54: The Archeologist


Early 2156 CE, Therum, Cerberus Research Outpost

As the door came apart after a flare of purple energy had given the piece of debris the force necessary for the lever to finally work as intended, the asari archeologist found herself stumbling forward at the sudden lack of resistance. Falling into the corridor she had come from not twenty minutes earlier, Liara hit the ground ungracefully, the painful sensation shooting through her head not a moment later causing her to grone before eventually pushing herself of the ground.

She knew that the smart thing to do would've been to just stay in the comm-room and wait for rescue to arrive. Especially considering that the gunfire she had been hearing ever since her call with the general had been interrupted had only ended a few minutes ago. But in spite of that, Liara had found herself incapable of just waiting for help like she would've done in the past. She wasn't exactly sure what it was that had caused this change of heart but right now the asari was certain that she had spent enough time of her life waiting for others to come to her aid.

As she steadily moved through the compound now flooded in red light with the aim of reaching one of the security checkpoints, Liara wasn't entirely certain if she had taken a wrong turn already or not. Although she had spent a considerable amount of time in the prothean facility, it looked like an entirely different place right now. Be it the additional lamps or covers for the endless network of cables that had been hung on the ceiling of the corridors that had been thrown from their usual spots or the support beams that had collapsed where the ancient walls they were supposed to uphold remained standing, the chaos of the sudden attack had left its mark on the outpost.

Turning the corner and finding one of the guards, the small, bloody holes in his armor and odd angle at which his head was slumped forward betraying that he was dead, Liara suppressed a gasp. While she had been around the remains of beings that had been dead for centuries or even millennia, the archeologist had never actually seen a fresh corpse. As she considered taking the rifle clutched in the hands of the human soldier, the asari came to the realisation that besides probably not being able to bring herself to pulling the trigger and killing someone, she wouldn't be able to use it properly either way. Briefly stopping to shut the eyes of the human, which had still been open in what looked like a shocked impression, with a gentle touch of her hand the archeologist once more began to walk forward, turning another corner just in time for the red emergency illumination to turn off. As she was about to turn on her omni-tool for a second time, the normal lights turned on, bringing with them the faint but growing hope that Cerberus might've already repelled the attackers and thus returned the outpost to its normal state.

That hope lasted exactly as long as it took her to hear the sound of metallic feet stomping on the ground and a muffled krogan voice roaring a new command.

"She has to be here somewhere. Find her. Tear this whole ruin apart if you have to!"

The blood in her veins ran cold at that. Liara didn't have to be a scientist to know that the 'she' the krogan was talking about was her and that the electronic clicking and buzzing echoing through the corridor was the sound of geth rushing to execute his orders.

She had to move.

She had to get out of here and find help, someone who could actually hope to take on this kind of enemy. Sensing her new-found courage disappear, Liara slowly walked back the way she had come from, nearly tripping over the corpse of the guard she had just passed, surpressing another gasp before circling back to where she had come from. Now that the lights had turned on, she had realised that she had indeed been going into the wrong direction. Determined not to get captured by the geth, the archeologist passed the checkpoint and started to head to where the closest exit should be located, passing by several more dead humans and destroyed geth in the process, the gruesome scene etching itself into her mind deeper with every second she spent looking at it. Averting her eyes and pressing on, it wasn't long until a third gasp got the better of her self-control.

"Doc," she heard a weak voice call. Despite its familiar sound, the asari very nearly screamed her lung out, only managing to force the keep down by putting her own hand in front of her mouth. "Doc, you have to get out of here," the human technician whispered after wiping the blood from his mouth. "The geth. They're here. You have to go. You have to-"

"By Athame, Pete," she said quietly while rushing over to where the injured man was sitting up against a wall with a pistol resting on his lap. As she realised just how much blood had soaked his fatigues already, she began to look around for anything that could be used to stop the bleeding. Spotting a small pouch marked with the human symbol usually used in relation to medical supplies on one of the dead guards lying next to them, the asari crawled over to it, tearing it open and pulling the first syringe of medigel from it that she could find.

"No, no, don't," Pete muttered, grabbing her hand just as she had been about to use it on him. "I'll just slow you down. You have to go. If the geth get their hands on you-"

"I'm not leaving you to die, Pete," she interrupted him defiantly, managing to free her hand from his grip which, thanks to the blood loss, had been far weaker than usual before applying the medigel to the large wound on his torso, the flow of red continuing even after the entire content fo the syringe was empty.

"Doc. Listen to me," the technician whispered as she crawled back to the pouch to get another syringe, the sound of mechanical footsteps becoming audible somewhere in the distance. "They're coming," he coughed up more blood as she returned to his side,"and I'm a goner. You have to go," he repeated.

"I'm no-"

"Liara. If the geth get you, everyone here died for nothing. The whole point of this mission was to-"

"You best stop talking," she muttered in return, trying to hush him.

"Was to keep Saren from finding you," he finished before coughing up more blood and causing her to look at him, his brown eyes weakly gazing back at her.

"What are you talking about?" she asked while applying the next syringe.

"Saren. He tried luring you out once already," Pete whispered as the footsteps grew closer. "But your mother caught wind of it. She kept the message from reaching you and tried to stop him by herself." Goddess. No. "When they realised what had happened, Director Harper and General Arterius decided that you needed to disappear. Couldn't let Saren get to you-"

Now it all made sense.

A boring prothean mining site on a world far out of reach for most people.

A head scientist who seemed intend to argue every one of her decisions.

A seemingly mundane artifact that no one really knew what to do with.

It was the perfect ruse to keep her distracted and hidden at the same time.

"- so that's why you have to go," the human technician insisted as more blood kept flowing from his chest, the next empty syringe cluttering to the floor and briefly overshadowing the sound the geth closing in on them. "Now," he insisted after another cough produced even more blood and pursued her to crawl back to the pouch again.

Eyeing the last syringe in the small pack and looking back at the still bleeding human who by now had ejected the empty magazine from his pistol and replaced it with a fresh one which judging by the amount of blood already on it had been stashed somewhere in his fatigues, the asari was stuck in a weird mixture of guilt and anger.

On the one hand she felt the immense weight of the realisation that her mother had been captured and that people had died just because she had gotten mixed up with the rogue Spectre crash down on her like a rock.

But on the other hand she was angry for being lied to for months.

Angry at herself for not seeing it.

Angry at Saren and the geth for doing this.

And for the first time in her life, she felt like letting that anger get the better of her.

With that thought a purple surge pulsed over her hands, causing the technician to turn towards her.

"Don't do this, Liara," he whispered weakly before returning his attention to where the footsteps where coming from. "Just go. Please."

Somehow those five words managed to demolish her resolve to make her stand than and there to either fight her way out of the prothean facility or die and render whatever it was that the geth wanted to do to her impossible rather quickly.

"I'm so sorry, Pete," she spoke quietly before rising to her feet. "May you find peace in the embrace of the Goddess."

Whatever reply it was that he gave to her farewell was lost to Liara as she began running, each gunshot echoing behind her a few seconds later causing her feet to carry her faster. As her breath grew more ragged on her way to the exit, the asari turned around another corner, spotting a polished white form in front of her and briefly hoping to have found another survivor before realising that this wasn't a human.

It was a geth.

If they hadn't been under orders to capture her alive, she knew that she would've already been dead by the time its cold three digit hand wrapped itself around her arm and if she hadn't been under the influence of adrenaline and already strangely focused on her natural biotic abilities, she never would've been capable of simply throwing the synthetic drone into the opposing wall with enough force to not only shatter it's form but also dent the prothean metal behind it in a single blow.

Picking up her pace and not even sparing a second to think about just how much raw power had to have been behind that attack for it to have that kind of impact, the archeologist came to a crossroads within the outpost, wasting a precious second to try and remember which way the exit had been. By the time she had come to a conclusion and picked a way, her decision was rendered pointless by a squad of geth appearing from the direction she had intended to head towards.

Left with the choice of either going back and running into the geth, heading for the command center, which was likely crawling with geth as well or going for the center of the ruin, the way she had come from earlier, the asari picked the one path in which she saw a small chance of escape and ran straight for the prothean artifact she had been studying under false pretense all this time. As she entered the cave where the room was located, she caught a glimpse of more dead humans, the head scientist amongst them, and ran straight for the stairs, climbing them several steps at a time.

"Hold it right there, asari!" a krogan voice roared behind her, the sound of metal creaking under the weight of something heavy telling her that he was right behind her. "I said stop!"

When her feet touched the first tile of the prothean artifact, she remembered the overload program the turian Spectre had given to her in a quiet moment before their first shared mission with the instructions of only using it when she found herself in a dangerous situation and neither he nor Anderson were around to save her get out of it. As her hands formed the gestures necessary to activate it, Liara herself having no idea how she managed to remember them in the first place, the archeologist also recalled her own words of what a sudden power surge, which an overload program by definition was, could do to a prothean artifact.

Unlike with the program however, that memory came to her a little too late.

As the surge connected with the krogan behind her and the tiles around them, she had just enough time to give credit to the now deceased Doctor Gregor for having been right about the room's purpose before being embraced by a strange force field that, upon being touched by the stumbling and unconscious krogan, caused the heavy alien to harmlessly bounce off of it. As she watched the armored lizard fall to the ground in what seemed like a small eternity, the asari came to another realisation which much like her last one came a little too late.

She couldn't reach her omni-tool to trigger another overload which might reverse the effect of the shield.

In fact, she couldn't do anything.

She was trapped.


10. January 2415 AD, HSASV Normandy, Hangar Compartment

"And you're coming with us as well," she said after exiting the elevator with the two human marines and the krogan bounty hunter behind her, addressing their turian guest who she had now walked past.

"Coming with you where exactly?" he replied distracted before looking up from the halfway disassembled Valkyrie lying on the table in front of him and turning his head to follow her path.

"Planetside," Emily explained while heading for the Mako parked in the center of the frigate's hangar, its presence and role on the ship being yet another one of the many turian ideas that had made it into the finalized design of the Normandy-Class. Usually intended to serve as an infantry fighting vehicle, the joint engineer team had taken a single look at the Hierarchy's practice of throwing Jiris IFVs out of low-flying frigates to support a mechanized push and rolled with the idea for the Normandy, adding a few mass effect engines to the floor of the vehicle to mirror the turian hovertanks and calling it a day. Considering that where they were going was far from hospitable, she was glad for that. "We'll be on Therum in less than an hours and since orbital imaging already shows a small geth army waiting right at the outpost, it's all hands on deck for this one. Get ready and fall in."

"Or stay here and wait for us to come back if you don't feel like you're up to it, Blue," the krogan behind her offered with a chuckle.

"Don't tempt me," Vakarian shrugged all the while pushing himself away from the table and grabbing the footlocker that hadn't left his side ever since he had boarded the Normandy. Since he seemed to have the same habit as Wrex, namely keeping his armor on wherever he went, it appeared that the turian was now ready to depart. "So we're really doing this then?" he asked as he caught up to them. "Charging into an active volcano to save an asari archeologist who somehow will help us stop Saren?"

"You make it sound worse than it actually is. The prothean outpost isn't really inside the volcano. It's just nearby," Williams offered at his apparent concern. "Besides, most of Therum's been inactive for centuries. We'll be fine."

"You see, when the briefing mentioned that the whole place might be flooded with lava if we blow up the wrong wall, I kind off stopped paying attention to the details of how we'll get burned alive."

"Heh. You sound scared, Blue," Wrex retorted as she opened the hatch of the Mako's crew compartment, trying to decide whether or not she would actually be able to squeeze the krogan on one seat only.

"Scared? No. I wouldn't say I'm sacred," the turian replied from outside the Mako. "I just happen to have a rather healthy sense of self-preservation. I'm not sure a krogan can relate to that."

"And you said you can drive this thing, Williams?" she asked while peeking up to the driver's seat, the dozens of buttons and holograms meaning next to nothing to her, ignoring the empty banter between her two alien team members.

"17th Marines is the only fully mechanized force in the Corps, Commander," she repeated her earlier statement. "I'd be a damn embarrassment to my unit if I didn't know how to drive one."

"I'll take your word for it, Gunny," Emily said while climbing out of the IFV.

"And you won't regret it, Ma'am."

"I know I won't," she nodded."Time for some last minute checks people. Make sure you have everything you need. Because once this thing drops out of the hangar," she knocked against the armor of the Mako, "we're not going back until the job's done. Volcanic disaster or not," she added with a small smile directed towards the turian.

The job.

Originally this mission would've been a simple pick-up. In and out in less than half an hour. But since the same thing that had complicated all of her recent 'simple' pick-ups seemed to have followed her onto the Normandy, the job had turned into a combat mission eight hours ago. It all had started thanks to a turian message informing her that someone was in the process of attacking Therum and that one of the Normandy's turian sisterships was on its way to Therum as well, likely ignoring every kind of safety regulation in regards to FTL travels and relay usage to hopefully get there in time. From there on out, she herself had come to the conclusion that out of every unit in the Hierarchy's military, the one most likely to be riding on the state-of-the-art frigate was either one of TNI's black-ops hit squads or Blackwatch.

Considering who it was that was attacking Therum, namely the geth possibly led by Saren Arterius , who had been part of the latter unit, the answer as to who was riding on that ship and what they intended to do had been rather easy to answer.

"Anyone else keeping track of our increasing odds of getting burned alive?" she heard the turian mutter. "No? Just me? Alright."

"Still feel like you're up to it?" Wrex teased again just as she realised that her omni-tool had started buzzing. Opting to check who it was that was calling her before answering, mostly because there was little time for all but the most important calls right now, the newly inducted Spectre did a short double-take when she recognized the caller's ID number as the one of Captain Anderson.

Quickly shaking the suprise off, the N7 made an impulsive decision. Given that he likely wasn't supposed to call her right now, Emily figured that she should make sure that this stayed between them.

"Lieutenant, I've got something else to take care of," she knew it was a terrible excuse even before looking at Alenko's expression. "You're it until I'm back."

"Aye, aye, Ma'am," the man replied in a somewhat confused tone, probably not entirely sure what he was supposed to do other than ensure that the banter between the turian and the krogan didn't evolve into something more serious.

Hurrying through the door of the hangar and down the stairs to the empty storage room situated near the Normandy's engine room, the commander disabled the room's intercom before finally picking up the message.

"Shepard, finally," the man's deep voice came through her earpiece. "I was starting to get worried I wouldn't catch you in time."

"Sorry about that, Sir. I figured I'd make sure no one would eavesdrop on us."

"Good thinking," there was a short pause in Anderson's transmission that made her wonder if he was just as hidden away as her right now. "Listen. I know you're going to Therum," for a brief moment her mind flashed back to the word's of the specialist again. If she hadn't suspected it before that Director Harper and the captain had some kind of connection, she would've done so by now. This wasn't a coincidence and it gave even more credibility to what the agent had said. "And I know that you might run into Saren once you get there," Anderson went on. "Which is why I have to tell you something I couldn't tell you earlier."

Bracing herself for whatever the next addition to her increasingly harder mission would be, the red-haired N7 asked the question.

"What is it, Sir?"

"If you confront Saren, you need to understand that none of this is on him," Anderson muttered quietly. "Nothing that happened happened because he intended for it to be that way."

What?

This didn't make any sense.

Saren had led the attack on Eden Prime, he had allied himself with the geth and he had been the architect of thousands of deaths and an incursion on a human colony.

How could he not intend for that to happen?

"I don't think I'm following you, Captain."

"I know you don't," the man sighed. "And I know this is hard to believe but Saren isn't to blame for this."

"Captain, I'm still no-"

"If you find Saren, Shepard, you have to try everything in your power to bring him in alive. He isn't the enemy. Not by a long shot."

"With all due respect, Sir. He's a rogue Spectre. Trying to bring him in aliv-"

"Dammit, he's not a rogue Spectre. He's just as much of a victim as the people on Eden Prime," the man interrupted her, sounding angry. Only after taking a deep breath did Shepard get the impression that he was calming down. "Saren's not in control of himself or his actions. Something took a hold of him and it's making him do all of these things and forcing him to watch. If you manage to bring him in alive, if you get him away from that, he might be able to help us stop something far worse than him and the geth."

"What are you talking about, Sir?"

"I-," this time the man cut himself off, "What I'm talking about isn't the kind of thing you can discuss over an omni-tool," he finally admitted. "I know this sounds like an excuse but I will tell you as soon as I find a safer way to contact you," as she was about to suggest using the embassy's own communication network to hail the Normandy directly, Emily remembered that Anderson was likely under constant surveillance by one of Udina's henchmen and that he had only managed to sneak away from him by going to a place far less obvious that the embassy's holoroom. "Please. For now just promise me that you'll remember what I said."

"Sir, trying to bring him in alive would place my team in a lot of danger. I don't know if I can do that in good conscious."

"Do you trust me, Commander?"

Although she certainly had reasons to answer 'no', the fact that those reasons had come from someone who had left a rather bad first impression seemed to encourage her not to do it.

"Yes, Sir."

"Then trust me when I tell you that killing him might doom us all in the long run."

What the actual hell was he talking about?

"So please. Promise me."

Emily could tell that he sounded genuinely scared.

She hadn't thought that the first human Spectre would be scared of things.

Then again she was now the second one. So she probably should've known for a fact that Anderson was just as human as her.

"I'll try my best, Sir."

That was the closest to a promise she was willing to go.

Luckily it had the intended result.

"Good. I've got to go now but I will come back to you as soon as I find myself a more encrypted line. And then I'll tell you what I was talking about. That's my promise. Take care, Shepard," and just like that, the cryptic call ended, once again leaving her with a few answers and even more questions than before.

This really needed to stop happening.


73 Minutes Later, 2156 CE, Therum, Enroute to the Outpost

As the turian-made shuttle pierced the dark blue sky of Therum and began to slow down its approach as it got closer to the ground, the Blackwatch operative held onto his harness and threw a look at the screen depicting their landing zone near the Cerberus compound as seen by the Parnack's advanced reconnaissance equipment.

"Looks like the place is crawling with geth, General," Lieutenant Callius observed from his right, her voice drowning out the sound of the shuttle's engines for the brief moment her transmission lasted.

"Then we might not be too late after all," he figured. If the geth were still around in such numbers, they had to have run into some kind of problem with trying to capture the doctor. And now that he was here, their chances of achieving that objective would lower even more. He'd make sure of that. "Galviat, as soon as we drop I want you to-"

It wasn't the first time that a sudden, loud detonation had rocked a vessel he had been in and caused it to initiate the painfully familiar process of crashing towards the surface of a planet. If he had to make a list of how many times a shuttle he had been in had been shot down, Desolas would probably find himself running out of spaces to make marks for each one before he was even close to done. Having served in every last one of the Hierarchy's major combat deployments ever since he had turned seventeen, the general had seen his fair share of crashes. And just like the other ones, all of them had caught him as offguard as this one and sent a series of thoughts running through his mind.

They had checked for anti-air emplacements capable of detecting them this early.

There had been none.

Unless the geth had suddenly become a lot more creative than before, this simply shouldn't have been possible.

Something was off here.

Had something changed the geth?

Had they gotten smarter?

As he peeked around to where a large hole had appeared in the cockpit of the hawk-like transport, the blue blood of what used to be their pilot having sprinkled all over its interior and the equally dead co-pilot alike, Desolas managed to spot the flashing red warning message mere seconds before their craft collided with the ground. Being suddenly stopped when flying at the kind of speed their shuttle had been going at was far from pleasant. More accurately, it was usually deadly. If it hadn't been for their harnesses, their armor, the emergency dampeners meant to lessen the blow of this kind of event and the fact that their pilot had been flying dangerously close to the ground to avoid being spotted by optical devices alone, all four turians still alive in the crew compartment would've ended up like the two dead ones in the cockpit of the craft. But since the spirits had always looked down kindly upon Blackwatch, the highly classified number of how many operatives of the ranks of the legion had already joined them likely being very much responsible for their favour, they weren't.

Although given the painfilled growls of Galviat, at least one of his honor guard wished he was.

Quickly orienting himself after realising that their shuttle had landed sideways, the general began. "Besides the usual injuries," he asked while he tasted the blood dripping from where he had inadvertently bit into his tongue upon impact before looking at Galviat, "is anyone else seriously wounded?"

"Only in my pride, General," Veltax muttered as he climbed from his harness and pulled on a lever situated next to the heavily dented, obviously broken door, the hissing sound of it being blown out of its socket following swiftly. "Think you can walk, Galviat?" the sergeant asked as he mustered the other turian who was still dangling in his harness and jabbing a syringe into the injection port of the leg portion of his armor.

"For the next three hours?" he replied before tossing the used stimpack to the ground, undoing his harness and beginning his own climb towards the door, "I'll manage."

"Lieutenant?" Desolas asked after taking a moment to confirm the deaths of the pilot, which considering the state of the cockpit was a mere formality by now. He knew how morbid that sounded but right now there was no point in or time to grieve for his comrades.

"Fine, Sir."

"Looks like we at least managed to crash in the right direction," he heard Veltax say while reaching the exit himself after pulling himself upwards through the help of the harnesses."I can already see the outpost." At least something good had come out of this. "Shouldn't be more than a couple minutes on foot," the other turian figured as Desolas eyed the complex in the distance. "That is if we don't get pinned down anywhere."

"Let's move then, we got no time to waste," Desolas ordered before jumping down from the crashed shuttle and beginning his march towards his goal, three more thuds sounding behind him as the honor guard, bloodied but not beaten, left the broken shuttle as well and fell into his step like they had done a hundred times before. Searching the barren hills in the distance for the faintest signs of geth that might've tried to reach the crash sight before they could recover through the use of his Phaeston's scope, the general was surprised to find not even a single spotter keeping track on them.

This was strange.

Why would they shoot their shuttle down but not attack the crashsite and finish the job?

Where they working under the assumption that no one had survived?

When it had become evident that the geth had chosen their side, Desolas had taken care to study the few incidents where Citadel forces had clashed with the synthetics in the wake of the Geth War. None of them had given him the impression that the geth were the kind of enemy that made decisions based assumptions. Between having access to vast numbers of disposable recon units and an unrivaled ability to process and distribute information across an entire battlefield in a mere instant once a certain number of drones were present, they, more than anyone else, could affort to plan everything down to when a single soldier took a single step.

So it simply couldn't be the that.

As a faint sound made its way through the audio filters of his helmet, Desolas' eyes widenend ever so slightly at the realisation.

"They're fighting someone else," he muttered as the silent but still present machine gun fire continued, the occasional louder cracking already having reached the point where it didn't need any amplification.

"Yes, I can hear it too," Lieutenant Callius confirmed a short second later, pausing when the louder cracking sound returned. "Is that a tank?"

"Sure sounds like one, Ma'am," Galviat offered from behind them, the pain-numbing effects of the stimpack allowing the injured turian to easily keep up with the increasingly faster step Desolas was leading his guard into as they closed in on the small hill separating them from the ruin and whatever battle was raging in front of it. Making himself as smaller as the top got closer, the general finally found himself crawling after having reached the top. Although he knew that concealment would do very little against any geth that might look at him, the optical devices their quarian builders had outfitted them with three centuries ago making them excellent spotters, he'd still be harder to hit this way. "I thought this place didn't have a real garrison."

"It doesn't," Desolas spoke as he leveled his rifle at the green silhouette of a vehicle that now started to climb down a much higher elevation to their left, the blue muzzle flashes coming from the machine gun attached next to its large mass accelerator canon making it rather hard to miss. Reading the human words written on the side of the tank and letting his HUD do the translation for him, Desolas opened a channel to the Parnack waiting in orbit around them. "Captain, break radio silence and hail the Normandy. Tell them they've got friendlies inbound from their west."

"At once, General."

Returning his gaze to the facility again, Desolas muttered something under his breath, his conscious decision to not transmit it over the squad intercom making it inaudible to everyone but him.

"I'm coming for you, Saren."


Two Minutes Later, 10. January 2415 AD, Therum

"Alenko, you and Wrex are with me," the N7 instructed as the backdoor of the Mako swung open, allowing her, the human biotic and the much taller krogan to make their first steps on Therum's surface under the watchful eye of the Mako, which had already proven its worth by getting them here in one piece. If it hadn't been for the IFV, one of the several larger geth war machines they had run into, the ones the C-SEC detective had kept calling either 'amateurs' or 'armatures', both equally likely given that he had proven himself to be rather talkative when it came to combat, likely would've interrupted their journey to the ruin long ago. "Williams and Vakarian, you stay here and watch our backs until we're at the entrance. Call out targets as you see them and get ready to move once we made sure it's all clear."

After receiving two 'Yes Ma'am' and one 'about time we got out of that tincan', entered a jog, her eyes set on the dark structure in front of them but still glancing at the destroyed geth lying on the ash-covered ground around her. With these guys she wasn't entirely sure if riddling them with bullet holes would be enough. Passing into the shadow of the facility and suspiciously watching a geth who's separated flashlight-like head blinked at her a couple of times before finally going dark, Shepard pressed on, still prepared for another attack.

"Commander, I just got a call from a turian frigate," Joker's voice suddenly came to her through her radio. "They say they've got a ground team coming in from your west."

"A turian frigate? I thought you said there were no friendlies in orbit."

"Well, turns out they're fyling what we're flying ," the pilot of the Normandy replied casually. "It's the THS Parnack. Same stealth and all. They didn't know we were around either until you showed up."

"Understood. I take it then that it's the people the turians called us about earlier?" the commander asked as she reached the black walls of the prothean site, pressing herself against them while also keeping her Valkyrie pointed up ahead, expecting something to jump out of the already visible entrance any minute now.

"The guy was pretty vague about who he was. So yes. Probably them."

She wasn't going to say no to Blackwatch reinforcements.

"Did all of you hear that? We got friendlies coming in over that ridge over there," the N7 asked over the squad's own network, before waving her hand towards the hill overlooking them from the west. "Do you see them, Williams?"

"No, but I do," a flanging voice answered in the place of the marine. "They're definitely Blackwatch. Four guys, looking a bit worse for wear," there was a short pause before the turian detective continued. "Which might have something to do with that smoke column building further west. If I had to take a guess, I'd say their landing here wasn't planned."

"Copy that. Keep them out of trouble, alright?"

"They're no going to need me for that," the turian replied as she reached the entrance of the outpost. Taking note of where the ancient airlock had clearly been blown out of its holdings by a charge large enough to crack the walls around it, the N7 gave the remaining two members of her team the signal to catch up with them before turning her head to where four black armored figures were closing in on them, lowering their weapons as soon as she spotted them.

"You're from the Parnack?" she called, this time not through her radio but through her helmet's speakers.

"Yes, we are," the one who seemed to be in charge nodded before climbing up the small ramp and joining her near the airlock. "Commander Shepard, I take it?"

Where had she heard that voice before?

"Yes," she replied as the cogs in her head began spinning.

"General Desolas Arterius, Turian Blackwatch."

Of course.

He had been the general who had first informed them of the Spectre's treason.

The same one she figured to be related to her target.

Thankful that her helmet was hiding most of the somewhat frustrated expression that had briefly appeared on her face at the realisation that another thing had added itself to the list of strange occurrences that had haunted her since being ordered to board the Normandy, Emily nodded her head towards the entrance as soon as she saw Williams and Vakarian approach from the corner of her eye, the latter quickly offering a salute to the Blackwatch officer himself.

"Have you already made any progress in regards to your objective, Commander?"

"No. We only just got here as well," Emily clarified. "Which is why I suggest we get going. If our asari is still in there, we need to find her before the geth do."

"I agree," he nodded before stepping past her and walking into the main corridor of the outpost. "Veltax, you're on point with me and the krogan. Galviat, Callius, you have the rear. Commander, you and the rest of your people should form our center."

If he hadn't been a general, she might've gotten angry at him hijacking this mission. But as things were, he theoretically held a higher rank, she still wasn't all that clear where she stood now that she was a Spectre, and definitely had even more experience than her. Additionally, she suspected that he knew a lot more about who might be leading their foes than she ever could.

So she'd do what soldiers were expected to do.

Follow orders.

"You heard him people. Fall in and stay sharp."

The inside of the outpost was exactly as damaged and narrow as she had expected it to be with pieces of debris offering the only real cover right until they reached a bigger junction where multiple paths seemed to connect to other portions of the outpost. While on their way to this crossroads, she had stopped counting the destroyed geth and dead humans, who all bore the same markings as the ones on Eden Prime, linking them to Cerberus in the process, simply setting for the answer that too many of her people had died here today.

"I don't like this. It's too quiet. You said the place would be crawling with geth trying to find that archeologist, didn't you, turian?" Wrex muttered, ignoring the rank attached to the person he was talking to.

"Yes I did," the general replied in a cold tone that bone-chillingly enough sounded very similar to the one the other Arterius had adopted in the audio recording that had let to her being here in the first place. "And by all means, it should be. Orbital imaging showed a dozen big dropships and even more smaller ones buzzing all over the area. The geth they dropped didn't just disappear. They're here somewhere."

"You know that we killed a lot of them on our way here, right?" the krogan replied in a low tone before suddenly stopping, causing the two turians flanking him to do the same. "Hold on. Do you smell that?" he asked, the fact that he was the only one who had chosen not to wear a helmet with the argument that Therum's air couldn't possibly be any worse than that of Tuchanka, already answering his question.

"No. As a matter of fact we can't smell that, Wrex," the lone turian who belonged to the Normandy's ground team muttered through his own helmet. "So why don't you go ahead and tell us what you're talking ab-"

"It's another krogan," he cut the C-SEC officer off before slowly marching towards the path leading deeper into the facility. Before she could ask if it was one of the females Wrex was looking for, the next sentence of the bounty hunter eliminated that possibility."And he's close by."

Had it not been for the fact that a turian was the one leading them, she might've been tempted to claim that it made no sense for a krogan to work with the geth. But as things were, she didn't put it past the possible.

"How close are we talking?" the turian general asked as he followed the krogan, seemingly not put off by his behaviour. Replying to the question with a mere gesture to be quiet, Shepard suspected that she and the two marines were the first to pick it up. It was a faint noise not unlike the kind you'd hear during night rotations aboard a spaceship, echoing towards them from a set of narrow pathways that did well to hide how loud the krogan was actually talking.

"Close enough for him to smell me too," the bounty hunter offered before suddenly breaking into a quick dash down the corridor, probably hoping to get the drop on his fellow krogan before he could alert the synthetics at his side.

"Sir?" the flanking turian who wasn't a general related to the rogue Spectre asked, turning his head to the one in charge.

"We'll follow him. He'll give us away one way or another," Arterius instructed before jogging down the corridor himself, albeit somewhat more careful. "Engage targets as they appear."

"Ma'am?"

"You heard him. Go after Wrex."

If she hadn't already come to that conclusion earlier, it was now clear that she and the krogan would need to have a talk once they got back to the Normandy.


Three Minutes Later, 2156 CE, Therum

As she watched the previously calm krogan beat his hand against the bubble surrounding her for the dozenth time in the last minute, something he had only started doing rather recently after more and more geth had swarmed back the way she had come from earlier, Liara shifted her focus to where one of the few geth that hadn't vacated the room was standing. Remaining motionless next to the equipment the Cerberus team had set up, only the rapid flashing of his 'head light' and the hand planted on the console suggesting that it was in fact doing anything, the pessimistic voice in the back of her head managed to tell her that it would soon find a way to shut down the field protecting her befroe she once more silenced. it.

Sure, while she could be naive at times , Liara didn't exactly consider herself a fool or crazy, no matter what people had claimed over the years. On the contrary actually. The archeologist liked to think that she was in good touch with reality. For this reason she understood just how bad her situation actually was.

To summarize things.

She was alone and surrounded by geth, completely at the mercy of a technology she didn't quite understand. Everyone in the outpost was either dead or dying and whatever help seemed to be coming her way right now might not make it before the geth, which was an AI and as such capable of calculating a thousand possible solutions to the problem she had worked on for weeks in a split second, found a way to deactivate the mechanism she herself had triggered.

While not a fan of the word dire, it seemed rather fit to describe the mess she had gotten herself in.

Shifting her eyes back to the krogan, who still looked about ready to kill her as another of his punches bounced of the prothean shield, something that only seemed to further his anger, Liara suspected that this was the time where an individual with different talents would've begun plotting their escape by drawing up some kind of plan that, against all odds, allowed them to thwart their opponents and live to tell the tale of how they escaped death.

But sadly she wasn't that kind of person.

She had already surprised herself with her earlier display of what she didn't dare to call fighting prowess. Although it was again dire to think such thoughts, Liara didn't figure she'd do much better than that once the geth managed to shut down the shield.

Preparing herself to suppress the internal flinching every punch had managed to produce up to now, the asari was surprised when the krogan stopped just shy of hitting the field. Instead of continuing his pointless battering, he visibly swallowed his anger as quickly as it had initially appeared and pulled his hand back, reaching for the gun strapped to his back and looking the way they had come from, eyeing the round corridor entrance at the end of the stairs, an unspoken order causing two of the geth standing near it to begin moving into it. After the drones had vanished for a couple of seconds, a red shape came thundering from the corridor, sending them flying backwards in a way that suggested that their heavy frames and strong synthetic muscles had simply disappeared in favour of something less the shape slowed down, revealing it to be another krogan, an angry roar slipped from the one standing in front of her, producing what seemed to be a smirk on the face of the other.

Visibly provoked by the gesture, chaos began to unfold swiftly. It all started with an shot of the krogan's shotgun that harmlessly bounced of the purple field surrounding the new arrival. Then, as if someone had flicked a switch, the battle broke out. Charging into the room after the krogan and immediately going for cover were two turians clad in a set of armor which's familiar sight caused her hopes of rescue to not just flare up but turn into a certainty.

Turian figures clad in dark, heavy armor that was covered with fine gold lines.

Blackwatch.

The general had come, albeit it with strange company.

As the gunfight went its way, the sudden appearance and speed of her rescuers' attack combined with their skill gave them the advantage early on, resulting in the geth and their krogan commander being overwhelmed despite of what her uneducated eye considered to be a superior position on top of the stairs.

"Clear!" a voice yelled as the brown-plated alien slumpled to the ground, orange blood flowing from a large wound in its chest. Encouraged by the other krogan's defeat, the one that had accompanied the turians, a particularly impressive specimen covered in red plates and scarred from what had to be centuries of fighting charged up the stairway to her first, the metal of the structure creaking under his weight. Apparently considering her to be unimportant as of right now, the red krogan kicked the bleeding one without ever look at Liara, causing him to spin on his back.

"Talk, welp. Where did Saren take our people?" he asked angrily. When the injured one offered no reply, the one standing over him planted his foot on the wound right as the turians and humans accompanying him caught up with him.

"You're too late," the injured krogan whispered through his bloodied mouth, "I've seen the truth. I know our purpose. Nothing you can do to me would make me betray his cause now. The cycle will no-" a kick of the red krogan interrupted him halfway through his sentence, the odd angle at which his jaw was now twisted letting Liara doubt that he'd say anything else.

"Take your time up here," the interrogator offered before effortlessly lifting his kin to his feet and dragging him towards the stairs. "I'll be downstairs."

"Doctor T'Soni, are you alright?" the voice of Desolas Arterius', who she had previously been angry at for putting her on Therum under false pretense, was like music to her ears.

She was safe.

Well mostly.

There was still the whole issue of her being stuck.

Unsure of whether or not the field would allow her to talk, she hadn't actually attempted it up to now since the brown krogan currently being 'interrogated' by the general's companion hadn't seemed all that eager to converse with her, Liara figured that only a good old scientific experiment would give her the answer to that question.

"I am," she said, or more accurately tried saying. It felt like she had been gagged. Much like she couldn't move, her mouth failed to produce what she was trying to say.

"Good," the turian general nodded. "Now let's get you out of here. Lieutenant Callius, think you can figure this thing out?"

Wait.

He understood her?

How?

With the weight of the geth trying to capture her lifted of her back, Liara found herself returned to the prothean archeologist. As she tried to come up with an explanation as to why this field seemed to produce the effects it had to her, she also gasped internally when another one of the turians, her smaller frame betraying that unlike the other ones she was a female, smashed her fist against one of the tiles likely responsible for keeping the field in place.

By Athame, what would hitting it possibly achieve?

"Unlikely, Sir," the lieutenant offered as one of the humans, this one a tall man, knocked his fist against the shield in a much more gentle way but still having the exact same effect as the punches of the krogan, namely none.

"What about you, Commander?" the general said before turning to the human woman on who's chest a small symbol she had last seen on Agent Anderson's piece of armor was depicted. "Any ideas?"

"I'm not so sure you should be asking me about this, General," the human replied while walking over to her comrade and softly placing the armored palm of her hand on the shield, which strangely enough seemed to a circular wave to expand across the transparent surface of the bubble. "The last time I touched something prothean, it kind of blew up in my face," she offered with a shrug before withdrawn her hand, the outlines of which seemed to remain on the exterior of the bubble, something none of the punches of the krogan or the touch of the other human had managed to do. "I thought she was the expert. Why not ask her?" the human finished with a question before turning to the group and facing her back towards the bubble, evidently missing the brilliant blue glow the waves her touch had started now shone in.

"Commander," the soldier to her side muttered as he locked eyes with Liara, the dark-brown orbs visible behind his visor filled with the same marvel as the asari's own blue ones.

"What's the matter, Alenko?" the woman said before turning her head around. "Ok. What's going on?"

Watching as the waves shifted from blue to green and finally to an almost golden glow, the archeologist was at a loss, too busy with thinking to notice that the feeling in her hands was already starting to return.

How was this possible? Had the commander just coincidentally touched the right spot?

No. It couldn't possibly be this simple.

"Whatever you did, Commander, do it again," General Arterius instructed as he came to a halt next to her, the mirrored faceplate of his helmet staring straight at Liara, allowing her to see her own surprised expression.

Hesitating for a brief moment before once more planting her hand on the spot where her imprint was still visible, the human soldier now too locked eyes with Liara, a green not all dissimilar from the glow on the bubble visible behind her own visor. Having never quite seen this kind of eye colour in any human, the slight bioluminescence it seemed to have making it all the more unusual, Liara could only come up with a single, awe-inspiring answer.

The human was somehow interacting with prothean technology in a way no one else had ever done.

Goddess.

Although she recognized how inappropriate it sounded, Liara felt a sudden desire to study her. Decades of scouring through ruins and not once had she seen this kind of reaction to someone interacting with anything prothean.

What was it that she had said?

The last time she had touched something prothean it had blown up?

Maybe that had-

Suddenly feeling her full weight being pulled down by gravity, Liara barely had time to brace herself for the incoming fall that began the moment the field disappeared, only escaping another harsh encounter with the ground thanks to the other human soldier and General Arterius quick reaction.

"How did you-" Liara managed to get out before feeling dizziness overcome her.

"Doctor, are you alright?" either the human or General Arterius, she honestly couldn't quite place the direction or the tone of the voice, asked as her head got heavier and heavier with each passing moment until suddenly there was only one thing she felt.

Blackness.


Meanwhile, 2156 CE, Orbit around Feros

"The last unit just shut down. We now have lost all contact with our forces on Therum," the asari said gracefully as ever as Saren withdrew the hand he had been hiding his face behind, a habit he seemed to have developed at a point he didn't remember.

"So we failed to retrieve your daughter," he muttered before looking for even the smallest change on the asari's face. It had been no coincidence he had phrased his conclusion that way. Satisfied to find no shift of emotion and thus proof of her continued loyalty to him, Sovereign and their purpose, the turian rose from his chair after gently disconnecting the tube that had previously pumped medicine into the leg where one of the Thorian's spawns had managed to injure him in a distracted moment on Feros. "What about the krogan?" he asked to distract himself from the anger slowly boiling up in him now that he knew that the archeologist, someone who while not crucial to his purpose could aid him greatly in finding the Conduit, had slipped through his fingers once more.

"Until he perished, his vital signs suggested that he remained as stable as we had hoped. It would seem this newest batch has finally outgrown the genetic flaws of the past ones."

"Good. Give word to Vermire. They are to continue with this template alone," although the geth were useful and unquestionably loyal to his cause, the turian knew better than to rest all of their hopes on him. The facilities on Vermire were his solution to that problem. And apparently the fruits of their labour were starting to pay off. Soon an army of krogan, the one foe that had managed to ever challenge the Hierarchy on something akin to equal footing, would be his to command.

"It will be done," the asari replied with a respectful nod. When she remained standing the turian realised that she had something else to say. Just as he was about to voice that question, the whispers let him knew that there was no need, to do so ensuring him that he'd get his answer right away.

"Before the last unit was destroyed, it managed to transmit the moments leading up to its destruction," Benezia T'Soni spoke as the door to the room opened and a geth stepped inside, a small purple device clutched firmly in its arms. When it came to a halt, the drone set it up with a series of perfectly executed motions before audibly interfacing with it. Turning his attention to the hologram appearing from the device, Saren again managed to keep himself restrained at the sight of the familiar N7 symbol. "And it would appear that this human was responsible for the attack."

"Is she the same human who accessed the beacon?"

"Yes."

Never before had a single word made Saren this angry.

"She was supposed to die!" he roared while walking over to the asari, neither of them noticing that the geth kept switching between images, the depiction of the human long gone by now. "Why isn't she dead?"

"It would seem that Fist failed at his task," the matriarch offered calmly as Saren shoved her backwards with enough force to make even a krogan stumble.

"Then he dies as well," the turian muttered as he looked at the asari who had only moved back a couple of steps despite his push. "They will not stand in our way." Turning back and finally noticing what had replaced the image of the human, Saren froze in place. As the hologram of a turian in a set of black and golden armor marked with the rank insignia of a general stared right at him, Saren felt something in him shift.

Desolas.

For a moment the whispers that had kept him calm or the all consuming voice that had forced him to obey when more subtle means had failed were gone. For a moment, all his mind was left entirely to his own, freed from the iron grip that had kept it in check these last few months.

As the anger vanished, now replaced with a sense of satisfaction that his plans had been foiled, Saren locked eyes with Benezia, who instantly seemed to know that something was off. Doing the one thing his gut was telling the turian Spectre not to do when facing off against an asari, he lashed out with his biotics. Either unprepared for the attack or unwilling to hurt what was the most crucial piece in the Harbinger's plan to bring death to the galaxy, the matriarch reacted just a second to short. Flying through the room right as his fist crashed into the head of the geth, destroying it in a single blow and spilling the white cooling fluid over his equally white facial plates, the turian considered his options.

In the brief seconds he had for himself in the wake of his sudden change of allegiance, Saren could've done a lot of things.

He could've tried to make a run for it and attempt to escape back home.

He chose not to because the chances of him succeeding were slim to none.

He could've tried to go through with what his subconscious had attempted several times and deny Sovereign any further access to himself by ending his own life.

But he chose not to because judging by what he had seen the Reaper do to people even after their death, he wasn't certain if that'd be enough either.

So instead of choosing a way out for himself, the Spectre did something else.

Bringing up his omni-tool and accessing the first unblocked channel he could find, which happened to be the last one he had used before boarding Sovereign for the first time, Saren managed to sent out one message consisting of nothing but a single word and his current location, hoping that he'd read it and draw his own conclusion from it.

Harbinger.

Spending the last seconds of his freedom by staring at the dozens of unread messages other people had sent him, Anderson's increasingly more desperate attempts to reach out to him causing a particular sting, the turian was glad to be gone again by the time Sovereign's will subjugated him once more.


Codex: Prothean Technology

Although found all over the galaxy, most prothean technology besides the mass relays, the Citadel and the basics of Element Zero technology is poorly understood and almost impossible to interact with on all but the most basic steep differences between these artifacts and other, later discoveries in the Attican Traverse has always been one of the major points of discussion amongst the scientific community, some fringe scientists and conspiracy theorists going as far as arguing that certain things thought of as prothean may in fact have originated from another, older civilization that predated the galaxy-spanning civilization of the prothean people. Besides pointing out the visible differences in design and material used in the construction of other structures, these theories are also fueled by the fact that most pieces of prothean technology emit a low but still significant amount of radiation that, after prolonged exposure, damage the DNA of most known plant and insect species, an effect not observed anywhere aboard the inhabitable portions of the Citadel.

While predating creations of the current space-faring races by at least fifty thousand years, prothean artifacts remain the most advanced pieces of technology in the galaxy, their continued functionality, complex design and resilience to all but the most hostile environments standing as a testament to the feats of engineering the precursor civilization achieved before disappearing.

Even though the study of their artifacts has a long and proud history ranging back to the first studies conducted by salarian explorers on Paeto following the historical discovery of Ammar Solem, successful non-digital interaction with prothean devices has been almost non-existent, a fact that has long since gave rise to the theory that most prothean technology outside of the Citadel might've been locked through a genetic imprint that happened to be damaged in the few cases were physical interaction, such as the accidental opening of the prothean archives on Mars, alone provoked a reaction.

Following the attack on the Citadel by [Due to public safety concerns, this segment is currently awaiting approval by the Citadel Security Service.]


A/N:

Am I going overboard with censoring the Codex?

Maybe.

Alright. Chapter.

Now, first off let me start by saying that I decided against writing a lot of action this time around because I personally feel like I've read descriptions of the Therum mission a thousand times already.

So I found a loop-hole and showed you the fight... from Liara's perspective this time around.

Now of course Noveria and Feros aren't going to be like that.

Also, I decided to... alter the way she gets out of the bubble... by a lot.

Now, this is going to tie in to the cipher being a bit different.

And before you get that notion, this isn't something like humans being chosen ones. It's why I went out of my way to mention that alenko doing the same thing didn't do anything. Also, the bit about the mars archives is basically me having the image in my head of some UN worker on a completely average job(remember them? they used to exist before the HSA. We'll get there, someday) tripping and accidently opening a huge-ass underground door and thus throwing humanity ahead a couple of centuries... thanks to being clumsy and bored with his mudane job and not paying attention to where he was walking.

Sure sounds like us, doesn't it?

Now. Other than that, Saren's back. Again.

Also, Shepard didn't actually get to lead her first mission by herself because. Reasons.

Also, also, for those of you who figured Darius and Blackwatch would end up on the Normandy and me saying it wasn't going to happen, I never said they would have nothing to do with ME1.

I just said it wasn't going to be on the Normandy.

Yeah.

I feel like since I already spelled it out like this, I can say just say it. For a lot of ME1 from here on out, not all of it but a good chunk, the Normandy's gonna have the Parnack's company.

That is all to that.

For the record we're at 480 reviews, 732 favorites and 819 follows.

Next up, a very important talk and a bit of other sideline stuff.

See you around next time.