V

Contact: Complications

Serving on the SR-2 was a strange mix of familiar and disconcerting. All Garrus wanted to do was relax into the old rhythm: follow Shepard's orders like he had when he'd first joined up with her, when he was still so sure she was always right. Check over the guns. Shoot the breeze with the humans until they decided he actually wasn't out to kill them or steal all their military secrets. Forget Omega and Archangel, try to turn back time and be the turian he'd been two years ago, an idealistic, impatient, stupid kid without the blood of ten good men and hundreds of bad ones on his hands.

But he hadn't been that kid by the time he'd shot down Saren. The galaxy had already gotten a lot more complicated. Shepard down off the pedestal he'd had her on in the beginning was even better; it was even more amazing to look and see the things she'd accomplished. But almost always right wasn't the same as always right, and he couldn't count on Shepard-the-person to know all the answers like he'd thought Shepard-the-Spectre had. There's no guarantees. No certainty. I must be getting old.

Those two years had happened—Three, really—and Shepard wasn't willing to let him become that C-Sec consult again any more than he was capable of going back to that. Not only was he gunnery officer, he'd been out with her every time she'd gone groundside since Doc Chakwas had first cleared him for active duty. After Jack had called him out for his failure to follow orders when they'd picked her up on Purgatory, he'd thought about holding back in the field. But he wasn't going to give less than everything he had to Shepard or compromise the safety of any of her team just because of what some of the new recruits might think. Cerberus called him the gunnery officer, but ever since Saren, Shepard's team had never fit into neat, military-approved little boxes. He remembered what Shepard had told him too, before and after Alchera. As much as his guilt wanted him to give up any responsibility for good, she needed him to keep it up.

Ops worked pretty much exactly the same as they had done on the SR-1, despite Miranda's fuming about "wasted time and resources." Shepard knew better. Elite teams didn't just happen, even if they were made up of a bunch of elite individuals. They needed training, time to learn how to work together in real-life conditions before they had a chance to screw up their primary objective, when it actually mattered. So Shepard went through the systems around their objectives like a C-Sec cleaning crew, answering distress calls, taking out crime rings, and evaluating her new troops all at once. And as Shepard came to know her new crew, so did Garrus.

Still, they hadn't done much more than destroy a factory sending out defunct, hostile VIs and recover data from a crashed ship before they were set to recruit the next person on Shepard's list. Garrus wasn't sure how much better he felt about "Warlord Okeer" than he felt about Jack the convict.

Garrus didn't go by the armory before heading to the shuttle—he modded and maintained his own guns—so he didn't know Shepard had called Jack out again until he saw her come into the docking bay and she greeted him with her customary sneer. He smiled at her in return. Not that a turian smile is very comforting to most humans, and mine's probably less comforting than most. Doctor Chakwas said his scars were healing well. He still looked exactly like a rocket had hit his face. But the idea that he'd throw Jack off balance was somehow much less upsetting than the idea that he'd throw the average human on the street off balance.

"You again? Why am I not surprised?" Jack said.

"A pleasure as always, Jack," Garrus returned.

"Bite me!"

"Not unless you buy me dinner first. And then only if you ask me very nicely," Garrus answered without missing a beat.

Jack stared at him, caught off guard, then she laughed once. "In your dreams."

"Everyone getting along down here?"

The elevator door hissed closed behind Shepard and Mordin. Jack rolled her eyes at Shepard. "Just peachy. Your boy here just asked me to elope. I told him he's not my type."

"A psychotic murderer with enough tattoos to make someone dizzy?" Garrus suggested.

"For a start," Jack said, flashing her teeth in vicious amusement.

"I'm heartbroken."

"I'm sure."

Shepard smiled and shook her head, arms folded. "As interesting as I'm sure your failed relationship would be, do you think we could get a move on? We might find a warlord more to Jack's taste." She gestured at the shuttle.

Jack shrugged. "An eight-foot-tall tough guy with a gun and a grudge against pricks like Vakarian? I can dig it."

"Without metal or strong alloy skeletal support, intercourse with krogan would likely crush you, Jack," Mordin pointed out. "Standard for some Alliance operatives. Also improves likelihood of survival in melee combat with krogan. Unlikely you have been outfitted with them. Could design brace system compatible with biotic energy—"

Jack's eyes glittered blue as she sat in the corner of the shuttle farthest from the door—with the most room to maneuver, if she needed it. "You come near me with a scalpel, Dr. Frankenstein, and I'll rip you to shreds."

Mordin seemed entirely unperturbed by Jack's death threat. "Simple 'no' will suffice. No need for violence."

"Yeah, whatever. Just stay away from me." Jack lapsed into sullen silence. Shepard sighed. She swung in and sat in her seat next to Garrus, across from Mordin.

"Take us down to Korlus, Niels," she called to the shuttle pilot. Outside, Garrus heard the roar of the wind as Niels signaled Joker and he dropped the ramp.

"You got it, Commander," Niels said.

Garrus felt the familiar lurching in his stomach right before the inertial dampeners kicked in to compensate. More to fill the suddenly tense silence than anything else, he nodded at Mordin across the way. "You coming down with us, professor?" Mordin's chief purpose on the Normandy was to design defenses against Collector weapons. He hadn't ever gone down in the ground team before, but Garrus knew Solus had been in the STG—worked with Mierin and Erash, back in the day. He had to admit he was curious to see how the good doctor would handle himself, even as he tried to imagine how the team would operate in this particular configuration. Who am I watching? Am I lead offense or support here?

Mordin stared at him, unimpressed. "Obviously. Was not always professor, doctor. Should make nice break from laboratory, tests, research. Renew thinking for return, enable fresh perspective. Breakthrough."

"Having trouble in the lab, professor?" Shepard asked.

"No," Mordin said. "But quarian data, Freedom's Progress samples limited. Collector tech entirely different. Not based on any tech known to any Citadel species. Need to find mathematical basis, elemental composition, then synthesize defenses from same processes. Hope Cerberus data is accurate, and Okeer connected to Collectors. Still—krogan. Uncertain of value of any Collector research. Never met krogan scientist worthy of the name."

"Okeer might surprise you," Shepard suggested. "One thing I've learned knocking around out here is that the minute you start trying to categorically label any one species, about half a dozen individuals pop up out of the woodwork to prove you wrong."

"Perhaps," Mordin admitted. "Humans much more varied than most species, however."

"So you've said. You going to be okay with a krogan on the team?"

Mordin blinked. "Fine! Brute strength, powerful warriors necessary to our mission! Krogan most aggressive, renowned warriors in the galaxy! Defeated rachni! Besides—I am a professional, Shepard. Species grudges counterproductive to any successful interspecies objective. Uncertain krogan warlord will see it that way."

"So if he doesn't, I'll paste 'em to the wall," Jack suggested. "Problem solved."

"Generous of you," Shepard said, though Garrus saw the flicker of distaste in her eyes. "But I'm hoping that won't be necessary."

"Coming in, Commander," Niels said. "Intel says Okeer's in the compound a couple klicks out, but I'm seeing a lot of agents on the ground in between here and there. No way of knowing if they're friendlies."

"Go ahead and set us down," Shepard ordered. "If they're not, we'll deal with it on foot. Small talk's over, kids. Time to get our warlord."

"Good. I was getting bored anyway," Jack said.

The shuttle door opened. The unfiltered air of Korlus came in, and it smelled just like trash. Shepard jumped down first, rifle to her shoulder. She checked the sight lines. The place looked deserted from here, just piles of scrap metal and clouds of ozone in every direction. Klicks of junk stretched out in every direction. Korlus was perhaps the ugliest place Garrus had ever seen.

"Dossier doesn't say if Okeer is on this planet by choice," Shepard said. She'd switched over to what Garrus always thought of as her mission voice, clipped, curt, and completely focused on their objective. "Assume hostiles." She gestured right, signaling the lane of attack she would cover, and Garrus automatically moved to the left as Mordin and Jack went up center, where their shorter-range attacks would do the most damage if they came across any enemies.

An angry female human voice sounded. "There is only one measure of success: kill or be killed." Jack swung her shotgun around, but there was no one; just a small, brown-and-black box mounted on top a jagged, metal pole that stuck up like an exposed bone from the dirt.

"Loudspeakers? Someone likes the sound of their own voice . . ." Garrus said, amused.

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Shepard's lips twitch, but she only said, "Stay focused."

It wasn't a bad order—kill or be killed was rather ominous. So was the silence. Inside the skycars and train cars and rusted building material all around was the detritus of the galaxy. This stuff had been brought to Korlus from dozens of different worlds, and they should have been able to hear the creatures that had been brought with it. Insects, spiders, the odd stowaway pyjak. But there was nothing. Just the acid breeze blowing through the dust. Hearing nothing on a world like this always meant a nasty something somewhere just out of sight.

They walked along the path Niels had outlined for them. There were other loudspeakers. "Being hired is merely the beginning," the angry woman said from another. "You must earn your place in the mighty army we are building."

Mordin, near the front, gestured at a raised platform, fortified with walls of metal scrap. "Lookout position," he warned. "Be ready for combat!"

The words had just left his mouth when the first shots were fired. The four of them instantly fanned out. Luckily, there was plenty of cover available. "I'll kill you all!" Jack screamed. The ground lit up with a wave of dark energy. It pulsed toward the enemy on the platform, conveniently knocking them off their feet. The movement as they fell painted their positions as clearly as if Jack had sent up a flare. Shepard and Garrus, behind different stacks of refuse, cracked out shots at almost the exact same time, and two different men went down.

"Clean hit!" Mordin said. Garrus didn't know who he was complimenting. A white, frightened, angry face poked out from the look-out position, though, and a fireball from Mordin's omni-tool took it right off. The merc went down screaming.

"Only one more," Garrus said, making use of his infrared filter to light up the heat signatures.

"He's mine," Jack snarled. Her fist glowed blue. "Fly, bitch." As the last, screaming merc in the path floated out of his cover, she plugged him with her shotgun, blowing a hole in his chest. Blood and bone showered down, and his limp body fell with a thud.

Shepard looked down at the body. "Blue Suns," she said, noting the armor. She looked at Garrus. "Think that's why they fired?"

EDI, tuned into their radios, interrupted. "I have been monitoring communications from Omega. No word has gone out with any warrant for Archangel—or for you, Commander. Omega's gangs are claiming Archangel was killed. It is likelier you that have disrupted a sensitive operation—perhaps one involving Okeer."

"Is that better or worse, I wonder?" Garrus mused.

"Shepard," Mordin called from up ahead.

Shepard walked on to see what the professor wanted. He was kneeling beside one of the mercs. His weapon had been blown away, and there was a gaping hole in his breastplate—but he was alive.

"Shit! Shit! Won't stop bleeding! I'm gonna . . . I'm gonna . . . son of a bitch!"

Garrus looked at his wound. The shot had obviously taken out his shields and punched through his armor, but it had penetrated through muscle mostly, it looked like. Maybe it had chipped a bone. Probably hurt like hell, but it wasn't gushing, either. He'd live. "Doesn't look that bad, actually," he murmured. "Getting sloppy, Commander?"

Shepard's eyes flashed. "Shut up," she muttered back. She stepped up to the man, who glared at her, even as he tried to scoot away. He hissed and gave it up as a bad job.

"I knew it wasn't berserkers! Not at range! You're Alliance," he snarled, focusing on the N7 insignia on Shepard's armor. Then, taking in Mordin, Garrus, and Jack's unconventional attire, he changed his mind. "Or mercs. I'm not . . . I'm not telling you anything!"

Shepard punched up her omni-tool. "I've got a nice application of medi-gel ready to go. But if you'd rather I just keep walking . . ." She shrugged and let it die, turned around like she was going to leave.

The man's eyes glistened with pain. "Son of a bi—I just—I don't know anything," he protested. "I just shoot the overflow from the labs. The old krogan up there? He's really been cleaning house lately. Jedore hired him to make her an army, but the krogan he creates are insane, so we use them for live ammo training. It's all crap. I don't get paid enough to goddamn bleed out."

Shepard, Mordin, and Garrus exchanged looks. It explained nicely why the mercs here had opened fire on them, at least. They were scared out of their minds, overrun with insane krogan. They probably fired at anything that moved. Disgust flickered over Shepard's features, but she didn't have time to make her standard dig about the ethics of the lady that was buying a krogan army and letting her people shoot the rejects, the mercs that were shooting them, or their contact that was selling his own people for slaughter, because the merc's radio buzzed, and a voice came over the com.

"Outpost Four? Jedore wants us to move. We need coordinates on that krogan attack."

That'd be us, Garrus realized. Shepard knelt down, pistol drawn, and showed it to the wounded man "I want your friends gone. Understand?" she murmured, too low to be heard over the radio.

The man's bright eyes crossed as he looked at the gun. He swallowed, but he pressed the com. "Uh . . . patrol? The last group . . . dispersed. I lost sight five minutes ago."

The merc on the radio sounded disappointed. "Dispersed? Jedore will be pissed. She wanted a show."

"You asked for a report, you got it!" their wounded man snapped. "Dispersed!"

"Understood. Returning to the labs."

"There. You see? I'm helping," the wounded man protested.

Shepard scoffed, but lowered her gun. "Have you seen Okeer? Does he know about all this?"

"We can't go in the labs," the merc explained. "But everyone sees what happens when the krogan come out. I've shot hundreds. They're crazy, mindless. Anyone up there, they know what's going on."

Shepard looked like he'd fed her something sour. Jack smirked. She eyed Garrus, as if to say, See? No one working with Cerberus keeps their hands clean. Not such a Girl Scout now, is she? Garrus looked away. "Is Jedore's lab heavily guarded?" Shepard asked the merc.

"There are big guns to keep ships away," the merc said, frustrated. "We're not outfitted to fight goddamn commandos."

Shepard hesitated, then, glancing at Mordin, asked, "What is Jedore planning to do with all these krogan? If they weren't crazy?"

The merc snorted. "Replace us probably. I sure wouldn't want to see an army of them coming at me." He made a fist. "She can't control them. They aren't supposed to be crazy, but they're krogan. How smart are they to start?"

Shepard's mouth was a hard line, and her eyes were like a storm. "You'd be surprised." She pushed the man back against the scrap wall and stood. "If you start limping now, you might find a shady spot before you bleed out," she told him.

The merc staggered to his feet. "Shit! Ow! Shit! Ow!" Garrus watched him go. He wasn't worth leaving alive, but he really wasn't worth killing either.

"Adding insult to injury," the doctor observed. "Literally. Necessary?"

Jack's lips twitched. "No," she answered for Shepard. "But funny."

"I thought so," Shepard said. "He'll live. If he finds a way off this scrap heap, maybe next time he'll pick a better line of work."

"Or he won't," Garrus said.

Shepard looked at him. "Or he won't," she admitted. She lifted her sniper again. "He gave us good intel. But I've gotten rusty."

"I hear two years dead will do that to you," Jack said. "Let's go. Crazy krogan and asshole mercs? This could be fun."

"Fun," Shepard repeated, in a voice dry enough to dehydrate a hanar. "Right." But she took point, and they moved out.

If Garrus had chosen the battleground, he wouldn't have picked Korlus. The smell was bad enough, but the piles of trash everywhere—some of them with organic components or not-quite-defunct machines—confused his infrared scanner and hid the mercs, on edge and already primed to shoot anything that moved. It was hard not to feel like rodents in a maze as they moved through the artificial corridors toward the signal Jedore's labs must be giving off.

The ground sloped down, and Garrus saw someone had built a metal bridge over the landscape. Vantage point. He pivoted to face the threat as Jedore's loudspeakers blasted her motivational messages out to her men. "Hostiles!" he cried. "Stay sharp!"

Gunfire rained down from above. Garrus darted behind a pile of crushed skycars as a screaming merc flew overhead, caught up in Jack's biotics. The sharp retort of Mordin's pistol ricocheted off the metal all around. But the screaming stopped. Taking advantage of the distraction Jack's fireworks had to have caused, Garrus leaned out and took out a merc on the ground up ahead. The force of the shot carried him back half a meter, but when he hit, he wasn't breathing anymore.

Shepard's Locust purred, but right as the mercs refocused on the noise, they cried out in fear and confusion. "I've lost visual!"

Garrus couldn't help grinning. He ejected a heat sink and fired again, and while the other mercs were still looking at the place Shepard had vanished, one of them went down from a bullet fired from the completely opposite direction. Shepard flickered back into scope, already in cover and ready for action.

So it went. Shepard and Jack bounced the mercs' attention between them like a biotiball, competing with biotics, tech, and noise to be the loudest, showiest players in the junkyard. They sowed panic and confusion in the ranks of the enemy, and Mordin and Garrus were more than ready to take advantage. It wasn't Shepard's usual style at all—she'd adapted to the capabilities of this particular ground team with the intuition characteristic of the very best soldiers in the galaxy. Garrus might have actually laughed a few times as they pressed forward. Jack was just being Jack, but there was something beautiful about the way that Shepard let her be—and the way Shepard had shifted her style to be as deadly as possible in this setting.

On a whim, he cued up some of the old alt rock she'd used to like on his visor and patched it through to the rest of the team. "What the fuck?" Jack demanded. "We got our own theme music? Hell, yes!" She blasted a merc off the balcony.

"Unconventional," Mordin remarked. "Rhythm could increase predictability to the enemy. Could also synchronize our movements and increase effectiveness. Unsure. Could run study—"

"Study the other ground teams," Shepard ordered. "When you're in one, just shoot!"

"Of course," Mordin said. His omni-tool glowed, and a new program shot out toward the enemy. A batarian behind some rotted semi pallets froze solid, mouth open in shock and pain. Cryo tech. He'd unfreeze in a moment, annoyed, but unharmed except for some minor freeze burns. Unless—

Shepard beat him to it. Her own omni-tool flashed, and her own incendiary program arced out and exploded into the batarian's chest. The merc shattered into a hundred shards of bloody ice. Even Garrus winced, though he figured a headshot would've done about the same thing. But Jack whooped. "Nice!"

"The krogan are your example and your warning," Jedore intoned from the nearest loudspeaker. "As ferocious as they are, failures are expendable."

Shepard made a face. "Haven't even met her, and I hate that woman," she muttered. Her omni-tool came up again, and she typed a command out. Garrus's music blared out from the hacked speakers. Shepard sniffed. "That's better." She shot a glance at Garrus. "We'll talk about your dated playlist later." She paused. "Wait."

All of them stiffened, hearing the same thing Shepard heard. Shots were still being fired in the distance—but the mercs weren't firing on them anymore.

"It's the krogan," Shepard said. "Come on!"

She just about sprinted up ahead.

A single, armored krogan was trapped in a dead end ahead. Six mercs surrounded him—two on the ground off to the right, four up above. His armor was holding, but he was in bad trouble, without a lot of cover and with only a short-range weapon.

"Jack! Mordin!" Shepard rapped out, signaling to the right. She opened fire on the mercs on the catwalk up above with her Locust, drawing their fire and moving toward the cover where the two others crouched. Jack and Mordin got their orders. Jack hit the ground, sending a shockwave through the air to flush the mercs out of their foxhole. She punched a messy, gory hole through the torso of one at short range with her shotgun. Mordin got the other with a neat hole between the eyes. The four of them moved into the now-vacant cover, continuing to fire upon the four mercs up above. The krogan took out one, blowing his arm off. He screamed and fell over the railing behind him, out of sight. Garrus took out the shields of another with his omni-tool, leaving him open to Shepard's fire. The other two were down in seconds.

The gunfire stopped. The krogan turned to face them. Jack, Mordin, and Garrus all raised their weapons, remembering what the merc had told them about these krogan's sanity, but Shepard raised her hand. With a glance at Jack, Garrus brought his gun down with the others, though he kept his finger on the trigger.

It was hard, though. It went against every instinct he had to let the krogan approach her as close as he did, until his face was centimeters away from her breastplate. Shepard herself looked like she felt a bit awkward, but the krogan sniffed loudly, and stepped back.

"You . . . are different," he said in a halting, measured bass. "You . . . you don't smell like this world. Seven night cycles, and I have felt only the need to kill. But you . . . something makes me speak."

Garrus stared. "Night cycles," he said aloud. "Seven days." This experiment was only a week old. What the hell were they doing to these things?

Shepard's jaw set. "They must breed them full-size, ready to kill. Not much improvement over regular mercs if they need training."

"Bred to kill?" the krogan echoed, confused. "No. I kill because my blood and bone tell me to. But it's not why I was flushed from glass mother. Survival is what I hear in my head, against the enemy that threatens all my kind. But I failed even before waking. That is what the voice in the water said. That is why I wait here."

They all looked at one another, trying to make sense of what the krogan was telling them. "Okeer's voice?" Shepard guessed. "Did he speak to you while you were in your tank?"

The krogan hesitated. "I heard the voice. Not like now, with ears. Inside. I called it 'Father.' It liked that. But it was disappointed. I'm not what it needs me to be."

Mordin stroked his chin. "A breeding program. Trying to escape genophage effects?" he suggested. Garrus regarded the professor. He looked troubled. Something beyond the usual krogan-salarian rivalry.

"Escape?" the krogan said. "Escape was never whispered. Survive. Resist. Ignore."

Shepard looked at Garrus and Mordin. "I destroyed Saren's 'cure,'" she said flatly. "How does Okeer expect these krogan to ignore the genophage if not by curing it?"

Garrus looked back at her. Did he look like a scientist to her? "No idea."

"Likely irrelevant," Mordin said. "Appears Okeer has had no success."

Shepard pressed her lips together and turned back to the krogan. "How did you disappoint the voice?" she asked him.

"I don't know," the krogan said simply. "It was decided before I left tank-mother: I was not perfect."

Jack gestured to the krogan. "That merc said these guys go crazy."

But looking at Shepard and Mordin, Garrus figured they'd come to the same conclusion he had. This krogan, at least, didn't seem insane. But he's not all there, either. The krogan sort of hung his head. "I don't know of that. But I'm not perfect."

"How can you speak if you're only a week old?" Shepard demanded.

"There was a scratching sound in my head, and it became the voice. It taught things I would need: walking, talking, hitting, shooting. Then it said I was not perfect, and the teaching stopped. And now I am here."

Simple answer. Right to the point, Garrus thought. He could appreciate that kind of concision. "He was taught enough to be judged," he said.

Mordin seemed intrigued. "Interesting. Raised, then rejected. Control group? Field test?"

The krogan sighed, apparently weary of all these questions he couldn't answer. "I don't know, but I am not perfect."

"You're supposed to be part of a mercenary army," Shepard told him. "Do you remember Jedore?" Garrus glanced at her. He didn't know if reminding the giant krogan he was supposed to be part of a Blue Suns army that apparently had a shoot-first-ask-questions-later policy where they were concerned was the right way to play this.

But the krogan didn't suddenly remember he wanted them dead. "I know that name," he agreed. "It causes anger . . . but also laughter. It is not a name that will be sung when we march. I don't know what that means, but I have heard it many times."

That was clear enough, Garrus thought. Jedore was paying Okeer to create a krogan army, then, but Okeer had his own agenda for the resources she was letting him use. He was judging the krogan he created by his own standard. Pretty smart, for a krogan. Not too ethical, but Garrus had known a grand total of two krogan that could be called ethical by any other species's definition—and one of them had sworn up and down he wasn't a krogan at all. He wondered what Krul and Mierin would make of this mess, and looked down at the ground as the sour taste of grief and guilt rose in his mouth again.

Shepard was just about done with Okeer's lab rat, though. "Show me the laboratory," she said. "I need to speak with Okeer."

At first the krogan didn't seem to know what she meant. "Uh . . . glass mother," he realized. He pointed up a hill. "She is up, past the broken parts, behind many of you fleshy things. I will show you."

He walked away then, and took hold of an enormous piece of scrap Garrus hadn't even realized was a barricade. It would take three, maybe four human or turian soldiers to move it. Eight salarians. But the krogan dug his claws into the metal, and it shrieked and bent. With a groan, he threw it aside.

"Brute strength. Key aspect of krogan," Mordin observed.

Garrus stared at the barricade. "Glad he's friendly."

"You fleshy things are slow when big things are in your way," the krogan remarked.

Shepard evaluated the krogan, thoughtful. "You could have run or tried to fight your way back to the labs," she told him. "Why stay here?"

"I am waiting," the krogan answered. "A voice told me, if they come, I fight. But I will not run, and I will not follow. I am not perfect, but I have purpose. I must wait until called, released."

He thought Okeer or someone else would come for him, pull him into an army for someone who deserved one. But if one thing was clear, it was that Okeer had totally written this guy off. It was a shame, Garrus thought, because he obviously had a brain and a personality. Didn't seem that bad for a krogan, though that might be because he'd only had a week in the world, or because he'd failed whatever test of perfection Okeer had wanted him to pass. But looking at him, Garrus knew that they couldn't talk this guy into leaving. Trying would just slow them down, even if he stayed relatively sane.

Shepard knew it too. She frowned, and hesitated, but eventually she turned away. "Thanks," she told the krogan. "Move out."

Shepard led the way through the barricade. Jack and Mordin followed her, and Garrus took up the rear guard. The trash through the gateway seemed more organized. The scrap had been shifted and built up into walls, bottlenecks Jedore's men could hold, force the krogan down. "Not a lot of room to maneuver," Garrus observed. "Stay sharp."

They heard the krogan before they saw them—and they sounded mad—roaring and firing in the distance. "Fuck," Jack muttered.

"Get ready," Shepard warned her. "Mordin, Jack, slow them down, keep them flying. Use tech and biotics, but stay out of range, and leave the shooting to me and Garrus. Got it?"

"Got it," Jack agreed, not even bothering with the badass posturing.

They were situated at the bottom of a hill—bad position, but the Suns had built up narrow walkways with long falls to force the krogan to predictable patterns of attack, never more than one or two at a time, and there was cover. At the top of a hill behind a wall of scrap, a mercenary went flying—minus a leg—and the first krogan came into view. He saw them and roared with challenge.

He gripped his gun in his short, beefy arms, lowered his head, and charged. And Mordin hit him with a cryogenic program that froze him solid. He fell end-over-end down the hill, and Shepard, grim-faced, fired. He shattered into pieces as his batch mates ran up behind him.

They'd seen what Mordin had done to their friend, and both barreled straight toward him. Mordin retreated, circling down the hill and around, and Jack let loose a shockwave. It knocked both krogan off their feet, Garrus took aim and fired. Orange blood spurted. Garrus dropped a heat sink and fired again, killing the first just as the second krogan was climbing to his feet. Shepard's Locust rang out, and the second krogan froze—she was using cryo rounds.

"Watch the hill!" she yelled, ducking into cover as another berserker came up from the halls beyond.

"On it!" Mordin told her.

It was a long, long dance of shoot-and-retreat, distracting the targets, employing biotics and tech to keep them at range. Finally, when the smell of krogan blood had just started to get the edge over the trash, and one or two scrap hurdles the mercs had set up were dented or melted, the krogan stopped coming. Jack was pale and sweating.

"Fuck," she gasped. "Fuck. I've never seen anything like that."

Garrus laughed once. He just bet. Jack was powerful, but she'd lived her life among gangs and opportunistic cutthroats. Professional merc organizations and krogan breeding programs gone bad had probably been a little above her paygrade. "Welcome to the team," he said, not without some irony. "Just like old times," he remarked to Shepard.

Shepard scoffed. "Maybe if you throw in a couple dozen geth and a Reaper." She paused. "On second thought, let's not," she decided. "You alright to move out?" she asked Jack.

Now Jack stiffened. She stuck out her chin. "Hell, yeah!" she retorted. "Plenty more where that came from."

Shepard stared her down. "When you say that to me, it better be the truth," she told Jack. "If you say you're good to go and you're not, that puts all of us at risk." She nodded at Mordin. "Professor?"

Mordin reached into his labcoat and brought out a couple of high-calorie energy bars. He handed them to Shepard, who tossed them to Jack. She caught them, eyes narrowed, but she peeled the wrappers off and started eating. Garrus tried not to smile.

Shepard jerked her head, and they moved out.

Most of the krogan were down, but the mercs all wanted to know what had gone down. Garrus thought they might have appreciated having the crazy krogan taken off their plates, but judging by the shouting they heard over the radio, their boss wasn't pleased. Soon they were in yet another firefight. Mercs were easy, though, compared to berserk krogan—and it wasn't too long before they found out they had help.

The first couple groups were coordinated, but after that it was like everything fell apart on the merc side. Attacks came at the wrong times. Their reinforcements didn't show up when called. Someone was scrambling communications.

"Warlord Okeer," Mordin hypothesized, making a beautiful headshot through a panicked engineer. "Knows we're coming?"

"Maybe," Shepard said. "We're not exactly being subtle, and it doesn't seem he's too loyal to his employer. But I can't figure why he'd want to help us kill Jedore's people."

"Okeer's got his own objective," Jack grunted.

"Krogan took down the grid," a mercenary shouted, as if to confirm their suspicions. "We're blind and getting hit on all sides! Where are the heavies?!"

They climbed higher and higher in the Suns' makeshift fortress. For a while, Jedore raged at her helpless mercenaries. Then, everything began to fell silent—mercenaries included.

"Have we killed 'em all, or is something else going on?" Jack wondered.

"We haven't run into Jedore, but I'm guessing she's onsite. No. They're putting something else together," Shepard said. "Stay alert."

After a while, Garrus noticed there were air filters whining in the background. The smell of trash lessened ever so slightly, but there were other smells around—corpses and antiseptic. As they passed krogan bodies laid out on slabs, dissected but left to rot, certain organs preserved in jobs next to datapads, Mordin's mouth tightened and Shepard's nostrils flared. Only Jack seemed to have no reaction.

"Labs," Shepard said. Under her breath she added, "If you can call them that, anyway. Okeer has to be around here somewhere."

He was. They found him just a few rooms later, staring at a monitor hooked up to a single tank. Without turning around, he addressed Shepard in a guttural growl. "Here you are. I've watched your progress. It's about time."

Garrus wondered if Shepard would recruit this guy or shoot him. She leaned back on one leg. Her face was a study in annoyance and disgust. "I take it you're Okeer," she said. "You don't seem particularly caged or grateful that I'm here."

Okeer turned to face her then. He sized her up. "You may claim that you are here to help, but the formerly deceased Shepard is not a sign of gently change."

Garrus was struck by this. He's got us there.

"Surprised?" Okeer challenged her. "All krogan should know you. Or have you forgotton your actions on Virmire?"

Shepard's face twisted. That might have been the hardest decision she'd made that day, Garrus knew, even harder than abandoning Ashley Williams. Saren had tank-bred an army of krogan free of the genophage, and Shepard had destroyed them and his research, refusing to allow Saren, the geth—and, as they learned, the Reapers—the advantage of shock troops as powerful and quick-spreading as krogan free of the genophage. She'd been able to persuade Urdnot Wrex in the end that he didn't want krogan that were free of the disease but slaves to another species's will, but it had been a close thing, and she hadn't liked making the call.

And when Shepard responded to Okeer, sure enough, her voice and expression was acidic. "I didn't have a lot of room for finesse. If there had been any other solution, I'd have considered it."

Okeer seemed genuinely surprised. "But I approve," he said. "Saren's pale horde were not true krogan. Numbers alone are nothing: the mistake of an outsider. One that these mercenaries are also making. I gave their leader my rejects for her army. But she grows impatient. It's time for you to take me out of here."

The warlord wanted to use them as a vehicle to escape his mess. "We're here about the Collectors, not your problems," Garrus said.

Okeer regarded him, looked at all of them. "I see," he rumbled. "Yes. Collector attacks have increased. A human concern. My requests were focused elsewhere. I acquired the knowledge to create one pure soldier. With it, I will inflict upon the genophage the greatest insult an enemy can suffer: to be ignored."

Mordin and Shepard both frowned. "So you don't want to cure the genophage," Shepard said slowly.

Okeer sneered. "Contrary to what survivors claim, the genophage does not produce strong krogan. The only quality it filters is the ability to survive the genophage. For every thousand stillborn, too many weaklings live. Every survivor is branded as precious. It's produced more coddling than your collective human teats!" He waved his hand dismissively. "I say: let us carry the genophage. Let a thousand die in a clutch. We will defeat it by climbing atop our dead. That is the krogan way."

Garrus looked at Shepard. He's a madman. He'd occasionally thought about how different Wrex and Krul had been from their compatriots. Okeer was almost their opposite, a krogan so krogan it was sickening, apparently endowed with just enough intelligence and ambition to be even more dangerous than most.

"I thought the krogan ideal was a return to the numbers that threatened the galaxy," Shepard observed.

"We will not need numbers," Okeer declared. "My soldier is a template. It is a greater threat than all the phantom siblings that would have been at its flank. The galaxy still bears the scars of the horde, but it will learn to fear the lance." He gestured at the krogan in the tank.

Garrus looked at it for the first time. Oddly enough, the male krogan in the tank was already in full armor—Okeer had fabricated the armor right along with the krogan. He was full-size but clearly still juvenile; his head plate hadn't completely fused yet, and his hump was still smaller than most. His fierce eyes stared at nothing; they were a shade of sky blue unusual for a krogan.

Shepard glanced over the krogan and away, dismissive. "Your search for the perfect soldier created a lot of failures," she said coldly. Garrus knew she was remembering the corpses they'd passed in the labs and the krogan at the gate. "You don't care about them?"

Okeer's eyes narrowed. "I failed no one. My rejects are exactly what Jedore asked for. She simply lacks the ability to command. They are strong, healthy, and useless to me." He looked at his prototype again, and his voice softened. "I need perfection. If a few thousand are rejected, so be it. My work will purify the krogan. We will not be restored; we will be renewed."

Shepard was unimpressed. "What did you get from the Collectors?" she asked. "I need whatever you know about them."

Garrus blinked. She wasn't going to recruit this guy. If she was, she would wait to have this conversation until they were aboard the Normandy again. He studied her stance, her face. I don't think she'll kill him, but this guy isn't coming with us. Good.

Okeer peered at his monitor. "They are strange," he said, pensive. "So isolated, yet very available when your sacrifice is big enough. I gave them many krogan. I may have information for you, but the tech was consumed in my prototype after I determined how to use it without killing the subjects. Their deaths were unfortunate, but I only need one success to start the process."

That made Shepard look at the tank again. Then she glanced at Mordin, lips pursed. "If your pet soldier is as strong as you think, maybe I could use him."

Okeer stilled. "Perhaps I could strike a deal to secure passage," he said. He knows she doesn't want him too. "But my prototype is not negotiable. He is the key to my legacy."

Right then, the speaker overhead crackled. "Attention: I have traced the krogan , of course. I'm calling blank slate on this project. Gas these commandos, and start over from Okeer's data. Flush the tanks!"

Okeer's nostrils flared at the same time Garrus smelled the first hint of toxins from the air filters, sweet, cloying, and deadly. "Fuck!" Jack muttered. All four of them put on their helmets, starting up their own purifiers. But neither Okeer nor his tank-bred had purifiers.

"She is that weak-willed!" Okeer cried, furiously typing on his keyboard. "She'll kill my legacy with a damned valve! Shepard, you want information on the Collectors? Stop her! She'll try to access contaminants in the storage bay!"

Garrus and Jack had their weapons out as Shepard stepped to the warlord, furious. "Now you know something?" she demanded. "Don't jerk me around, Okeer."

Garrus, looking at the frantic warlord, knew Okeer didn't have any more than he'd thought he might have before. He was just desperate. "I will give you everything I can," he replied. "My legacy must not suffer this insult. Jedore will be with the rejected tanks. Kill her. I will . . . stay and do what must be done."

Shepard made a disgusted noise, but signaled for the others to follow her. They pelted out the other exit. They hadn't seen the tanks on the way in, so it made sense that they were on the other side of Okeer's laboratory. In fact, just down a ramp, there were rows of them.

Lined up in the dirt, the tanks reminded Garrus of Virmire. The resemblance was helped by the fact that angry, armed krogan were coming out of the tanks, charging toward them. "I want them dead!" a human female screamed, no longer over the loudspeaker. "This is my world! I'll poison them all!"

"Charming," Garrus muttered.

Then the deafening sound of heavy fire cut through the air. Glass shattered, bullets ricocheted off the heavy metal tanks. "Whoa!" Jack shouted.

"She's got a mech!" Shepard called. "Mordin, watch my back! Garrus, Jack—"

"Watch the krogan!" Garrus finished for her, pulling out his assault rifle.

Shepard just nodded, drawing the missile launcher.

"You're on distance control," Garrus ordered Jack. "Keep 'em back, and I'll take 'em down!"

Jack's eyes flashed and her muscles tightened, but even she wasn't going to countermand an order that made sense in a situation like this. As Mordin harassed Jedore, across the corridor of krogan tanks, and Shepard shot missiles at the heavy mech, Jack threw krogan back from their position. Sweat broke out on her brow and she grunted with the effort. Garrus fired at the insane rejects from cover. They roared as their eyes burned away and their crests were torn back from their skulls.

"Gas them, kill them, I'll create more!" Jedore shouted in fury.

"Somebody shut that woman up!" Shepard growled.

Across the alley, an explosion told Garrus that Shepard had blown up the mech, and his visor tracked a human woman flying through the air, thrown back by the blast. Heart rate elevated, injured—but not dead. "Shields are down and armor's damaged," he reported.

"AAARGH!" Another krogan screamed, his cry suddenly garbled by the bullet that tore through his throat.

"I see it," Shepard said. She put up the missile launcher and drew her pistol and blinked out of view. Mordin looked at the place she had been for a millisecond, then without missing a beat turned to cover their right flank. A program flew out from his omni-tool to freeze the last krogan advancing on that side, and Mordin's bullet hit the krogan at the same time as Garrus's.

On the other side of the storage bay, Jedore had stopped her threats, which made the blaring alert ringing out over the tanks all the more obvious. "Alarms in the lab?" Garrus sighed. "What's that krogan doing up there?"

Shepard walked back up the stairs to their position, and EDI's voice came over their radio. "Shepard, the lab alarms coincided with a systems failure. The remaining lab systems are unprotected, and I have gained limited access. According to lab scanners, the lab is flooded with toxins and Okeer's personal life signs are fading rapidly. I recommend haste."

Shepard's mouth set. She jerked her head at them all and took off at a dead run. Terrible person or not, they needed Okeer's data.

But by the time they got up there, it was already too late. "Contamination detected. Emergency vent in progress," a cool VI announced. The air was green with all the poison Jedore had diverted up here. But the tank had been disconnected from the lab. It was glowing. On a small display above the krogan's chest, his life signs were stable. He was in stasis, in travel mode, ready for transport. Okeer must have spent his last moments making sure the poison wouldn't affect his creation. The warlord himself lay prone on the metal floor, dim eyes staring at the ceiling. On the monitor, a vid was playing, taken only seconds before, it looked like. Okeer braced himself on the keyboard. His facial muscles were twitching. So were his fingers, and his eyes were going in and out of focus. "Shepard, if I knew why the Collectors wanted humans, I would tell you. But everything is in my prototype. My legacy is pure. This one soldier . . . this grunt . . . perfect," video-Okeer said. He tapped a button, and the recording froze.

Garrus stared at Okeer's corpse. It was impossible his prototype had been through any type of field test. "Why would someone so fanatical sacrifice himself for one krogan?" he wondered aloud. Dead, Okeer couldn't do anything for his people anymore. He had to have had a lot of faith in the krogan in the tank.

"Delusional," Mordin suggested, though he looked troubled. "Unlikely one krogan, however strong, could have impact Okeer wanted. Am . . . almost certain. Suggest leaving it."

Jack grinned. "I say crack it open. Let's see what a pure krogan's got."

"Krogan genetically dangerous," Mordin told her. "Socially dangerous as well. Have enough enemies without adding this."

Shepard had been standing by, staring at the tank, fists clenched. She brought up her omni-tool and ran a quick scan. As the fans gradually dissipated the toxins in the room, Garrus saw her take the data on Okeer's monitor as well as the data on a technician's computer across the room.

"He's not necessarily an enemy," she said. "A pure krogan can pack a hell of a punch. We could always use another heavy hitter." She patched them through to the ship. "Normandy, Okeer's a no-go, but we have a package that needs retrieval." She looked the tank up and down and sighed. "And he's a big one."