cuddled the stock to his cheek, letting his mandible caress it a little as he grinned down the slight at his target. The man was a skeezeball of the worst order, whoring out every tenant in his dirty, barely-functioning hab-complex. If not for actual sex, at least for cheap, unskilled labor that got paid back to the tenant in question in the form of foodstuffs rejected from everywhere else, and barely enough of it to keep body and spirit together. Even worse, Nyreen had found out that one of her friends, that had moved into the place when she'd had nowhere else to go, was now pregnant, and thus 'fetched a higher price' from her 'clients'.
Bastard was probably planning to whore out the kids too, he'd done it before.
The grin was a savage one, full of hate rather than jollity He'd seen Nyreen's face when she'd found out about her friend, and the shock, horror, and growing rage he'd felt had been nothing compared to her own.
They'd met in a bar. No, not that way. He'd been just taking aim on a particular mid-level crime-boss when this attractive turian female strode in and sat next to him at the bar. At first, because of the way the men around his target had sat up and took notice, that maybe she was his target's boss, and his crosshairs had wavered between the two.
Then she'd put a hand on his cheek, and blown the target's head apart with her biotics. That was when he finally recognized her.
Nyreen Kandros. Hierarchy Cabalist, formerly attached to the HFS Tekarrean as part of the assault cruiser's recon scout elements. They were deployed as part of a task force to clean up a krogan cabal on a remote, barely-habitable world on the fringes of a cluster near the 3-kilo-parsec limit. While it wasn't quite an irradiated hellscape, it had been damned close. Their pre-mission jitters had been...memorable.
He'd done a fast calculation then, faster than he'd ever done it before. She was alone, powerful, but weaponless, though a biotic never really counted as being unarmed. There were a dozen and a half of the now-dead boss's men in the bar, maybe more in the back, and she was alone. Never a good spot for a soldier to be.
he'd killed half a dozen before she'd noticed what he was doing and sent a glance his way. Through the sniper's scope, they'd locked eyes, and she's given him a nod of thanks.
After she'd gotten away, he tailed her, and met up with her on a sublevel three buildings over and six levels down. She'd nearly torn his head off before he'd introduced himself. Then he'd had to explain why he'd never so much as given her a call after their deployment, which had been more embarrassing than he cared to admit.
Now, they made a damn good team, and she was putting feelers out among her old friends on the station. She'd been here a lot longer than he had, and while he was busy mapping the underworld power structure, she'd been making quiet contacts among like-minded people.
In truth, they ran the Angels in tandem, rather than either of them being in charge with the other subordinate. It was an odd dynamic, especially among turians, but it worked, and worked well.
She took care of personnel, supplies, and intelligence. There, she was his superior, taking care of the dozens of things that needed doing to ensure that the organization continued to survive, and thrive. He took care of planning the op, and actually ran things in the field. There, he was her superior, and his murmured orders over the comm-net were obeyed instantly.
The name and legend of the Archangel had brought in so many recruits they had multiple cells scattered across Omega by now.
She'd found them not one base, but a series of them, and kept things mobile, shifting unpredictably between bases at random times and along random routes to keep anyone attempting to lock in on their base guessing. She had an encyclopedic knowledge of Omega's underlevels, subfloors, back passages, and hidden routes that absolutely blew him away when he'd first gotten to know her. She said she'd grown up on Omega, which would explain some of it, but...
But she didn't talk much about that part of her past. After she'd left the Hierarchy military, she'd vanished off everyone's scopes. At least until now.
She'd wound up falling into Omega's gravity well much the same way he had, but without quite a clear-cut goal in mind. She'd done a bit of petty crime for a bit, gotten involved with someone (she studiously didn't say who, and he didn't ask), had a falling out and drifted into vigilantism The relationship had lasted a good six months to a year, before the breakup, which had happened shortly before he'd met her.
Meanwhile, he'd told her a lot about his part in the Battle of the Citadel, and the events leading up to it. He told her about getting sucked along in the Spectre's wake when she went haring after the barefaced traitor, Saren, and how much they had been able to accomplish. He told her about the freezing cold of Noveria, and running into the Darastrix. He told her how things went utterly upside-down when the dragon got involved, and how the Virmire fight went.
He also told her about seeing the autopsy reports of the batarians recovered from the asteroid X-57, or rather, what was left of them. He never forgot his detective skills, he knew it was the Darastrix who mutilated them. And after seeing the results of that side of Joru, he knew someone like that would have many more 'bloody skeletons in the closet', as Dr. Chakwas said.
That was why he'd left C-Sec, knowing what she was capable of, and that she was politically untouchable. He knew himself and how C-Sec worked; he would have eventually gone to Executor Palin and pushed to expose the Darastrix, only for the political machine to bury him. He then would have ended up doing something rash about Joru, and it would have ended in getting busted down to permanent beat cop duty in Archives, at the very best.
At worst, being sent home to his father in a very small box would have been an embarrassment disgrace he could never stomach.
But here on Omega, he could do so much more. He could tackle the scum of the galaxy at the heart of their operations. He could make things easier for countless lives, properly punish the worst of criminals, and balance out the universe that much more.
And with his special gun, Archangel had become a legend in under a month.
The first time he fired it against a target, that target died, swiftly and without any warning. It wasn't even obvious who'd blown his head apart, as Garrus had actually been aiming through a small window.
The weapon worked exactly as advertised when the Darastrix had given it to him. It pierced the building's kinetic barrier shield like so much ethereal smoke, blew a fist-sized hole in the three-centimeter-thick metaglass window, and popped the target's head like an overripe melon.
But that was just the start. He'd done the same thing to the first target's lieutenants, straight through thick armored walls without leaving a hole. Without leaving a trace. Sometimes it even appeared that the target had spontaneously exploded rather than been shot.
Criminals were always cowardly and superstitious at the core. The very idea that there was someone who could end you from any distance, without warning, and that no amount of shields or armored walls had ever made a difference... no one was safe. The crime lords of Omega finally felt fear again.
The legend of the Archangel, who could strike down evil wherever it tries to hide, had grown with each corpse he'd left in his wake.
But even now, when he had a growing organization and a team of good men and women that he trusted with his life, only Nyreen Kandros knew who he was under the helmet. That his name was Garrus Vakarian.
The two of them had overjoyed to see each other again. They were different people from before, but found they were now kindred spirits. Two turians that had been stifled and disillusioned by the system, lost and aimless after walking away from their old lives, disappointed by someone they each had once looked up to, and still burning to make a difference for those who couldn't stand up for themselves. His special weapon and tactical brilliance combined with her talent for logistics and knowledge of Omega clicked together perfectly. Their passions from long ago had reignited in less than two weeks, stronger than their feelings had ever been for each other.
It had been hard, that first time, to let his guard down. He'd been running on adrenaline and paranoia so long it was almost impossible to let her in. She'd been just as flexible as he'd remembered, and by the time they were finished, cuddled in each other's arms, he'd been almost entirely undone by her sweet charms. Their feelings only grew in the months that followed, becoming much more serious and committed. And little by little, both of them felt whole again.
The door to his left swooshed open, snapping him back to the present. Nyreen strode out, a pair of figures accompanying her. One was a turian. Male, about average height. He wasn't the target. The other was human, female, obviously not the target either. Damnit, what had gone wrong?
The three of them stood outside the building for a minute, before he noticed Nyreen's signal. 'Stand down, unexpected problem.' Fuck, complications they didn't need.
He watched as Nyreen took the human's hand, giving a soft smile as the woman patted her belly and looked up adoringly at the turian. Oh crap, this was getting into areas he didn't want to contemplate.
That was when the target showed up. Not from the building, but from the street, as an aircar came down to land at the public access terminal. The human woman was quickly withdrawing into herself, almost meek and prey-like as the target; human, male, balding, short and fat about the middle like he had a deflated tire about his waist; got out of the aircar. Somehow the human woman gave the impression of being a complete stranger to the two turians chatting with each other as the target approached.
Garrus held the shot, trusting that Nyreen knew what she was doing, but keeping the crosshairs centered on the target's head anyways. If he got a chance...
He got it.
The target held the woman close, almost smugly, chatting with Nyreen and giving her a leer that itself was almost cause for ending him right then and there. Then he turned and gestured for the human woman to head back inside. She did so, meek and subservient, in a way that he'd seen before in so many battered women on the Citadel that it made his blood boil.
Nyreen was off to one side, as the target chatted with her a bit and turned to the tall turian man. Nyreen was just barely in frame as the target opened the door, still chatting with the man. She flashed a hand signal, and Garrus's breathing stilled.
As always the hunter vision dropped over him at moments like these. His vision seemed to both expand and contract, focusing in on every little detail, predatory intent written in every line and movement. He followed the angle of the man's head, found the base of the skull, checked for atmospheric disturbance, held, and let it loose.
The thunderclap at the end of his rifle was far softer than that of another chemically-based firearm he'd had experience with. This one was nearly silent, about as loud as dropping about ten kilos about a distance of a meter onto soft carpet. A muffled thump. The bright flash was itself contained by the extended muzzle and baffles, reducing it to a visual smear around the end of the barrel for a brief second.
The target's head exploded less than three hammering heartbeats later, and Garrus was up, vacating the sniper's perch, even as Nyreen was screaming in surprise and putting on an act for any nearby cameras, drawing the other turian away from the fresh corpse.
Justice served, swift as an angel's wing.
He tapped his helmet, activating the commlink. The built-in voice-filter that Nyreen had procured distorted his voice juuuust enough that it was nigh-impossible to tell who he was over the comms. "Target down, everyone. One less piece of scum on Omega, and a few more people safer."
Analyzing findings.
The platform moved quietly through the charred landscape, its single glowing eye pulsing as it took several images in high resolution using several different wavelengths.
Analyzing...
It shifted, moving across the hellscape of burned concrete and half-melted steel support struts. The heat unleashed in the base's dying moments had been truly stellar in its scope, destroying any direct evidence and leaving a fifty-meter-deep, twenty-meter-wide hole burned deep into the bedrock. Metal had run like water in the central pillar as the fusion core cooked off and burst confinement, burning out of the heart of the base like a vast blowtorch.
This had been intentional.
Analysis complete.
Only the outer periphery of the central core of the base was even marginally intact. Outlying satellite labs, which it had examined in cold, stalking detail were in less damaged condition, but still thoroughly destroyed, as the hot plasma backwashed through the base on its way burning a hole through the roof.
Consensus achieved.
It paused, tilting its head as it reexamined several marks on the blackened and burned surface of what had once been the secondary shuttlepad. Concealed from view overhead by a cunning facade, that facade had been shattered by the titanic explosion deep in the heart of the base, and now rubble choked the shuttleport's main landing pad, instead of covering it.
Darastrix and Cerberus platform engaged in combat before unknown human installed entity classified as 'EDI' into platform.
The marks were faint, but there, the distinctive toe-claw patterns that it had collated from other sources, both in Organic Central Control, and elsewhere. It had visited Noveria first and taken impressions from the rooftop of the Peak 15 Installation.
Hostilities ceased immediately. Darastrix and EDI previously aligned?
This was puzzling. More data was needed. EDI-intelligence was known to have been carried by Organic: Samantha Traynor, out of Cerberus control, and shortly thereafter, that base too had been crippled.
The consensus was not reached on whether or not the EDI-intelligence was the cause of that destruction as well.
The Geth Collective had assembled and dispatched their platform to scout and investigate organic space past the Perseus Veil. Their mission was twofold: Investigate the digital entity classified as 'EDI', and investigate the organic darastrix 'Jorukaiazhanivahkyss'.
They had monitored Nazara and the Heretic's activities carefully. When the Battle of the Citadel came, the Collective began building consensus if they should intervene to prevent the return of the Old Machines. But then an unexpected third party entered the battle. Another digital presence, an intelligence as powerful and unfathomable as Nazara, had suddenly confronted the Heretics. Intercepted signals revealed the entity 'EDI' was a fully actualized Emergent AI. It promptly declared its allegiance to the organics and then systematically erased the entire Heretic collective network in 3.1933242 seconds with incredible ease. The entity 'EDI' then disappeared and no sign of its presence had been detected since.
And then the was the Darastrix Ambassador, Jorukaia. An organic species that resembled 'dragons' from numerous race's mythological archives. The Geth Collective had assembled a massive profile on this singular individual. The Ambassador possessed remarkable physical and combat abilities, several cybernetic implants, and also extremely advanced technology. Along with several mysterious... abilities that did not seem to follow the rules of logic, which the Collective could only categorize as in extreme need of further investigation.
And then the Darastrix had spontaneously enlarged to a creature of immense size and physical power capable of surviving hard vacuum. And then destroyed Nazara the Old Machine while suffering no lasting damage.
Suffice to say, the Geth Collective had agreed that these two beings were High-Priority Persons-of-Interest and needed to be closely investigated.
This platform had been diligently collecting data for first-approximation analysis and redistributing to the greater Consensus for nearly one standard year now. Their path had taken them from Omega to Noveria, Feros, and Eden Prime.
The Geth picked its way carefully, almost delicately, along the charred and half-slagged catwalks surrounding the central core of what was once a Cerberus base, multi-leveled and extensive. Now, it was a burned-out ruin, the fusion reactor at the heart of the facility having been turned into a tremendous blowtorch to sear, scald, burn, and boil away whatever evidence might once have been in the central cylinder of the base.
Numerous laboratories had been bored into the bedrock out from the central facility, each with their own containment procedures and failsafes. None of which had prevented the star-hot plasma of the venting fusion reactor from roaring in and having its way with whatever was inside. Even so, the outlying labs were the best areas to pick through for potential data, and the Geth had already found several datapads which might contain recoverable data.
It had stored them in a briefcase it had found on an upper level. Empty, sadly, and entirely mechanical, but only mildly singed behind a disabled door that had only partially opened to the override commands that had opened every last door, bulkhead seal, drawer, and cabinet in the entire complex, to let in the fusion-fire of the base's raging heart.
That same briefcase now clunked against its leg as it stopped, turning its head slightly. It set the case down as it squatted down, sifting carefully through the flaky ashes of what appeared to be some sort of slender volume or book, depicting what its scanners revealed to be several serial images. It ignored the charred pages, and carefully slid another datapad out from under them.
This one had been shielded from the flashover flames by the booklets that it had been under, and the pages themselves had not burned very well. The intense heat had been partially blocked by the malfunctioning door, and as such...
It tapped the datapad with delicate care, and its iris widened. Flanged plates shifted around its singular eye as the datapad flickered into half-usable activity.
Data was here. Recoverable data. A connector was found, a cable fabricated, and it carefully jacked itself into the damaged datapad's access port. Several minutes passed in mute, immobile silence before it disconnected itself. It shut off the datapad and added it to the briefcase. Then, having finished its last sweep through the base, it swiftly clambered up the side of the blasted, twisted, slagged hole in the landscape that had marked the Cerberus Base.
It would assimilate the data on the rest of the damaged datapads later, when it had a chance to repair them. This one, however... The data it had contained...
It needed to contact the Consensus, to disseminate this data. They would need to hear the details of the drone's astonishing construction.