Chapter 43. The Word That Ends The World


2155 CE, Citadel, Spectre Office

"Are you going to say something?" he asked while closing his omni-tool. Anderson had remained completely silent for nearly two minutes by now, his expression unaltered in spite of everything he had just shown to him. While he knew that it wasn't the case, a part of Saren briefly wondered if he had just broken the other Spectre by unveiling every little detail years of investigation had uncovered in less than five minutes.

"You could've told me," the human finally said while shaking his head. "No, you should've told me," Anderson corrected himself while something akin to anger became visible on his face."People need to know what's coming for them."

"They can't," this was exactly what he suspected would happen. Anderson was a good Spectre and an even better soldier but he had never been entirely able to do the one thing that made a Spectre excellent, turn off his morale compass when necessary. "Not yet," the turian explained. "Not before we know what we're up against."

"Saren, if this is as bad as you say," the human gave him a look to which the turian only replied with a firm nod, "then we need to tell everyone and mobilize everything we got, not chase after some quarian just because he might be able to give you a shot at chatting up the geth."

"Mobilize what exactly? An army that doesn't know who or what it's fighting? What kind of plan is that?" he retorted and much to his surprise, Anderson didn't directly have a reply at the ready. "How are we supposed to win like that?" he added darkly, a feeling he had become estranged to over the course of his life resurfacing in the process. It was the emotion capable of bringing out both the best and worst in people, the emotion capable of making or breaking a person in a single moment, the one emotion he had never allowed himself to get the better of him up to now.

Fear.

"I know that you feel like telling people is the right thing to do and if you must, I won't stop you, David," he spoke, "but still, please listen to me. This," he added while bringing up the coordinates Harper had sent him to locate the quarian, the orange glow reflecting of the white surface of his armor, "might be the last chance we have to even the odds, the last chance to save the galaxy," his eyes met Anderson's,"and if we throw it away for the sake of doing what's morally right, there won't be a galaxy left to save when we're done," the turian paused briefly, trying to make sense of his friend's expression but coming up empty handed. He had known the man for years but he had never seen him like this and, for a brief moment, he asked himself if he had misjudged his friend, if going to him had been a mistake and if it would destroy everything he, his brother and the others had worked for all those years.

"I need to know if you're with me," he finally asked and when he was done, the longest couple of seconds in his life began. Watching Anderson turn on his heel and walk away shattered something within him, at least until he realised where the human was going. Coming to a stop not five steps to his left, far away from the entrance he had expected him to use, the human instead opened a crate Saren hadn't even seen when they had first entered the office. As Anderson reached inside and pulled out a familiar looking rifle, the modified Phaeston the turian Spectre had gifted to him after his Spectre induction, Saren's mandibles clicked into a smile.

"Of course I am," Anderson nodded, the unknown expression on his face replaced by that of grim determination personified. "But you have to promise me something, Saren."

"Anything."

"Don't ever keep something like this from me ever again, alright?" the former N7 said before attaching the Phaeston to the back of his armor.

"Alright."

"Just because you can, doesn't mean that you have to carry the weight of the world by yourself. In the long run, that shit isn't healthy," he went on while nodding towards the door. "Alright, enough heart to heart. Let's catch ourselves a geth."

"We're not going to catch a geth, we're goi-"

"-to talk to a quarian, I know. Believe it or not, occasionally I do listen to your briefings," the human shrugged on his way out of the Spectre office. "But don't you agree, that talking to a quarian doesn't sound nearly as impressive as catching a geth?" Anderson added with a brief laugh.

"Can't argue with that," the turian chuckled before they made their way to the docking bay.

He should've done this earlier.


One Week Later, Attican Traverse, Lestral

Their plan had been simple, get to the coordinates, ask the right kind of questions, find the quarians, ask them right kind of questions and figure out how they could help him and Anderson. The first step had worked like a charm, mostly because Harper had gotten them a very fast ride to the coordinates, ensuring that they arrived in time to intercept the quarian scouting party. Once they had set foot on the planet, which only real significance for the region was the fact that it supplied one of the larger fuel depots of the region, all they had to do was hunker down and wait for their target to arrive.

Simple enough.

Or so it had seemed.

"You just had to ask him, didn't you?" the turian muttered as a mass accelerator punctured the thin metal next to his head, a miniscule round tearing through the air and embedding itself in the wall opposite to him.

"He looked like he might know," the human replied after dropping back into cover, the screaming of a pirate indicating that he had hit his target.

If Saren had to pinpoint the exact moment that had led to him and Anderson getting into a rather average gunfight with a band of pirates, it probably would've been the second step of their plan.

"The only thing I wanted to know was if they knew when they'd show up. How was I supposed to know they'd start shooting at us?" Anderson called in return as Saren rose from behind the counter and managed to sent a single Carnifex shot down range before once more being forced back into cover, a hail of gunfire draining his kinetic barriers. It was probably for the best that his shot had missed, even though they were Spectres and above the law, the last thing they needed were local authorities getting involved. While far less attentive than the likes of C-SEC, he suspected that the security forces of the colony would be drawn to them sooner than later. Explaining a few injured pirates was far easier than explaining a bunch of dead ones. "What's their deal anyway?" the human added.

"They think we're competition," he explained while biotically throwing a turian, who had turned to a life of crime instead of staying in council space, through the window of the bar they were currently destroying, the nasty sound of glass shattering almost immediately being followed by the turian climbing back inside, insisting on finshing the fight he had started. "Pirates don't like competition."

From a certain point of view, it was a good thing that they were currently fighting this group, it meant that they were on the right track. While the armada wasn't exactly the first choice of slavers, pirates and raiders followed the Migrant Fleet like a hungry predator followed it's prey, waiting for a chance to strike at a lone ship that had parted waits with the rest of the fleet and hopefully getting their hands on some valuable tech, or sometimes the ship itself, in the process. Where there were pirates, there usually were quarians.

"Well and I don't like being shot at," the human retorted before yet another burst of his modified rifle roared through the luckily mostly empty bar. As strange as it sounded, Saren was really glad that just about every innocent civilian in this region was used to spontaneous violence erupting in the middle of their day. It meant that they knew how to get out of the way quickly when the bullets started flying and it made their job a lot less messy.

"Than you probably picked the wrong profession," he called in between his own shots. "Last time I checked, getting shot at is part of our job descript-," his remark was cut short when a round, likely a phasic one, managed to pass through his barriers and bounce off of his armor, shaving a portion of the white top layer off his shoulder and revealing the dark metal below it. Briefly glancing at the spot and being thankful for the fact that just about nothing was as resilient as Blackwatch armor, Saren paused for a moment. Although their training and equipment was far superior to anything the pirates could muster, they were gambling with their lives by trying to keep the damage to a minimum. Even if his intention was still to end this with as little bloodshed as possible, the turian now realised that he had to end this right now. If they kept going at the pace they were currently at, their approach would get them killed and getting killed wasn't a step of his plan.

"Spirits, I've had about enough of this," he cursed before rising from his cover and summoning his biotic powers. Pushing his hands forward as soon as he felt the energy around him reach its climax, Saren unleashed a wave of rapidly shifting mass effect fields onto their enemies, its force throwing them away from the two Spectres and more importantly out of their cover. As he was about to dispatch the first of the now exposed pirates to give the others an example as to what happened to those that got into his way, the turian realised that his display of power had managed to achieve more than what he had hoped for. Instead of keeping up the pressure, as he had expected them to, the pirates decided to cut their losses and make a run for it, stumbling out of the bar and into the rain outside.

This had gone better than expected.

"You couldn't have done that earlier?" Anderson asked, himself lacking biotic abilities. "Would've saved us a lot of time."

"I wanted to exhaust," he paused as he looked at the now completely destroyed bar, "less destructive options first," His past investigations had taught him a thing or two about the region and besides outright murder, the surest way to draw someone's attention in this part of the Attican Traverse was to damage the wrong person's property. "We should get out of here, find the quarians," he said.

"Before they do?" Anderson replied after nodding towards the direction the pirates had fled into.

"They won't kill the quarians but they might scare them off," Saren explained while stepping over a broken chair, out of the bar and into the rain that seemed to be a constant occurrence in this part of Lestral, paying almost no mind to the batarian who had already returned to the bar to finish his drink that had somehow survived the onslaught. Things like these were simply part of the day for people living on independent colonies at the absolute frontier of Citadel space. Devoid of any formal security beyond whatever colonial militias or corporate security forces the worlds mustered, planets like this one were even more lawless and dangerous than the worst parts of the Terminus Systems. "We should follow them, see if they already found the quarians," the turian reasoned while tracking the distant shapes of several figures running away from the bar.

"I've got a better idea," his friend replied not a moment later before collapsing his rifle and once more stashing it on the back of his armor. "Why don't we follow him?" he suggested as Saren looked the way he was pointing, almost instantly spotting the hooded, environmental suit wearing figure he was referring to. There, standing underneath the shielding roof of one of the prefabs that made up the majority of this mining settlement, was a quarian, the tainted glass of his mask looking directly at them, his arms folded in front of his chest in a way that allowed everyone to see the heavy pistol he was carrying just below the partially soaked cloak hanging from his shoulders.

"The last time you asked for directions, people started shooting at us," Saren reminded him.

"The last time I asked for directions, it wasn't a quarian," the human pointed out while making his way across the street, leaving visible foot prints in the mud below his boots. Although Saren knew that this town solely existed to support the large mining site already visible in the distance, he still asked himself who'd live in a place like this. They had seen the planet on their approach from orbit, oceans, forests, mountains and plains covered it's vast, unclaimed surface and in his opinion, all of them where better places to settle than the swamp he was currently in. Whatever it was that they were pulling from the ground at the mining site was obviously worth it.

"Chances are he's not a part of the group we're looking for. For all we know he's a pilgrim," the longer serving Spectre countered. While a lot of the adolescent quarians traveled through places more welcoming than this one, he knew that several of the more militarized clans that had grown influential within the Migrant Fleet's armed service expected their children to venture into the rougher parts of the galaxy, hoping to 'forge' them for the struggles ahead of them and have them understand with what kind of people they might have to deal with later down the line. The Council might've liked to ignore it but the fact remained that the Migrant Fleet was a major player outside of its sphere of influence and as such, it was always useful for future leaders to know just how the world they lived in worked.

"To me it looks like he's wearing heavy duty armor," Anderson responded, causing Saren to take a second, much closer look at the pieces of the quarian's suit he could see and sure enough, there, just below the cloak, he could make out the heavy armor plates the quarian military liked to add to the already resilient suits they handed out to their soldiers to reduce the chance of them dying through the effects of a suit rupture, the single worst thing that could happen to any quarian now that their immune systems were basically non-existent. Besides their lack of numbers, their fragile biology was the sole other reason why the Migrant Fleet's marines preferred more indirect ways of achieving their goals. Armor, weaponry, training and motivation all meant nothing if a shot that turians, batarians or humans could just walk off could lead to a potentially deadly bacterial infection that would put them out of the fight for months at a time. For that very reason quarians, even more so than anyone else, liked to avoid getting shot at. "When was the last time you saw a pilgrim with heavy duty armor?"

"Out here, actually," he replied dryly. It wasn't exactly as much of an exception as Anderson believed it to be.

"Well, either way there's only one way to know," Anderson spoke with a shrug. "Where's the harm in asking?"

"That sounds suspiciously like what you said before the pirates tried to kill us," Saren recalled again, causing Anderson to throw an annoyed glare towards him. "But sure, go ahead. Just don't say I didn't warn you."

"Hey, you!" Anderson called without ever acknowledging his concerns but the quarian remained silent and unmoving, the reflection of the two approaching Spectres' clearly visible on his dark-purple mask and only the two faintly glowing orbs behind it indicating that there was someone alive beneath the suit. This was what unnerved Saren about the quarians, one could never tell what they were up to. Exclusion from most of the galaxy meant that just about no one that wasn't a quarian could understand their body language and unless they were crazy or full of medication, watching their faces for some hint as to what they were thinking wasn't an option. "Got a minute?"

"That depends," the stranger replied in an especially thick version of the unique accent all quarians he had met seemed to share. Now that he thought about it, it really wasn't surprising that they all spoke the same. Three hundred years of living onboard tightly packed space ships was probably one of the best ways to force a species into adopting a singular culture consisting of elements of whatever groups had managed to survive the Geth War.

"On what?" the quarian replied, his arms still folded. For someone being approached by two heavily armed and heavily armored people who had just been involved in a fire fight, he was surprisingly calm. That either meant that Anderson was right or that this particular pilgrim had been here long enough to get used to everday life, which wasn't even that much of a stretch given that some pilgrimages took years to complete, especially in these parts of the galaxy. After all, it was hard to find something useful to bring back to the fleet if there was hardly anything around to begin with.

"On who's asking."

"Just two travelers," Saren offered. "We're looking for one of your people."

"To do what exactly?" the quarian replied, still entirely at ease.

"To ask questions."

"You don't look like the kind of people who ask questions," the stranger spoke dryly. "At least not the kind of questions you walk away from," he added while nodding his head towards the bar they had just come from.

"We're looking for Kenn'Mal," Anderson said in turn.

"Why?"

"As I said we just want to tal-"

"Cut the crap," the quarian interrupted him. "Spectres never just want to talk," he countered and upon seeing the hint of surprise on Anderson's face, let out a small chuckle before nodding towards Saren, "Didn't think I'd recognize the 'Hero of the Citadel?" he asked. "Please. Turians might all look the same to me, but anyone with two eyes and access to the extranet knows what Saren Arterius looks like." That was the problem with Spectres being public personas. No matter where he went, someone always recognized him. It might've helped him with intimidating people in the past, after all he had built quite the reputation over his career, but in cases like this, cases where he wanted to stay anonymous, it did the polar opposite. "Now what do two Spectres want from my captain?" the stranger, now revealed to be some kind of forward observer of the scouting party, demanded, unfolding his arms and letting his hands dangle close to his own weapon. It wasn't exactly a subtle threat. "The answer better be good," he added, still completely unimpressed with the people in front of him, which was a rather odd attitude to have given that he knew who they were. Either this quarian was very confident or very stupid. Those were the only two reasons he'd even consider fighting two Spectres.

"His help," Saren explained after a moment of consideration.

"With what?"

"We know that you're tracking the geth and we need your captain to tell us everything he knows about what they're doing in the Traverse," the turian replied and unless he was mistaken, the small glowing orbs behind the mask widened ever so slightly. The quarian clearly hadn't expected him to say that. Right about now the stranger was probably asking himself how the Spectre had known about the assignment of his ship, which was a justified question given how tight-lipped the Migrant Fleet was about operations like this due to groups like the one he and Anderson had just run into. It was rare for people outside of the fleet to come this close to things the quarians wanted to keep a secret.

"How did you-" the quarian was about to ask before shaking his head. "We're not doing this here," he interrupted himself while his head turned towards a couple of rather shady looking town inhabitants that had begun to listen in on their conversation with particular interest. It wasn't exactly a secret that quarian ships, as old as some of them might've been, were filled with tech that could produce a small fortune if sold to the right people and both the Spectres and the quarian scout could tell that people were starting to smell that fortune right about now. "Follow me," he instructed before quickly vanishing behind the prefab, not even turning back to check if they were actually doing what he had told them to do.

"That was easy," the turian muttered. "Almost too easy."

"Trap or not, we should get going right now," Anderson replied as he subtly nodded towards another group of people looking far more dangerous than the band of unorganized pirates they had just taken care of. Instead of carrying outdated weapons and mismatched pieces of damaged armor, the mixture of turians, humans and salarians was clad in modern body armor and evidently had access to a rather advanced armory. If he had to take a guess, these people were mercenaries hired by a company or a colony to keep the Migrant Fleet out of their system and away from their resources. It wasn't exactly rare for groups like this one to track quarian scouts and 'take care' of them before they could report their findings back to the fleet itself. After all the strategy had proven itself in the past, nothing was as sure to keep the quarians away form a place as their scouts never returning from it.

They could become a problem really soon.

"Yes we should," Saren nodded before they followed the quarian behind the building and found him standing next to an old all-terrain vehicle, its large wheels and green hull covered in a thin layer of brown dirt which was slowly being washed away by the warm drizzle falling from the sky above them. The stranger briefly looked around himself before waving his omni-tool at the door of the vehicle, the faint sound of its locks opening themselves almost immediately being followed by him jumping into the driver's seat and removing a panel beneath the steering wheel.

"What are you waiting for? Get in," he called just before the engine of the vehicle turned on and roared through the backend of the town.

"Stop the thieves!" a voice echoed from behind them.

"I don't have all day," the quarian added as the first gunshot hit the dirt just between Saren and Anderson. Sharing a look, the two Spectres too climbed into what was definitely not the quarian's all terrain vehicle and not a moment later, began to race off into the swamp, leaving behind a very angry and very dangerous town.

It seemed that this day was getting worse every time Anderson decided to ask a stranger a question.

"Did you really have to steal this thing?" Anderson complained as the quarian simply kept his foot on the gas, pushing the vehicle to its absolute limit and paying no further mind to the worrying sounds its engine was starting to make the longer he put this kind of strain on it. In a way it was already a miracle that this thing was driving as quickly as it was, given the muddy terrain below them. At least they had stolen a vehicle that lived up to its name.

"Yes."

"Why not call your captain or use what got you here in the first place? You just pissed off half the town just to steal this thing," the human Spectre groaned as a brief look behind them allowed Saren to see several military-grade transports, which were much more suited for traversing the swamp than their own, steadily catching up to them. "Why?"

"Because I didn't plan on having passengers," the quarian replied dryly, glancing at them through the rearview mirror and paying no mind to their pursuers. "Besides, the guy who owned this thing didn't need it as much as we did. Otherwise he would've invested in a better lock," he added before pulling a small, brown box from his belt, pressing a button at its side and placing it in front of the steering wheel, the projection of another quarian appearing from it. "Zenn, I'm on my way back but I've got some company."

"We can tell," a female quarian voice replied momentarily, "they are hard to miss. Just lure them into the deadzone, the mines should take care of them."

Wait a minute.

Mines?

"Not talking about the boats behind me, Zenn. I've got two Spectres with me. They want to talk to the captain."

"Keelah, why would you bring Spectres with you? What were you thinking, Reegar?"

"They know about our mission, Zenn. I had to do something."

A short pause.

"Understood. Bring them in. I'll inform the captain"

"That was the plan," the quarian, apparently named Reegar, sighed while pressing another button on the brown device. "Alright, you better hold onto something," he said as the box projected a grid across the windshield of the car, which now acted much like the HUD of his helmet would, and highlighting a pathway through a field of red dots, which, now that he thought about it, were probably the aforementioned mines.

In a way he had to give the quarians credit, hiding the explosives below the muddy swamp waters to cover their landing site was a smart move. They were almost impossible to see and if the first explosion that had just sounded to their left was anything to go by, they were also powerful enough to take care of anyone trying to get to close to their ship. But that was where the credit ended because as solid of a tactical decision as these mines were, Saren couldn't help but ask himself what happened to the people who unknowingly got too close to their ship, those who traveled through these swamps without having any harmful intentions in mind. He had seen the food that was served in the town they had just left and just about all of it was caught by fishers traveling through these swamps. Some of them were bound to be caught in this 'deadzone' sooner or later. These weren't the same kind of mines the Hierarchy used, these mines couldn't distinguish between their targets, they weren't 'smart'. If they were, there would've been no need for the quarian to dodge them as closely as he was currently doing.

"Jesus!" Anderson exclaimed with a strange mixture of worry and excitement as one of the boats blew up right next to them, shrapnel of the explosion embedding itself in the hull of their own vehicle, one of the sharp metal shards having been stopped just shy of penetrating the human's legs, only luck keeping him from suffering a similar fate to the now dead mercenaries that had tried to stop their all-terrain vehicle.

"Just one more right behind us," Reegar muttered to himself as Saren realised that their paths would soon cross with one of the red points they had avoided up to now. The Spectre realised what their driver was doing but that didn't mean that he liked it. Bracing himself for the inevitable last second turn, the turian wondered why he always got into life-threatening car chases the moment he got into the same vehicle as Anderson and why his friend never seemed to be nearly as bothered by them as Saren himself. Somehow, he suspected that Anderson enjoyed these moments far more than he should. "Come on you Bosh'tet, just a little bit closer," the quarian whispered just before jerking the steering wheel as far to the right as he possibly could, causing their ride to break away to the side at the last possible moment, the force of the following explosion nearly throwing him, Anderson and Reegar out of their seats and into the swamp.

"Spirits," Saren groaned as the vehicle came to a stop a few moments later, the sudden stop causing a wave of muddy swamp water to wash over them from behind. "Please tell me it's over," he added while Reegar and Anderson already climbed out of the all-terrain vehicle.

"Yes, we're here," the quarian said just before Saren spotted a dark shape in between the trees in front of them. Groaning again as he got up, mostly because of the unpleasant sensation of his spine popping back into place, the turian too climbed out of the truck and dropped into the ankle-deep swamp below him, thankful for the fact that his armor was completely sealed. The last thing he needed now were wet feet."Come on, the captain is already waiting," Reegar added before moving a few of the tree branches out of the way to open up a path. "Welcome to our home base." Saren had expected a lot of things upon hearing those words but this wasn't one of them. Built into the muddy soil right next to what looked like a repurposed salarian corvette, he found a piece of home far away from Council Space.

"This is a turian installation," he said as he eyed the several story tall building and the large dish attached to its roof, the faint memory of a history lesson surfacing.

"A forward observatory to be precise," Reegar injected, giving him the much needed reminder. "Your people built hundreds of them shortly after the Geth War, waiting for the big invasion tthat never came," the hostile undertone in the accented voice already told Saren what would come next."It's a funny story, really. You turians were so worried about the geth coming from beyond the Veil to destroy the Council that you didn't even spare a second thought to your fellow dextros trying to fight off starvation. You had the biggest emergency stockpiles in the galaxy and you didn't even open one of them for us. Some peacekeepers you are, watching hundreds of thousands die without even blinking an eye," the quarian muttered while turning to Anderson, "If I were you, I wouldn't put too much faith in the oh-so glorious turians. Trust me, when it comes down to it, they'll let you down the moment the Council tells them to."

Something about the quarian's speech had stung and he knew exactly what it was, the point he had. The Geth War hadn't been the proudest hour of his people, even if they had done exactly what was expected of them, following orders. While they liked not to think about it, every turian in one way or another knew that the Hierarchy could've ended the Geth War and by extension the quarian genocide if they had intervened the moment it had become evident that the quarians' creations were in open rebellion and that the sporadic fighting that had broken out across quarian space wasn't a 'system malfunction' but rather a fullblown war between the quarian military and the geth, a number of which had already been modified for military use.

"Are you going to give us a history lesson or are you going to introduce us to your captain?" Anderson simply retorted.

"Can't teach the unwilling," Reegar shrugged. "Right this way," he waved his hand towards the large, halfway opened blast door of the observatory. "I'm back, Zenn" the quarian called upon entering and not a moment later, Saren and Anderson found at least a dozen guns pointed at them from a walkway over their heads, "Oh, yes," Reegar added. "This is the point where I ask you to hand over your weapons."

"What's the meaning of this?" the turian Spectre asked, his voice turning ice cold as his mind raced through his possible options.

"A safety percussion," a new voice added as a quarian wearing a normal version of their enviromental suit stepped into view. "Disarm them," he ordered Reegar.

"You're Captain Kenn'Mal?" Anderson figured.

"Yes."

"Captain, before you take this any further, think this through. We only came here to talk," the human reasoned. "There's no need for violence."

"There won't be any violence on my part, Spectre. As I've said, this is merely a safety percussion," the quarian officer countered as the marine who had just helped them escape pulled the Carnifex off of Saren's armor, inspecting the gun for a brief moment before tossing it to the other end of the room, only briefly muttering that it was 'nothing persona' before repeating the process on Anderson. "I can't have agents of the Council interfere with my operation," he reasoned before turning to Saren. "I am sure you understand, Agent Arterius."

"We're not hear to interfere with your operation," he began. "We're-"

"- here to talk, I know," the quarian interrupted him. "So talk."

"You're using our installation to track the geth, we need to know what you learned about them ever since you started."

"Your installation?" the quarian chuckled. "Your people abandoned this place for centuries until mine found it and fixed it," he said while walking towards them, nodding his head at the makeshift repairs that had been done to the interior of the base. "Can you really still call it yours after all of that?"

"I don't have time for philosophical questions," the turian replied. Right about now, he didn't care if the quarians wanted to keep this place. In his mind, they could have every last outpost the Hierarchy had ever built if they gave him what he needed. "I need you to tell my what you know about the geth."

"Why?" the captain retorted. "Is the Council finally planning to do something about them? If that's the case, I am sorry to be the one to tell you that you're too late. The geth surpassed the rest of the galaxy centuries ago. You won't be able to stop them now."

"They're doing something in the Traverse, we need to know what," he said in return, sharing a look with Anderson, who if his face was anything to go by was far from happy with the current situation. "For all of our sakes, please just tell us what you know," he practically begged.

"He sounds legitimately concerned, Sir. Maybe we should tell them, even if it's just gets them out of our way without making a mess," the quarian from earlier said as he hung his wet cloak over one of the disabled consoles. If he hadn't just walked them right into a trap, Saren might've appreciated what he was trying to do.

"When I want your opinion, I'll ask for it, Corporal Reegar. Is that understood?"

"Of course, Sir."

"What is your intention with the geth?" the captain asked after shutting down his subordinate. "What will you do if I tell you what you want to know?"

Saren paused for a moment, choosing his words carefully.

"The geth hold the answer to a question I need answered. I was hoping that your intel will spare me the trip," he admitted, "but if it comes to it, I'll use what you tell me to figure out a way to ask them myself."

That reply ushered in the single most silent silence Saren had ever experienced in his entire life.

"You want to talk to the geth?" the captain spoke with complete disbelief.

"If it comes down to it," he confirmed.

"The geth?" the captain muttered. "The same geth who are known to shoot on sight?"

"Yes," he repeated.

"Have you lost your mind, Spectre?" the quarian asked, this time completely sincere.

"I realise that this plan sounds dangerous."

"Try suicidal," Reegar injected.

"But if you knew the stakes, you'd understand why I'm willing to do this," Saren finished. "Please, Captain Kenn'Mal, we need this information."

There was another pause, this one clearly one of consideration. If it weren't for the suit, he might've been able to tell what was going through the mind of the officer but as things were, the only thing Saren could observe was him slowly but surely walking closer towards them. Even if he didn't want things to go this way, Saren readied himself to lash out in case the quarian made the one decision the turian hoped he wouldn't. They might've gotten the drop on them but between Anderson, a human N7 who still had access to blade knife Saren knew to be hidden just below his gauntlet, and himself, a biotic Blackwatch operative, they could fight their way out of this if the need arose. High ground or not, quarians weren't exactly well suited for the kind of fight Spectres excelled in.

"Do you want to die? Is that it?" the captain asked as he came to a halt just in front of Anderson. "Because I can make that easier for you. There are a lot of deadly predators in this swamp, all I'd have to do is throw you in it at night and be done with it," he said in a low tone. "Would spare you the trip."

"Why don't you give it a try?" Anderson replied as he moved his face closer to the yellow face plate of the quarian, causing Saren to ready himself, putting a finish on the plan he had been outlining since the very moment they had walked into this trap. First he'd throw a shockwave at the ones above them, causing them to lose their balance and their line of fire. Then he'd close in on Reegar and get himself a weapon, he might've looked strong for a quarian but the turian was more than certain that he could take him in hand to hand combat, even if he had to resort to his biotics to finish it. After that, they'd have to see how many reinforcements the quarians still had and then they'd have to figure out how to retrieve the data they had collected and the-

A laughter broke his focus.

"Who am I to deny you the right to walk into your death?" the quarian chuckled. "Lower your weapons," he instructed. "You're already aiming at dead men."

"Does this mean you'll give us what we need?"

"Me?" he asked. "No," he shook his head. "As the scientific officer of this mission, I have other matters to attend to," the quarian they had been looking for dismissed, "but Specialist Zenn will take care of you. Take them to her, Corporal," the captain instructed before simply walking away from the two Spectres as if he hadn't just threatened them. "Make sure they get what they want."

"Yes, Sir," the quarian in red once more said before following his superior's orders. "Alright, come with me," he went on before coming to a halt, "I promise you, there won't be an ambush this time," he chuckled.

"You think this is funny, don't you?" Anderson said all the while picking his weapon of the ground under the suspicious eyes of one of the quarian riflemen.

"I think we'll be laughing about this if we ever meet again," the quarian scout reasoned while climbing up a ladder to one of the other levels of the previously turian base. "Watch the third rung, it's kind of loose," he added while skipping that particular part of the ladder. "Where are you, Zenn?" he called just as Saren himself managed to climb the ladder, feeling another rung bend under the combined weight of his own body and his armor. This place really was a mess, was it possible that the Hierarchy had built it but never actually gotten around to man it? It was certainly the impression he was getting the longer he stayed in the base.

"Right here," a voice came back to them from beyond the corner up ahead, the faint humming of machinery becoming clearer the closer they got to the source of the voice. "Just a moment," it added as Anderson, Saren and Reegar entered the smaller room, which looked like it had served as some kind of information hub before the Hierarchy had abandoned the place. Terminals and screens were lining the walls and a mess of cables all lead towards a central holo desk he recognized to be an outdated piece of turian military equipment, having long since been replaced by a far more modern variant. "This is the Saren Arterius?" she asked as she mustered the turian with a brief glance before looking back to Reegar. "I thought he'd be older," she observed.

He wasn't sure what to make of that statement.

"The captain wants you to give them a copy of our data on the geth."

"All of it?" she questioned with a hint of doubt.

"All of it," the other quarian nodded.

"Are you sure about this?"

"Orders are orders, Zenn, it doesn't matter what I think about them," Reegar sighed. "Give them a copy of our data."

"Fine," the quarian woman said as she nodded towards the holo desk. "Let me get this out of the way immediately, we probably don't have nearly as much as you think we have, so don't get your hopes up," she explained while pulling a new-looking data drive from an adapter that had been attached to the much older desk. "When this place was built, the geth weren't nearly as sophisticated as they are now. That made things difficult."

"Meaning?" Saren inquired as he caught the data drive being flung towards him half heartly.

"You know how geth work?" she asked and before even giving them a chance to reply went on. "The more geth programs there are, the smarter they get and the smarter they get, the harder it becomes to track them. When this base was first set up, there weren't nearly as many geth programs as there are today. It wasn't built for the kind of tracking it's currently doing. I guess you see why that might be a problem?"

"How much intel are we talking?" Anderson injected as he leaned against the holo table.

"It's not a lot but what little we have, is still interesting," Zenn replied. "We've got a few coordinates and one major anomaly. That's what we've collected up to now."

"An anomaly?" the human asked again.

"A repetitive message ," the quarian explained before sighing upon seeing Anderson's confused expression. "In case you were wondering why this is strange, "she spoke with a hind of sarcasm, "Geth don't require repetition. They're not like us, they don't forget things, it's not how they work. They don't need reminders every now and again," she went on. "Hence, it's an anomaly."

"Alright and what are they repeating?" Anderson replied.

"I have no idea, it has no meaning. Or at least it shouldn't have one, at least not to the geth. Hence, a major anomaly."

"Care to elaborate on that?" Anderson asked again, causing the quarian to sigh.

"Geth communication is based around Khelish numerals. We use words, they use numbers and to bridge that gap, our scientists made sure that every set of numbers the geth use can be translated into Khelish," Zenn spoke, before turning towards one of her screens, intending to continue whatever work they had interrupted her in. "But in their repetitive message, they aren't using numbers which we can translate, they're repeating a word and it's not a quarian one."

"Geth can learn things, right? Is it such a stretch for them to make up a language to stop you from eavesdropping on them?" Anderson replied, causing the quarian to stop in the middle of her task.

"That's not how the geth work," she sighed agai."Sentient AI or not, their base code will always be Khelish and they can't help but think and communicate in Khelish numerals. It's a part of them they can't change, no matter how many of them exist. They can't rewrite themselves to such an extreme degree," she paused. "But somehow they managed to do just that, which is more than just freighting. If I were you, I'd think twice about doing what I think you're about to do with this intel."

"What's the word they're saying?" Saren asked. Dangerous anomaly or not, they had to do this. Since the quarians obviously didn't have what they needed, this was their last, best shot. If he had to find a way to talk to the geth to save the galaxy, he'd do exactly that.

"Nazara," Zenn replied. "As I said, it means nothing," yet to him it sounded strangely like a name.

"And what about the coordinates?" Anderson once more asked, likely to the annoyance of the quarian woman.

"They're way points."

"To what?"

"A single location all the geth in the region seem to be converging on," she shrugged. "It's no groundbreaking anomaly but we still managed to pick it up. But I still don't see how either of these things make your plan any less suicidal."

Probably because it didn't. Neither the anomaly, nor way points answered the question as to why the geth were picking apart the Attican Traverse for the same kind of clues they themselves had been chasing all these years or what had happened to the thing that had influenced Had'dah. As things were, he and Anderson would really have to go face to face with the synthetic pariah of the galaxy.

"Anything else we should know?" Saren muttered while considering their options. This hadn't gone like either him or Harper had hoped it would. The quarians hadn't given them answers, just more questions.

"Only one thing really," Zenn replied. "These geth are different from the rest. While they're a lot of them roaming around the Traverse, they are both" for a moment the quarian looked as if she couldn't find the right word, "dumber and smarter than they should be," that made next to no sense. "Collectively it's almost like they're not connected with the majority of their collective consciousness but if that were the case, they shouldn't be nearly as smart as they are appear to be. Something about them is just all wrong, like they're fundamentally different from what they should be."

"Kind of like the anomaly?" Saren remembered to which the quarian nodded. "Great."

This was not at all how he had hoped this day would go.


Seven Hours Later, HSASV Budapest

After pretty much walking away empty-handed from Lestral, he and Anderson had called for their ride, a human cruiser flying under the flag of Cerberus, and subsequently set course for the last hint they had, the way points of the geth. While the eventual goal was still to find a way to ask them what was going on, both Spectres knew that jumping head first into the rally point the geth were converging on would be both suicidal and pointless. Getting killed by overeagerly flying into what might as well be an enemy armada would not only get them nothing, it would also be quite embarrassing. Right now, the best thing they could do was stealthily trail the movements of the geth in an attempt to get a better grasp of what they were doing all the while trying to figure out just how they could get around the small, pesky detail that the synthetics would likely shoot them on sight, a problem Harper was apparently 'working on' if the brief conversation the two had shared earlier was anything to go by.

At least his brother had been more successful. According to his message, Desolas had been able to link up with his old asari contact without much trouble.

Saren let out a sigh as he stared at the small ration bar in his hand, its familar bland taste doing very little to distract him from the fact that he hadn't even gotten close to achieving what he had set out to achieve without Desolas' approval. They had gotten nothing on Lestral. No that wasn't entirely accurate. They had gotten less than nothing on Lestral, the meeting with the quarians had only raised even more questions and there would come a point in the near future where there wouldn't be enough time left to answer them, where the fight with the Harbinger would've begun on terms that made their victory not only unlikely but outright impossible.

He couldn't let that happen.

Placing the mostly unconsumed ration bar back in the compartment of his armor he had retrieved it from, Saren glanced at the bunk the ship's captain had provided him with and ever so briefly considered falling asleep right then and there, an idea that died the moment his omni-tool vibrated, an unknown contact demanding his attention, expecting him to take a call originating from the opposite end of the galaxy. Quantum entanglement really was a useful technology. Checking to see if his communication scramblers were in place, he wouldn't want to give away his position after all, the Spectre gave in to his natural curiosity and waved his hand to answer the call.

"Hello, Agent Arterius," a voice itself scrambled to the point of no recognition began to speak. "It as come to my attention that you are looking into a matter I myself have taken a interest in."

"Who is this?" he already had his suspicions.

"I can be a great many number of things, Agent Arterius, even your worst enemy, but at the moment I'd like to think of us as allies pursuing a common goal," the deep voice explained, the short breaks and simple demeanor with which it spoke quite unlike anything he had ever heard before. Even with scramblers, one could usually tell to what species they were speaking, the rapid pace of salarians or cold monotone of elcor being particularly clear examples of voice scramblers failing to hide entire identity of the person using them. In this situation this wasn't the case. "My agents have already found what you're looking for and as such I know how to find that which you call Nazara," how did the voice know about something he had only heard a few hours ago?

The only real explanation he could come up with was only reinforcing his earlier suspicions.

"Who told you about the geth?" the Spectre muttered while closing the door of the room he had been provided with. The last thing he needed was someone walking in and scaring off what was likely either a high-ranking agent of the galaxy's most notorious information dealer or, even more likely, the Shadow Broker himself.

"Even the Migrant Fleet is not out of my reach," the arrogance in his tone was clear even through the scramblers.

He thought carefully about his next move.

The Shadow Broker had a truly unique relationship to the Special Tactics and Reconnaissance branch of the Citadel. On the one hand, he was a wanted fugitive in the entirety of Council space, assassinations and acts of terror causing the Citadel Council to give all of its agents the order to shoot on sight should they ever encounter him. By all means, he was one of the biggest enemies the civilized part of the galaxy had ever seen. But on the other hand, beyond the veil of moral superiority and principles, the Council knew very well that almost half of its best agents regularly dealt with the Broker to various extends, using his vast network to stop other threats to the Citadel's security in exchange for their own assistance, a practice the Citadel Council ignored as long as it worked but cracked down on the moment a Spectre fell out of their grace.

Saren himself had always avoided going to the Broker, a mixture of a sense of honor, a concept most Spectres abandoned at one point or another, a rather rigid set of personal rules he used to keep himself on track and the worry of what the Broker would have him do in exchange for giving him the desired knowledge keeping the turian away from any dealings with the enigmatic figure. He had always figured that there'd always be another way to save the day, even if people like Tela Vasir, who had done far more than just 'basic favours' for the Shadow Broker, claimed the opposite. He had never understood how desperate one would have to be to come up with the idea of asking a sworn enemy of the Citadel Council to help protect the very same institution that had placed a 'shoot-on-sight' order on him. It simply felt like a leap of logic he could never bring himself to make.

At least until now.

No matter how he spun it, no matter how sick it made him, how much it went against his code or how much it contradicted everything he believed in, this really was the only viable option he had left. They couldn't study the artifacts, their lead on the quarians had turned out empty and talking to the geth was basically suicide. For all intents and purposes, his options were all but exhausted, yet here the Shadow Broker was, presenting an easy solution to him at just the right moment. He suspected that this was exactly how Vasir and others had fallen into his service.

"Where is it?" Saren muttered with the same icy voice he found himself using far more often these days. Was this what it felt like to sell pieces of himself for the greater good?

He didn't like it.

"I will sent you the coordinates momentarily," the Shadow Broker spoke.

"What's in it for you?" he was almost hesitant to ask but he simply had to know.

"At the moment? Nothing," the Broker explained as the coordinates to a planet at the very edge of the Attican Traverse, already brushing against the Perseus Veil, appeared on his omni-tool.

"If you think I'll become your personal hitman for this," he began only for a dark, incredibly alien chuckle to cut him short.

"I expect no such thing," the Broker explained in an almost uncharacteristically arrogant way. What little he knew of other Spectres dealings with the figure had suggested that he rarely if ever let his emotions slip, leading some to believe that they weren't even talking to a living being to begin with. "Consider this an investment into my own business. What you're pursuing is as dangerous to me as it is to you. The only thing I expect from you, is that you stop it." He really wanted to ask how the Broker knew but something told him he'd never get the answer to that. "May I extend a suggestion to you, Agent Arterius?"

"What is it?" there it was again, that cold tone he kept noticing.

"The nature of what Nazara is likely to be," he didn't like the sound of that,"could require the assistance of your asari acquaintance," his eyes narrowed ever so slightly at that. "I suggest that you tell Doctor T'Soni to meet you on the Citadel, her abilities will become," the Broker paused for a few seconds, "useful in the near future."

"How do you know about her?" the turian Spectre asked.

"I will be watching you, Agent Arterius," that wasn't an answer.

With that the transmission ended and soon enough Saren found himself standing on the bridge of the Cerberus vessel.

"What do you mean 'turn it around'?" Anderson asked as he and the captain of the Budapest stared at him, the bluish glow of the mass relay they were about to journey through illuminating the bridge around them.

"I just got another lead, a solid one," he explained. "But we have to get back to the Citadel before we pursue it."

"I don't understand this, why the change of heart?" the captain, an older human with skin slightly less dark than Anderson's asked as he ran a hand through his short, graying hair.

"And where did you get this lead?" the human Spectre asked.

He considered it for a moment before Anderson's words from earlier this week echoed back into his mind.

"It's from the Shadow Broker. He just contacted me and told me that he knows where to find Nazara," he said, causing the older human to become visibly disgruntled. Even if it was hardly relevant to their cooperation, he knew that the human intelligence service and Cerberus in particular had been trying to get to the Shadow Broker for years now. It was no surprise that the man didn't like hearing that name onboard of his vessel. "But it's still a solid lead."

"Saren, how do you even know that it was the real Broker?" Anderson asked.

"I just do."

"This could be an ambush," the human captain, who had been distinctly less reluctant about flying into territory crawling with geth, added and he couldn't deny that the thought of it being another trap had crossed his mind. After all, the Broker would gain a lot from taking out even a single Spectre. But in his mind the risk was worth the reward. Even if it was a trap, the figure still knew something about Nazara. If it took springing his ambush to get a shot at that piece on intel, he'd do it. Spirits, if he was entirely honest with himself he knew that this point there wasn't anything he wouldn't do to find some way to stop the Harbinger.

"If you don't want to risk your crew on this operation, Captain, I will respect that but I still need you to bring me back to the Citadel. We can't afford ignoring this and if I have to do it myself, I will," the turian reasoned.

"No, we've been down this road before," Anderson sighed. "You're done doing things on your own, Saren. We're in this together," the human Spectre said before turning to the captain. "Sir, I vote in favour of this new approach," he said to the older man.

"You don't need to vote on anything, son. It's neither your nor my call. The director was clear on one thing," the man nodded towards Saren. "He's the one in charge," a pause. "Helmsman, bring us back to the Citadel."

He deeply hoped that he wouldn't regret this.


2155 CE, Thessia, Dormitories of the T'Lav University

She was certain that there was no noise more terrible than the vibration of an omni-tool at night. No matter what the goddess had created in her alleged infinite wisdom, nothing came even close to the horrendous sound that had interrupted her already far too short sleeping hours. Fumbling in the dark, trying to find the device she knew to be somewhere on her nightstand, Liara only now recognized that this wasn't the sound of her regular omni-tool but the one General Arterius had given to her in case she ever needed to be contacted directly and at short notice.

That realisation woke her up fast enough.

Briefly struggling to adapt to the orange glow of the omni-tool shining far too brightly for comfort, she accepted the call in spite of her eyes still being in pain and found the familiar face of the younger Arterius, the Spectre, appear in front of her.

"I'm awake, what do you need me to do?" she spoke, almost tripping over her own words, the prospect of working on yet another exciting piece of technology causing her to be far too excited considering the overarching reason she and the turian were even working together to begin with.

"Doctor T'Soni I-" the turian spoke only to quickly avert his eyes, his mandibles twitching rather oddly in response. "Spirits, I apologize I didn't mean t-"

"Oh, no. Don't. There's nothing to apologize for. It's fine," she realised what was going on, pulling her blanket up to her chin. In her excitement, she had forgotten that her sleeping habits, while completely normal in the mono-gendered society of the asari, could be rather distracting for other species. "It's fine," she repeated.

The turian cleared his throat before once more turning his head.

"Doctor T'soni," he began again. "I need your help with something."

"Another artifact?" she asked. "Are you already on Thessia?" she knew she shouldn't sound this excited but she just couldn't help herself in cases like this one. "When will you be here?"

"I am afraid it might be a bit more complicated than last time," the turian replied as the twitching of his mandibles ceased, "and far more dangerous."

That last part served to quell her mood. Liara had always been rather adventurous and her mother had insisted on her sharpening her biotic abilities to the point where they could save her life but she still wasn't the kind of person who ran towards danger. It took a special kind of person to put themselves in the kind of situations people like Saren Arterius activitly looked for and she wasn't one of them. But even then, she had known exactly what she had gotten herself into when she had said yes to Saren's brother back when he had first approached her. Back then she had made a promise to herself and now she intended to live up to it.

Maybe it was time for her to become a different kind of person.

"What do you need me to do?" she repeated her earlier question far more awake and far more serious than before.

"Can you meet me on the Citadel?"


Codex: The Shadow Broker

Known only by his alias, the Shadow Broker is the galaxy's most notorious information broker and one of the most wanted individuals in the galaxy. Having made his first appearance some time after the Geth War, the Broker was at first believed to be a salarian, then a turian and finally when he had outlived both the natural life spans of these two species, an asari or krogan with a background in the intelligence service community, capable of heavily influencing the course of galactic politics into his favour through the use of a vast network of agents, mercenaries and companies all acting at his ultimate direction.

Wanted on accounts of murder, espionage and terrorism, the Shadow Broker's role in galactic history is a rather strange one, mostly because at times, his or her actions directly contradicted themselves, a fact that led many to believe that the Shadow Broker wasn't just a single individual but a rather a group of people all assuming the identity of the Broker whenever it worked in their favour.

It should be noted that due to the timing of his appearance, several experts have voiced the theory that the Shadow Broker may in fact be an AI that, upon witnessing the Geth War and the Council's reaction to it, namely the Artificial Intelligence Ban (See Entry 'Artificial Intelligence Ban'), disguised itself as a real person to escape termination.

Furthermore it should be noted that leading intelligence agencies such as the Turian Naval Intelligence (TNI) and the Special Task Group (STG) have voiced the hypothesis that the original Shadow Broker has in fact been dead for centuries and that a series of successors, assuming the mantle either through murdering their predecessor or simply outliving him, have long since taken over his operation.


A/N:

Chapter 43!

Literally my christmas present to you! That's what you call timing!

Yeah.. I really thought I'd get this out earlier... but lately my expecations have been anything but accurate.

So.. I finally dropped the N-bomb (Nazara, for those of you who don't know who or what that is, don't look it up, it'll make the rest of this arc a lot better) in Semper Vigilo, indicating that we really are getting close tothe first REAL Reaper moment of thisstory. Up to now it's all been talking around it but soon, really soon, it's gonna happen. The pay of to what's basically been one year of me foreshadowing the shit out of things.

Also.. I don't know why but no matter what happens, I just can't keep Saren and Anderson's scenes completely serious... they always get a little lethal weapon-y (is that a word? I'll make it a word) but I think that's fine. It's half their charm really. At this point these two guys are so good that they can be a bit joking when shit hits the fan.

Also also... first real appearance of the quarians. A bit of talking and two perspectives of the same geth war. As I've said a thousand times, I'm not a fan of making the quarians compeltely innocent and good (hence the nasty minefield), but as this chapter probably shows... I also know that something utterly fucking terrible happened to them and the rest of the galaxy basically just watched it happen. Hence... the attidute reegar (hello there canon character making a bit of an early apperance) gave Saren.

Also also also... I finally managed to get the Shadow Broker back into things, even though I rarely use him, something about his character just speaks to me. Until Lair of the Shadow Broker, the guy was basically THE god damn Chessmaster of the Mass Effect universe and to me, (in case a lot of Semper Vigilo's plots didn't let oyu know) spies and subterfuge and all taht shit are really interesting.

That's basically all I have to say really.

Let me know what you think.

Happy Holidays mates.

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