XLIV

The Dreams of Dead Gods: Living Nightmare

Garrus shook his head. "Where are the geth?" he asked. He nodded at the stakes over the edge of the scaffolding. "We've seen these before. Dragon's teeth, your people call them, Shepard. The geth used them on Eden Prime."

The entire group got the significance. Joker had told all of them about the geth ship alongside the Reaper. Before they had boarded the Reaper, they had all assumed the geth had killed the Cerberus research team. Now, they knew from Horizon—and the Collector vessel—that the technology to make husks came from the Reapers. It didn't originate with the geth. But the geth had made a lot of husks in the past, and they had always done it on tech spikes just like the ones here.

Samara looked out over the corpses raised up on the stakes. "I have heard of them being dug up on worlds that are far older than the geth," she said. "I believe they are Reaper artifacts."

Shepard frowned. "Maybe." She gestured around the cavern. "See how the room's arranged? They treated this place like some kind of altar." She glanced back at Garrus. "Remember Feros?"

Garrus nodded. On Feros, some of the geth attackers had set up spaces that centralized Reaper technology this way. They'd caught geth worshipping there. "I see it," he said, taking vid on his visor of the way the room was set up, the way the lights had been repositioned around the walkway to highlight the corpses impaled on the dragon's teeth. "So, do you think it was the team or the geth?"

Shepard shook her head. "I don't know. We can't help these people now, but we won't let the machines use their corpses like this." She brought up her omni-tool, and a blue nexus of electric tech came up around it, then arced over the dark, cavernous room to fry one of the transforming husks atop the spikes. There was a long, pained shriek, then silence.

Krios's mouth set. "Agreed," he said, pulling back his arm and letting a ball of dark energy fly. Grunt fired his gun, incendiary ammo enabled. Samara joined Thane in hurling biotic energy, and Garrus joined Shepard's tech attacks until every last one of the perverted research team before the altar to the Reaper had burned, fried, or warped away to cinders. The five of them gazed over the empty dragon's teeth in grim satisfaction, then turned away toward the airlock to the next section.

Airlocks, Garrus decided, were more unnerving than usual on husk-infested Reapers. As they waited for Cerberus-installed life support systems to complete the air exchange, Garrus couldn't help but think of all the nasty ways hostiles could kill them right here, without bothering to track them down through the Reaper's interior or fight a fight they might lose. And it's not like there aren't plenty of hostiles.

But the air exchange went through without a hitch. A pleasant, female VI voice reminded them that safety was everyone's concern. "We have gone five days without a workplace death," she said cheerily, and the doors opened onto an even larger section than the one they had just left.

"Do you think it's counting back from the last members of the Cerberus team or something else? Do the husks kill one another? Were the geth here?" Garrus asked.

"Good que—"

The cracks of the Widow blew through the recently reaerated chamber. Garrus's visor flashed an ultramarine warning. Too late! Garrus had his gun to his shoulder in a split second, backtracking the trajectory of the shots, and in his periphery, Grunt seized two husks from less than a meter behind their group.

"Dead!" he reported. The sniper hadn't been targeting them. The sniper had saved their lives.

And Garrus had spotlighted the sniper now, found him in a beam of concentrated light from the barrel lamp of his Mantis, illuminating the dark recesses of the constructed catwalks above. They all froze.

A horribly familiar blue light was shining back at them. Geth. Garrus recognized the gun it carried. Shepard had one just like it riding the back of her armor. But the geth didn't fire again. Instead, it raised a three-fingered hand, shaped like the hands of its quarian creators. Then it did something no geth Garrus had ever seen had done before.

It spoke.

Just two words, projected in an artificial but not an unmodulated voice to carry across the distance. "Shepard-Commander."

A thrill went through all of them. He could feel it resonate in every member of the squad. This was a new one. Garrus's finger hovered over the trigger on the Mantis. Every instinct he had told him to shoot. Geth were enemies, AI allies of the Reapers. And yet . . .

Shepard was holding up her hand, a closed fist. Hold.

And in that moment, the geth turned away and melted into the shadows.

"The geth was the sniper," Krios breathed.

"A geth that talks," Grunt muttered, disgusted. He shot a look at the commander. "Since this one knows you, tell it I don't need its help."

That was something else: the geth's recognition of Shepard, calling her by name and rank. The way it inverted the order sounded like a file identification, program-function format. Was that how geth saw things? But how had the geth known who she was to begin with? And why had it saved her life?

If the dragon's teeth were Reaper tech like Samara thought, already present or created by the indoctrinated Cerberus team when the Reaper got inside their brains, what had that geth been doing here? Was it the only platform that had come in the ship outside?

He had a hundred questions. He was dizzy with them. "Since when do geth operate alone?" he wondered aloud, remembering things Tali had told them. "They get smarter the more of them there are."

"We should find that thing if we can," Shepard said. "If it can talk, I want to talk to it. But for now, stay focused. We're not out of this yet."

Garrus looked out over the walkway. Gray shapes were just visible moving through the dim caverns of the Reaper's interior, crawling up onto the scaffolding and glowing with ominous-looking tech. He snapped a new clip into the Vindicator. "Speaking of which."

Beside him, Krios and Samara lit up with biotics. "Press forward toward EDI's coordinates," Shepard called. "Make use of the levels on the walkways. Keep moving, and don't let them pin you down!"

What followed was one of the longest, most brutal battles Garrus could remember fighting his entire career. Worse than all the ops he'd run with the turian fleet or in C-Sec, and almost everything he'd done with Archangel. Worse than Horizon or the Collector cruiser trap. On par with the Battle of the Citadel or the fight for the Feros colony.

The journey to the derelict Reaper's mass effect core could have taken half an hour. It could have taken the better part of a day. During the battle, Garrus wasn't entirely sure he hadn't been fighting for a week. Time lost its meaning in the dim, cavernous expanse of the Reaper's interior. It stretched and warped. Garrus forgot the geth, the Normandy and Lawson's backup team, that he had an appointment in Shepard's cabin in just a couple days. He even forgot his mother on Palaven. He forgot everything but sighting through the darkness for the next half dozen husks.

Over and over again, Garrus thought, How are there so many? Where did it get so many?

And, This is what it will be like when the Reapers finally invade. This—all the time. Everywhere. There's a difference between a skirmish, a firefight, an operation, or a mission and fighting in a war. As they struggled through toward the Reaper's mass effect core, Garrus felt in his gut that the five of them were fighting in one of the first battles of the war against the Reapers.

There were more of the augmented husks they had first seen on Horizon, the armored tech monsters with their plasma heavy weapons. They started coming in pairs before Garrus and the others were even halfway through the next section. The difficulty was, there was no taking cover from their fire because the more ordinary husks kept coming. The second any of them stopped for a second to duck the plasma weapons, or just to catch their breaths, he or she was in danger of being swarmed by a whole cluster of the enemy.

Grunt was in his element. Not that the rest of them were helpless when it came to close-quarter combat, but Grunt was a krogan. He was made for it. He kept laughing like a maniac, eyes flashing almost as bright as the Reaper tech. He moved like a professional wrestler in an intersystemic championship match, light on his feet, dancing with the enemy, taking on three and four of them at once like the battle was an encore of his Rite of Passage. By the time they'd gone a little more than halfway down the chamber toward the core, Garrus was fairly certain the krogan had saved everyone else's life at least twice. He was always worried the husks might flank them and get around him to Shepard, or that Krios and Samara, up ahead, might burn out their biotics, but with Grunt, the only thing Garrus was worried about was that the kid would get carried off into a blood rage and jump off a parapet in his rush to kill the next bunch of husks.

The rest of them weren't doing so great. Shepard was having more problems than she usually did. She didn't have Krios or Samara's biotic ability to force the husks back to a distance, and she was more vulnerable to their electric shocks than either Grunt or Garrus. Soon, she was plastered with sweat, and there was an anxious edge to the usual battle scents of gunfire and adrenaline rolling off her. Whenever Garrus looked behind or beside him to check on her, her mouth was a thin, grim line.

She was still managing better than Krios. As time wore on, the drell's breathing grew hoarser and hoarser, ragged and uneven. He slowed down. He was an assassin, used to lighting strikes on unsuspecting targets. He wasn't trained or used to endurance melee fighting. Garrus figured he probably would have been in trouble even without the Kepral's Syndrome. With it, he was in more danger every minute the fight went on. His biotics kept him going, limiting the amount of brute force he had to use, but he didn't have Samara's power.

Still, they had nearly reached the end of the chamber—almost two klicks, distance-wise—and were closing in on the turn that would take them to the next airlock and the chamber containing the Reaper's mass effect core, maintaining the barrier generators keeping them aboard. When Garrus pulled up EDI's scans of the Reaper's interior on his visor, he could see it, one of two pulsing white dots she had painted for them. The other was even closer—just this side of the airlock, it looked like. The IFF. Garrus had almost forgotten about it.

He could see a curve in the catwalk ahead, just down a ramp, where it turned left toward the airlock out. He could also see four of the husk heavies between them and that exit, and more of the regular husks crawling up the infrastructure. Garrus ran his dry tongue over his sweating teeth and popped out another heat sink. He was running low on ammo. He'd have to pay attention to where the sinks fell from now until the exit so he could pick them up and reuse them if necessary. Otherwise, his visor said he only had forty-six shots left.

"There's the exit, soldiers," Shepard called. Her voice was labored, cracking, but despite the anxiety in her scent, as strong and sure as ever. "Grunt, you and Garrus and Samara hold off the husks. I've got the heavies. Krios, help me, and watch our backs. Keep moving forward! We'll come through this!"

They all gave weary monosyllables of affirmation. Even Samara was sweating now, breathing heavily, but she rolled her shoulders back and pushed out her barrier again, hoisting her shotgun high. Garrus and Grunt fought at her flanks, making use of a formation so the things couldn't get any one of them alone. Over their heads and above the shrieks and moaning of the Reaper's twisted monsters, Garrus heard the crack of Shepard's Widow and the phut-phut of Krios's Viper, firing on the heavies. Ahead, one of their heads split in a fountain of blue sparks and gray viscera.

"Burn and die!" Grunt roared behind him, pumping two husks full of incendiary shotgun rounds.

Garrus kicked one husk midchest, elbowed another. Took a breath. Scooped up a still-scorching heat sink. He ignored the heat and popped it right back in his gun.

Bang! Bang!

Garrus leapt and dived, a meter and a half to the front. The plasma fire hit where he had just been standing, and in his peripherals, he saw Samara stagger. She threw her arms out, pinwheeled them in a vain effort to regain her balance. Then she went down anyway.

There were three husks on Grunt, two more coming up on Garrus. He couldn't help the asari. He fired his weapon, saw another of the heavies going down in the distance, courtesy of Shepard and Krios. He butted a husk in its face, gritting his teeth as his shields absorbed the shock. His shields had mostly held through the entire length of the Reaper, but every time they absorbed an electric attack, they vibrated, and the stress of it was beginning to set his bones aching. In the back of his mind, the cold, hard fear clawed at him. Had Samara gotten up again?

Bang! Bang! Bang! Schwick-hisssss!

Garrus jumped again and stumbled, caught himself, and fired on another husk coming up on the krogan. Samara was up again, throwing two husks back from her in a shockwave that sent them end-over-end and at least one leg spinning in a completely different direction.

"Garrus." The voice came over his radio, quiet, calm.

"Shepard." Garrus only then registered Shepard was speaking over a private channel, just to him. "What do you need?" They were around the bend now, looking straight at the airlock, two more heavies, and half a dozen husks.

"Thane's down," she reported. "Alive but wounded. Some husks from our rear. I'll bring him up to join you guys, but I need you to take command up there and clear the way."

"Understood," Garrus said. He swallowed, and then, on impulse, started issuing orders. "Grunt," he said. "Fall back to the commander. Thane's wounded, and the two of them will need an escort up to join us. Samara, you take point. I've got the heavies."

Both asari and krogan nodded, and their wedge dissolved as Grunt fell back and Samara swung out to the flanks, toward the husks on the edge. Garrus switched out his Vindicator for his Mantis, and sighted down the line toward one of the two remaining heavies' distorted, twisted heads. "Alright," he murmured. "You're in the way, ugly." He fired. Didn't stop to make sure the shot was good. He was already moving, keeping out of the other one's line of fire. His visor developed a new targeting solution as he moved. He brought the Mantis up again, chambered a new round. Fired.

Behind him, Samara's biotics were an arc of blue light. "Embrace eternity!" she cried, her voice almost as labored as Shepard's now, and carrying more defiance than he'd ever heard in it before. Blat! Blat! The sound of the asari's Scimitar was blunt and ugly, but it was a hell of a lot nicer than the husks whining and groaning. And there was less of that every second.

Garrus tried not to think about where the others were, wonder if they were safe, how badly Krios was hurt. He just sighted on the last remaining heavy and fired again. He chambered another round. Fired a second time. The hunchbacked, slavering thing—the last one in this segment of the Reaper—was less than four meters away. He saw its jaw tear away and the synthetic gunk that passed for Reaper blood spill out.

Behind him, Samara was standing, chest heaving, lips parted, fingers tightening and loosening upon the stock of her shotgun. Her eyes met his, still completely opaque, swimming in blue dark energy, and then they cleared. She nodded once at him, and over her shoulder, Garrus saw Shepard coming up with the others.

Grunt was sweeping the rear for any remnants, husks that hadn't crawled up from the void just yet or might still be lurking in the shadows. His once-orange armor was now almost brown and gray from all the fighting, but his eyes were gleaming. Shepard was half-carrying Krios, right hand still holding onto her Locust, but her left arm around the drell's torso. His arm was over her shoulders. His jaw was slack, and his eyes were blinking rapidly, unfocused. But even as Garrus watched, Krios started supporting more of his own weight, moving a little faster.

"What happened?"

"My biotics died," Krios croaked. "Half a dozen of the husks caught us from behind while we were trying to take down the gunners. I was unprepared. I . . ." he trailed off, shook himself.

"He probably caught a few hundred volts before we got them off us," Shepard said. "Both our shields went down, but Thane got the worst of it by a long shot. He was completely down and shaking for nearly a minute."

"I'm fine," Thane said, straightening and pulling away from Shepard with a wince. But everyone could hear his ragged breathing.

Garrus shook his head and tapped his visor. "I don't have an app on this thing to track drell heart rates with as much certainty as the Council species—"

"Heart rate's erratic," Thane confirmed, with a self-conscious, bitter twist of his lips. "And I suspect electrical burns."

"Looks right," Garrus admitted, running through the modes on his visor. "Infrared's all over the place."

"I can fight," Thane said. "There is another airlock to the ship's exterior past the core, yes? Beyond the barrier?"

"There is," Shepard confirmed. "You hear that, Joker?" she asked, opening up the channel to the Normandy. "We're going to need you to catch us the other side of the Reaper's mass effect core."

"Aye-aye, Commander," Joker confirmed. "I'll bring her around. Remember, you guys are gonna have to hustle once you take down the core. This thing's gonna start to fall."

"We'll be ready," Shepard promised. "Page Doctor Chakwas to be waiting for us, though. I think she'll want to take a look at a couple of us."

"You got it," Joker said, his voice unusually serious. "Shepard—you guys get out of there. You hear me?"

"We're gonna do our best," Shepard promised again. She turned to a crate just outside the airlock. On the top of it, there was a piece of tech giving off a ping all of them could hear. Shepard went over to it, picked it up, and fixed it to her belt. "We've got the IFF, and we're coming home."

"Point out the core, and I'll tear it up," Grunt said, pounding his shotgun with his fist.

But Shepard shook her head as she led the rest of them into the airlock and shut the door behind them to initiate pressurization of the section ahead. "That's a negative, Grunt. I'm gonna need you on defense. You all did well back there, and this is it. EDI's scans show the core is just ahead. We're going to move out in another formation—diamond, this time." She indicated what she meant with her hands, where she wanted each of them. Krios at the center, where the rest of them could protect him on the other four sides. "I'm guessing they'll come at us from every direction the core isn't. I've got the point toward the core 'cause I've got the biggest gun. I'll need the rest of you to keep them off me and be ready to push forward fast on my order." The lights in the airlock flashed to indicate the pressure exchange was complete, reflecting off Shepard's gray eyes. Along with the weariness and anxiety they all felt, there was an avid interest there, undimmed by the battle they had all been fighting. "And keep an eye out for that geth."


A/N: Honestly, I probably could have done this mission in two chapters, but it felt like it deserved a three-chapter arc nearly as much as Horizon. Even if the chapters were short, writing the arc in three instead of two helps convey the sense of weariness that I always feel playing this particular mission in the game and allows me to give Shepard's choice to bring Legion aboard and reactivate it all the weight it deserves. So there's still one more chapter aboard the Reaper to go.

To those of you still bearing with me: thank you. I hope I haven't completely let you down.

Best Always,

LMSharp