Chapter 91. Answers
Some Time Later, Some Place Else
It was cold and pitch black.
That was the first thing that Kaidan noticed and immediately he wondered if he'd died and gone to whatever passed as the hell of their universe. It'd certainly be a fitting end. He waited a few seconds for the devil to greet him. But when that didn't happen, he let out a groan and decided that wherever he was, it probably wasn't the afterlife. He felt very much alive.
After another moment of trying to figure out if he'd been blinded, which didn't work because it was pitch black and he had no idea to tell if he could still see things or not, Kaidan tried to remember the last thing he could. That was that he'd just climbed up through a hatch in the Collector Ship hatch and that an electric tingle had ran through his entire body, freezing him in time.
The tingling.
Speak of the devil.
There it was again, immediately familiar.
He'd never been able to shake the feeling of the prothean beacon taking him over and trying to imprint its contents into his head, even though it had been over two years ago. Back then it had hurt like hell right until Shepard had pulled him away. When asked, he'd always compared it to someone hitting his head with a sledgehammer over and over again and from what little he'd spoken to Shepard about the incident, that was apparently a very fitting description. The N7 had called it the worst headache and pain of her life and with her being an N7, he was sure that she wasn't being overly dramatic.
Despite the similarities in the moment, he had to admit that he wasn't necessarily feeling pain right now. His muscles ached a bit and there was a ringing in his ears, but no head splitting pain. But in terms of pain that was it.
That didn't mean that everything was peachy though.
As he thought about taking a daring step forward and into the black, a sick feeling crawled throughout his entire body. It was the worst nausea he'd ever felt, to be precise. He imaged that this is what being poisoned felt like and suddenly his mind sent a thought flying.
Had he been poisoned? He tried to move his arms and much to his surprise, ha actually could. The problem was just that there was nothing to touch and still nothing to see.
He wanted to call out for someone, but when he tried his voice failed him by not making a single sound.
If he hadn't been anxious already, he was becoming it now.
Again Kaidan tired to remember what had happened after he'd climbed the hatch and, while successful, the memory was accompanied by a sting.
He clutched his head.
There was the head splitting pain. Turns out it had just been waiting to make an appearance.
In one moment he had been standing next to Bau and now he was here. But where exactly was here?
Screw it.
Despite the darkness, he took a step forward. If he'd known what that would cause, he probably would've stayed still.
His foot touched something wet and oily and not a second later he was paralyzed and bombarded with images that could only be described as depictions of the worst butchery he'd ever witnessed. Green and teal flesh was being cut apart and yellow and brown metal implants were bolted in its place. Tortured scream echoed through his head but were silenced when a blade stroked through the vocal cords of its owner and a claw ripped them out before stuffing else inside. Arms tried to flay in defense, but were broken, twisted and bent in the way whoever was doing all of this desired them to. He could feel the pain, everything that was happening felt like it was happening to him. He tried screaming and closed his eyes.
That's when he saw it.
There was a flash of golden light, a longer green pulse and finally, a faint blue glow that seemed like it was here to stay.
Ahead of him image flashes became memories. They could have not been his own, but they might as well have been with how detailed and clear they were.
There was an empire of unimaginable scale, a people of scholars, conquerors and rulers. Twenty thousand years of civilization build upon the ruins of a tall, gaunt people that his own civilization had never encountered nor heard of. He saw it unravel, all of it. From the first cautious steps on a distant, long unnamed world to having the key to understanding even the last mystery of their galaxy in their hands. This was it.
A race at the true apex of civilization.
Huh.
Weird.
Those last words didn't feel like his own.
Suddenly Kaidan was rocked by pain. He let out another scream.
This time his voice returned, just in time for the horror to kick in.
He saw the Citadel, warping and moving itself into a star-shaped mass relay.
He saw an endless stream of Reapers pour out from dark space in bright, blue flashes that blinded him.
He saw images of burning pyramids and towers of obsidian black crumbling to dust. Worlds glowing with cities of blue, gold and green light were snuffed out by an oily shadow that planted itself over the galaxy and extinguished everything it touched, one system, no, one city, at a time.
In one second, he experienced horrors he couldn't even begin to fathom.
Seven-hundred years of fighting a lost war.
Ten trillion deaths, after that the count had stopped.
The fall of the Prothean Empire and its dying shout of defiance.
Then, the slaughter of its last survivors on a world familiar, yet also foreign to him.
He wanted to scream, but again he couldn't.
Between the pain, he blinked and looked at his hands.
For a second they were brown, insectoid claws.
When he blinked again, they were back to normal and he simply stared into a black, reflective mist that had appeared in front of him. Four, yellow glowing eyes with black twin-orbs, aligned in a horizontal line, looked back at him and shouted something in a clearly alien tongue.
He wanted to tell whoever this was that he couldn't understand him.
But he still couldn't speak.
Another jolt ran through his body and then a figure with a rough, carapace-covered dark-blue head and teal skin materialized from the mist and grabbed him by his shoulders with two three-fingered hands. He opened his mouth for another shout but still Kaidan didn't understand what the figure was screaming about. He could just hear rough growling, clicking teeth and alien sounds he himself couldn't produce.
Suddenly a spike of pain shot through his body. This one was different from before. It was equally painful, but the pain felt electric, like someone was driving lighting through him. A series of images too fast to comprehend shot through his mind. In between he recognized the butchery he'd witnessed earlier, but there was something else underneath the pain and horror. A sense of-
Hope.
Victory.
Defiance.
Retribution.
The figure looked at him again and started to speak but unlike before, Kaidan understood him now.
"You are not one of the inheritors, yet you are touched by our gift to them. It courses through you, lends you strength that is not yours to command, helps you endure," the figure's grip on his shoulders tightened. It had a thick, alien accent and every word it said echoed through Kaidan's body several times over like a loudspeaker being pressed against his stomach. "You are familiar. Yet I do not recognize your kind. This needs to be rectified," another jolt went through Kaidan and for a second it felt like someone had set his spine on fire. But as quickly as it had appeared, the feeling vanished. "Ah. I see. In our time, yours was a primitive people, secluded form the empire and the network. You were discovered right as the geology of your world ignited your destruction," an image flashed through Kaidan's mind. He saw an ash-covered, Earth sky and watched as an enormous volcano erupted. He felt an incredible cold, an even worse hunger and terrible loneliness. "You were fated for extinction. Your deaths were considered an inevitability. Doomed by nature's will and life's design. Too unlucky to thrive long enough to endure and too weak to flourish in the face of adversity," the figure let go of Kaidan's shoulders and took a step back, revealing that everything below his torso was still made of black liquid. "We abandoned all hope for your kind. We seized all observations and left you to your miserable fate. Yet here you stand. Survivors of extinction," the figure paused and seemed to stare through Kaidan with its four eyes. "It seems that my people misjudged your kind."
"I don't understand," he replied while his mind began to race over what he'd said and a suspicion as to who this figure was surfaced.
"In time you will," the figure, which he somehow recognized as a prothean who'd lived and died during the Reaper War, replied before looking at the palm of its hands and twitching his head.
How he knew all this?
He couldn't tell.
He just did.
While he was contemplating on the source of his knowledge, the prothean suddenly snarled in pain and cursed in its alien tongue. Then it grabbed Alenko again. Not a second later, a sickly yellow glow started to crack through its chest. "He has sensed our deception!" it declared before pressing the palm of its hand against the biotic's heart. "This message was not meant for you, but there is no more time to wait for a more suited recipient. It needs to be passed on, even if you lack the means to understand it," again there was the sensation of being set on fire. A magnitude of images, experiences and sensations flooded over Kaidan but not one of them made sense. They flashed by rapidly and in random bits and pieces, like a distorted memory. He screamed in pain right until the hand was retracted and then doubled back and dropped to the ground. After the deed was done, the figure began to crack under the yellow glow and started to dissolve in a manner similar to what had happened to the Collectors. "Follow the path. It will lead you to the only way to break free of this cursed cycle."
"What is it?" Alenko called as the liquid the figure had risen from started to turn brighter and brighter, quickly approaching a familiar shade of yellow. "How do we break it?" he shouted while the figure dropped to its knees. It tried to reach out to him, but its arm simply turned back into the black liquid and then dropped into the boiling and bubbling floor.
"The answer is already within you. Find an inheritor. They will be your cipher."
"What's an inheritor?"
"Those who were supposed to walk in our place and stand where you are standing now," the figure gasped for air and its voice turned into a whisper. "They were chosen to avenge us. All of us." It threw a final glance at Kaidan. "Yet. Here. You. Stand," it repeated before the light cracked through his torso completely and the figure exploded into a ray of light.
Suddenly the human biotic felt like he was free falling. He glanced to either of his sides and then behind him. Then he realized that there was a shadow chasing after him. It was oily, yellow and looking at it alone left a sour taste in his mouth. He had a feeling that being caught by them would be pretty bad news. To his sides there was nothing. Just blackness. Next he looked back down and his eyes widened. He had just enough time to instinctively raise his arms in front of his face to shield himself from the imminent collision with a pool of black liquid, as if that would do any good, but right as he was supposed to hit it, his eyes opened.
This time for real.
"-think he's waking up."
In an instant, bright lights, the beeping of machines and several flanging turian voices assaulted him. After a few seconds of complete disorientation, he pulled in a sharp breath, sat up instantly and looked at the person in front of him. That was when he noticed that he was no longer on the Collector Ship. Or anywhere near New Canton. Due to the familiar layout of the medical bay, a second passed where he asked himself how exactly he'd ended up on the Normandy. Then he looked at the brown-plated face in front of him and realized that there wasn't a single human in sight and that the canteen behind him wasn't actually a canteen, but an improvised barrack housing dozens of Blackwatch soldiers in the process of doing post-mission activities such as cleaning their armor.
He was on the Parnack.
"Please stay calm, Captain Alenko," a turian wearing a dark-green medical corps uniform said before another one with grey skin, wearing the same uniform, walked over to the machines he was attached to. "You've been in a coma for several days. Heightened activity could have a negative impact on your health," the turian said, unaware that his explanation was quickly fading form Alenko's mind, which was occupied with something else entirely. A sting of pain shot through it and instinctively he pressed his palm against his face. His conscience was screaming at him to remember what had just happened, that it was important and that he needed to act right this instant. But all he was left with was a mash of images he could make no sense of, a deeply rooted sense of having just witnessed something horrible and the impossibly annoying notion that the answer to what was causing all of this was right there and all he needed to do was remember.
"What the hell happened?" he groaned before noticing the painfully large needles in his arms, which were definitely designed to pierce turian skin and not human.
"What's the last thing you remember, Captain?" the doctor asked just before the door of the medical bay pulled open with a hiss and Bau and General Arterius walked in. He considered his answer for a moment. There'd been their mission to New Canton, the attack on the colony, Bau's suspicion, the death of Doctor Bryson at the hands of his HK assistant and the joining of forces with Blackwatch. Upon the conclusion of the latter, they'd assaulted the Collector Ship, found the colonists and-
He practically jumped out of the bed, only being stopped by the turian medic, who incidentally also kept him from tearing out the previously mentioned painfully large needles.
"The beacon," he said before he noticed how badly his muscles ached. Then he made a connection between his own jumbled mess of thoughts and what had happened to Shepard two years ago. If said jumbled mess of thoughts and nagging in his head was right, then he couldn't waste any time. He looked at Bau and Arterius. "I need to see Doctor T'Soni."
Bau and Arterius looked at each other. Then Arterius took a step towards him and leaned against the chair that was standing next to him.
"What did it show you?" he asked as his white-plated face and icy-blue eyes locked up into a serious expression. As expected, the turian knew exactly what Alenko had in mind.
The informal third human Spectre paused for a second to search his memories. But he could only come up with a horizontal line of four yellow orbs and the same sense of urgency as before.
"Something important. We need to go. Now."
"Hardly specific," Bau observed.
"Bau's right. I'll need more details than that before we fly halfway across the galaxy on a post-coma hunch," Arterius added.
Again Alenko tried to pick his own brain.
Death, destruction, defeat. It was all there, just very incoherent. He looked at the perfectly mopped floor of the medical bay and focused on the beeping of the machines and then, like a bolt of lighting, it struck him.
"I think it showed me how to beat them."
"Them being?"
"The Reapers."
The general took one look at him and then opened up his omni-tool.
"Helmsman, plot a course to Menae."
Ten Hours Later, 5. April 2417 AD, HSASV Normandy
Just like all the times before during her other daily routes across the Normandy, the doors of the lab pulled open to reveal Mordin hard at work.
"Good morning, Mordin," she greeted as the salarian buzzed between the Seeker specimen, a tablet and a mess of orange and blue cables attached to what looked like the combat rigging of a hardsuit.
"Hello, Shepard," the salarian greeted with a wave, his focus entirely on the terminal in front of him. "Would like to thank you for assisting with personal matter. Hadn't gotten the chance yet," he went on. It was true, as soon as they'd returned to the Normandy, Mordin had strolled of to his lab without saying a single word. She'd interpreted it as a sign of grief and as such decided to give him some time to himself, which had led to her skipping him on her route yesterday. But despite what she'd expected to find, for someone who'd just killed and buried his apprentice, the salarian seemed strangely undistracted from his work. He took a breath and turned his head for just a second. "Thank you."
"Anytime, Mordin," she said before once more tracking the salarian as he moved to the dead Seeker. Without another subject to talk about, she just went with the obvious. "Have you made any progress?"
"Matter of fact, yes. Information provided in wake of New Canton assault has caused significant breakthrough."
"What kind of-" she watched as he pulled open the protective case that the turians had delivered it in and then winced when the former STG agent suddenly stuck two large spikes into the dead creature.
"Uhm, Mordin. Should you be damaging our only specimen?" she began before she saw electricity jump from the spikes and into the creature, making its legs and heads twitch.
"No longer only specimen. Assault on New Canton provided several others," the salarian replied nonchalantly. Then she noticed how the front legs of the creature were clicking together and producing what she could best describe as ripples of biotic energy. After having seen what these things could do to humans, Shepard got wary. "Mordin, just what are you doing?" she asked when the salarian turned his back to the seemingly reanimated creature to pull on the harness he'd borrowed and altered.
"No need to be alarmed commander. Assure you, situation perfectly under control," the salarian stated while attaching the cables of the harness to his gauntlet and flexing his fingers into a fist to check if everything was properly attached.
As soon as she caught on to his idea, it was already too late for her to yell out not to do it. Before she could voice as much as a 'don't', the salarian stuck his hand into the container to where the field was buzzing and let himself get caught by the paralyzing energy. The field jumped over to Mordin, laid itself onto the exterior layer of his armor ready to paralyze him and then-
-then Mordin wiggled his fingers as if nothing had happened.
"Wouldn't indulge in self-experimentation without certainty of success," he said with a grin on his face that bordered on a cocky smirk. As the technically dead seeker continued to try and paralyze Mordin's hand to no effect, Shepard realized what the salarian had just achieved.
"You finished the countermeasure?"
"An early prototype," the salarian replied before pulling out the spikes and closing the container again, ending the Seeker's twitching movements. "Will still need some development, of course. But should be ready in time for next engagement with the Collectors."
She looked at the modified harness and how it seemed to be capable of neutralizing what was effectively a biotic stasis field.
"This is amazing, Mordin," she observed. He'd just delivered them what might be their most useful weapon in this fight.
"Simply doing what you recruited me for," the salarian replied humbly before moving over to his terminal. Out of curiosity, she walked to the desk where the harness was lying on. But before she could pick it up the salarian, as if he had eyes in the back of his head, scolded her for trying.
"Please refrain from touching prototype," he called while holding up one finger. "Designed for usage on my own suit only. Might cause second degree burns on exposed skin," her hand froze an inch away from the harness. "Will inform you as soon as safe version has been constructed," then the salarian took an audible breath and jumped to the next subject. "How much longer to next mission?" he asked, seemingly out of the blue.
Shepard frowned at the thought of said next mission.
Despite what Wrex had told her and her own, personal objections regarding the krogan, Harper had insisted that they take care of Okeer now. Although he had at first not been specific on what was causing the sudden urgency, the director of Cerberus had been clear about one thing: They needed to get to Korlus as quick as possible, unless they wanted to lose their shot at figuring out what Okeer knew about the Collectors. Only when she'd pressed the issue had Harper actually cracked and told her why he was rushing her. Cerberus had learned that the Blue Suns were coming for Korlus, and specifically Okeer, with a vengeance. And neither the pirate gangs on the planet nor the little mercenary protection force based around a salarian Eclipse-remnant that Okeer had hired to guard his lab on the starship junkyard that was Korlus were going to hold them back long now. The first wave of their troops had made planetfall already and as far as Cerberus could tell, more were on their way right now.
Although Harper hadn't been able to tell her why the Blue Suns suddenly wanted Okeer's blood, something she didn't have a single issue with, he'd made the very sound argument that whatever information Okeer held about the Collectors would be gone as soon as the first Blue Suns trooper got their hands on the krogan war criminal.
"Unless Joker finds a shortcut," which wasn't going to happen due to the way the mass relay network was structured, "it'll be another two days before we reach Korlus," she said.
Mordin looked at her for a second, then to the terminal and then his harness.
"In that case, requesting to be excused from ground team for Korlus. Could finish the countermeasure very soon, if left undistracted."
She considered Mordin's suggestion for a second. Although Tuchanka had made it clear how much of a combat asset the STG veteran was, him being on Korlus would certainly make whatever run-in they had with the Eclipse-remnant much easier. Furthermore, finishing the countermeasure was a definite priority on their larger goal of defeating the Collectors. Hence the answer was obvious.
"Alright, you're excused, Mordin," Shepard said before turning towards the door. Although he probably would never say it, the fact that his buzzing around had slowed down ever so slightly since she had started to talk to him told her that she was likely also a distraction to Mordin. Therefore, she decided to take her leave.
"Appreciate your understanding, Shepard," the salarian said.
"No problem," she said with a shrug. "I'll leave you to it, now. Just call if you need anything for the prototype," she offered.
"Requisition list already forwarded to EDI," Mordin replied.
In retrospective she probably could've figured that much on her own.
Speaking of EDI. As if speaking her name had summoned her, the AI made its presence known.
"Commander," the voice of the AI came through the earpiece of her omni-tool. "Garrus Vakarian has asked me to tell you that he wishes to talk to you in the main battery."
She stopped on her way to the armory, where she suspected to find either Leng or Callius, and began heading for the elevator.
"Did he say what it's about?"
"No, but he requests your presence at your earliest convenience," the AI paused for a second. "My psychological analysis indicates that whatever he wishes to discuss is urgent to him."
"Understood EDI. That'll be all?"
"Yes, Commander. That will be all. Logging you out."
Five Minutes Later, 5. April 2417 AD, HSASV Normandy, Maingun
After making her way down to the crew deck and running into Lieutenant Nader, who had apparently made it her mission to berate Mess Sergeant Garner on his cooking skills, Shepard walked through the hatch of the maingun and found Garrus typing away at the holographic calibration screen of the weapon, as he usually did whenever she'd come down here since they'd linked up on Omega.
"Shepard. That was a far earlier convenience than I was expecting," he greeted before turning away from the screen and leaning against the railing that separated the gun's main battery's targeting system from the main battery's computer.
"What can I say. I make time for old acquaintances," she replied. Then she glanced at the holographic screen. "Am I interrupting something?"
"What? No. Just the usual calibrations," the turian replied before somewhat awkwardly looking at the opened door behind her. "Do you mind?"
She wiped her hand over the closing mechanism.
"EDI said you wanted to talk."
"I did," the turian replied with a nod. Then he drifted back to a very uncharacteristic silence. Instead of answering directly, he pushed himself off the railing and brought up his omni-tool.
"Everything alright?"
"Illium's on our list, isn't it?" he asked while typing on something she couldn't see due to the way omni-tool holograms were programmed for privacy.
"it is," she replied before watching the turian terminate the hologram and lock his face into a grimace.
"Good," he nodded. "Good," he repeated, this time far more sinister.
"What's going on, Garrus?"
"I told you about Sidonis, didn't I? He was one of the Blue Suns I was working with."
"Yes, you did," Shepard replied. In a quiet moment after the Freedom's Progress mission Garrus had told her about his team briefly before locking back up about anything related to Omega.
"Well, as it turns out, there's no longer a necessity to talk about him in the past tense," the turian explained before his omni-tool buzzed. He ignored it. "I talked to a source of mine who's still in the Suns. He says that Sidonis is alive, kicking and has started to run an operation on Illium that's pretty similar to what we were doing on Omega."
Shepard raised an eyebrow.
"Didn't you say he got blown up?"
"He did," Garrus nodded. She watched as the blue-armored turian leaned against the railing and began to clasp the rail hard enough to make the metal creek.
"Then how's that possible?" from what she knew about the blast, no one could've survived it, let alone walk it off in two weeks.
"It isn't," Garrus muttered before shoving himself off the railing and taking several quick steps towards her. He looked down at her and she could see the confusion plastered on his freshly-scarred face. "Nothing about this makes sense, Shepard. If I didn't know any better, I'd say that Sidonis sold us out and that's why he's walking around Illium. But I watched him storm the building. He was there when it blew up. They all were. I watched them die. All of them," Garrus muttered before taking a step back again.
Now she was confused as well.
"Then how does that add up with what your source told you?"
"It doesn't," Garrus turned his back to her and leaned against the console of the maingun. "Don't you get it, Shepard? It's a trap. The same people that killed my team are still looking for me. They don't think I'm dead and they know that I want revenge. So they got to my source and spread the rumor that Sidonis was alive because they knew that I'd draw this conclusion. They're using Sidonis to lure me to Illium so they can take another shot at me," she watched the turian lean into the console and angrily type on the hologram again. It was probably a good think the screen was holographic, otherwise Garrus' armor-assisted finger jabs probably would've broken it by now. He let out a growl. "And the problem is that it's working, Shepard. I want to go."
She folded her arms. She knew Garrus long enough to know that his sarcastic and at times gung-ho, screw-the-rules-and-procedures behavior hid someone who wasn't just very intelligent and calculated in the way his thought process worked, but also someone who was very loyal and very determined. Hence, she wasn't going to ask how he could be so certain that he wasn't just misinterpreting good news because of trauma-induced paranoia acquired on Omega or that it was stupid to go if he knew that it was a trap. That wouldn't work. If his mind was set on a goal, that's how it would remain until said goal was accomplished. Even if that goal was an almost all-consuming desire for vengeance. While she was thinking about all that, Garrus was interpreting her silence.
"When you brought me onboard, I told you I'd avenge them, didn't I?"
"You did," which brought her back to the all-consuming revenge fantasy she'd just thought about.
"So you know what I'll do when we're on Illium."
"I can take a guess."
"Don't take this the wrong way, Shepard. I'm not asking you to help me like you did for Mordin or telling you that I'll abandon you and the Normandy if you don't drop me off this instant, Collectors and Reapers be damned. I still see things far too clearly to ever get that stupid idea into my head," he said after his angry typing stopped. "I only want you to wait for me on Illium until I did what I need to do."
"This being the brutal murder of all those involved?" given how Omega seemed to have changed him, she somehow doubted that Garrus would simply shoot whoever was responsible.
"They deserve it, Shepard," the turian responded before turning his head towards her so that his injury was hiding the uninjured part of his face. Needless to say, it wasn't a pretty sight. "Whoever did this has dodged justice all their life. So it's time someone brings it to them," he said in the same icy voice she'd come to associate with 'Archangel' instead of Garrus. "I know you don't approve. So like I said, I won't ask you to help me with killing them," now the detective was looking at floor, almost as if he was ashamed of what he was saying. "But please, give me the chance to come back after I'm done. Your fight against the Reapers, I want to be a part of it, no matter how it ends."
It was true, she didn't approve of his murderous intentions, mostly because she liked to believe that the Garrus she knew before being dead for two years wouldn't either and was still somewhere underneath all the Archangel layers he'd wrapped himself in. But what she approved even less than one of her friends going on a killing spree was one of her friends dying because they walked into an ambush by themselves because they were blinded by vengeance.
"The Normandy's still going to be there when you're done," she said. Then, after a second of uncertainty if she should do so or not, she took a step towards Garrus and placed her hand on his armored shoulder pad. "Joker's not going to fly anywhere without me on board."
"You don't have to do this," Garrus said before glancing at her with a pale-blue eye instead of turning his head. At first she wondered if the look in his eye was that of vengeance, but then she started to suspect that it was something else entirely; grief, for his team and for the times that had been and fear for the road ahead of them and the uncertainty that they were charging into. Even though no one on the Normandy would ever say so, including herself, Shepard assumed that they were all secretly afraid of these things.
Who wouldn't be?
"You nearly died the last time you went after these people by yourself," Emily said as her hand slowly wandered up to where his armor ended and his scarred skin and grey surgical graft began. Garrus tensed up for a second but didn't pull back. Instead, he seemed to relax after a second or so. "I'm not going to let you do that again," she added before realizing where here hand was and how close she'd gotten before quickly and awkwardly pulling back both her hand and herself. She took a step backwards and looked at the seemingly frozen Garrus. "I mean taking one gunship shot to the face is bad enough. I don't think you should go for round two just to see if you get lucky again," she said quickly.
Garrus let out a chuckle and then stopped himself with a grunt of pain, muttering how his face was barely holding together anyways and how Chakwas had told him repeatedly that he should be a stereotypical turian and cut laughing from the list of his facial expressions. "You're probably right about the gunship part, too," he added before turning to face her again. "I appreciate you doing this for me, Shepard," he went on. "And while I hate to kick you out of the main battery of your own ship after you just vowed to help me enact revenge on those who wronged me, I do still need to finish something."
"More calibrations?" she guessed.
"I was actually going to try and see what I can find out about Illium, but now that you mention it I do feel like I can still squeeze another point-zero, zero one percent of accuracy out of this darling," he replied before waving his hand over the holographic main battery interface. "Thanks for enabling my addiction," he said. Humorous Garrus was back, apparently. That was a good sign. The brooding, vengeance-fueled one wasn't exactly her favorite. "I'll let EDI know when I find something."
"Sounds good," she replied. "But why not call me directly?"
"Because I want EDI to feel included for a change. I checked in with her, you know. For a ship with an actual AI, the crew's not using her all too much. Mordin's giving her something to do every now and again but the only one she really frequents with is Joker. The interactions in the helm are off the chart."
"Joker hates her."
"He does?" Garrus replied with a genuinely perplexed view on his face. "He practically talks to her non-stop."
"I'm pretty sure that's down to EDI choosing to annoy him all of the time," she looked to where the avatar of the AI was lingering in the corner of the room. "Isn't that right EDI?"
"The biometrics that Flight Lieutenant Moreau displays during our interactions do suggest a heightened state of aggregation," the voice of the AI announced. "And while I do appreciate your concern about the degree of my inclusion into the crew, Detective Vakarian, I do have to point out that I am immune to what organics would consider 'being ignored' or 'loneliness'."
"That's what most lonely people say, EDI," Garrus replied dryly, now once more focused on his calibrations. "Trust me, I speak from experience."
"If you wish to seek psychological council, Detective Vakarian, I suggest that you contact Yeoman Chambers. She is the Normandy's psychiatrist. I could contact her right now, if you wish to schedule an appointment to discuss your loneliness. From what I understand, her dissertation specialized on adult, male turians experiencing depressive episodes in the wake of their discharge from the military," Garrus shot Shepard a look before the N7 decided that this was a hole he'd dug himself.
"Uhm, I don't think that'll be necessary, EDI."
"My psychological analysis routines indicate that the denial of help is a sign of its necessity. I will now contact Yeoman Chambers. I am sure she will be eager to listen to you."
"And that's my cue to leave," she said before walking out of the door, which closed just as the turian began to whisper for help.
Meanwhile, 6. April 2417 AD, Citadel, Kithoi Ward
One week.
That was how much time had passed since she'd gotten the strange message from someone manipulating her Codex app and omni-tool. At first Emily Wong had passed it up as a scam or some weird stalking attempt. Being a journalist of mediocre popularity, she sadly had made her share of experiences with the weirdos the extranet brought to light. It would've made sense, the message was constructed with enough mystery so that it might peak her interest, speaking about the geth attack on the Citadel two years ago and how the HSA was 'just as deep in it as the rest of the Council', but also vague enough so that she'd want to know more. The perfect bait. A day after, and before she could decide what she wanted to do about this stalker, there had been another message.
This one, despite its claim to not be, had been even more stalker-y than the first one. Although whoever had hacked her Codex had told her that they'd 'vet' her, she hadn't actually expected them to only take a day to figure out that her father was a 'big shot in the HSA'. That was weird in the fact that her father's position as a head researcher in the Navy's RND department wasn't exactly public knowledge. And although she had considered blocking the stalker then and there, her curiosity about how he knew this had stayed her hand. It had turned out to be a wise move it. In a message that had followed an hour after the first one, the person on the other hand had decided to start handing her the pieces of an explosive, but unproven story.
It went as the following:
The ship that had attacked the Citadel wasn't a geth vessel. And it wasn't just a ship either. Just like some of the nutcases on a turian-dominated prepper page claimed, the vessel was supposedly a sentient weapon, a so-called 'Reaper'. In addition to not being the only one of its kind, these Reapers were, according to the source, also involved into the story that had dominated Citadel News for the last couple of days, the alien attack on New Canton. Additionally to this revelation the sender had claimed that the attack on New Canton was neither the first of its kind, nor that the string of events related to it were 'new' news either. As their version went, the attack on New Canton was related to a string of disappearances that had started just after the death of the famous Commander Shepard and, as of recently, included the populations of two other human colonies. As far as they were concerned, hundreds of thousands of missing person reports were connected to these aliens and more would follow in the future.
This was explosive in the fact that the HSA hadn't mentioned anything like this in its public statement about the attack on New Canton. While there had been questions about the rumors regarding the disappearance of two upstart settlements in the traverse and the military mobilization that happened to start just after 'Cyrene' and 'Freedom's Progress' had vanished off the comm-buoy network, there had only been a brief 'slavers did it' explanation. The logistics of how a slaver band in the post-Skyllian Blitzu era could possibly abduct hundreds of thousands of humans without the HSA being able to stop it had been handwaved away due to Cyrene's and Freedom's Progress far-off locations in the Traverse, as if distance had ever stopped the HSA from projecting military force.
Going from there, Wong had gotten very curious and very invested into whoever was contacting her through the Codex.
Since there had been a clear implication that more of the same would follow, the journalist had decided to put whoever was sending these messages to a test. With the help of her father and the excuse that she had stalker trouble again, she had put up improved, military-grade security on her omni-tool and waited.
The logic behind the decision was the following. Someone who was genuinely trying to hand her incriminating government information, instead of the alternative of just repeating extranet bullshit to her to get her attention or credit chit number, would have the skills and the dedication to work around this kind of security.
Then she had set down and waited for another message, while also doing her own research on information she'd received. For six days, nothing had happened and she'd been about to pass the whole incident off as a stalker after all.
But then?
Well then she'd gotten the message that was causing her to rush to her editor right now, with the fact that she was supposed to only show up again when she had real dirt on the Final Wave again that they could use for her exposing paper only being an afterthought.
What that message had contained to cause the usually collected and critial Emily Wong to get into an excited rush like this?
It was actually a pretty simple story.
After insulting the military-grade security of her omni-tool as trash, the person contacting her had decided to give her what they considered a 'side-story' to the grand galactic conspiracy about the HSA and the Reapers that they were trying to uncover. While not directly related to the Reapers, it did connect to the HSA and another institution that Wong was looking to drag down alongside the Final Wave: Hahne-Kedar, the single largest supplier of the HSA's military, who built everything from their assault rifles to their Paladins. If the implications that the HSA was lying about waging a secret war against whoever was abducting humans on frontier worlds were dynamite, what she'd been handed this morning was the atom bomb of news stories.
HK, with the help of the HSA and in direct violation of the Citadel Council's laws, had taken destroyed geth from Eden Prime, tinkered with them in the Sol System and used them produce the very same Sentinel drones and other combat robots that the HSA had shipped off to the CIP.
And while the claim in itself, if true, would be outrageous, the files that she'd received a few hours later, which included footage that seemed to show geth being repaired and studied within Hahne-Kedar's Galilean Moon Laboratory complex, and the theoretical introduction of the Sentinel Network to human space made it the perfect story didn't just make it a good lead.
It made it a perfect story.
As soon as she'd received the files that proved what the sourse wa claiming, Emily had been out of Gunn's apartment. These last couple of days her murderous fake-boyfriend, had mercifully become an afterthought due to seemingly having vanished off the face of the earth ever since going on a 'quick trip' four days ago. While he had not answered her messages since and his absence had spurred the hopeful notion that he might've died, Emily hadn't wasted her breath on him. She'd simply taken a rapid transit to Shae's block to recruit the editor into her effort to turn what was already a perfect story into a perfect, undeniably true story.
To achieve that Wong needed three things: More information from the source, more proof of what Hahne-Kedar had been doing and a clear link between the Sentinel drones and the geth. She'd have to wait for the first part and work on the second part by herself. But for the third part she needed Shae's help. Wong herself didn't know anyone who knew the first thing about robots. But Shae? She had been alive centuries and, more importantly, made connections for centuries. If there was someone who could dig out someone who could, without the shadow of a doubt tell her that Hahne-Kedar had made the Sentinels out of geth technology, then it was the asari.
The excited journalist took a turn around the corner to enter the street where Shae's apartment building stood and never managed to stop before running into a blonde man. She bumped into him, sent his shopping bags flying and then subsequently landed on the floor when she found out that out of the two of them, he was the less moveable object.
"You alright down there?" the man asked before helping her up. His accent reminded her of a boyfriend from journalist school who'd been a native Horizoner but his goatee, his dirty-blonde hair and chiseled, athletic frame stood in stark contrast to that particular ex of hers. Going form his frame alone, she assumed that the guy was one of the few people on the Citadel who still did manual labor. Well either that that, or he, much like her murderous fake-boyfriend, was the kind of douchebag who snorted protein powder for breakfast before sprinting to the gym to conclude his dual-workout of the day. Then he clocked in at work, where he abducted volus kids and murdered nannies for a living before coming back home to his girlfriend, where he pretended to be the troubled angel, who was losing sleep over his dead, asshole merc frie-
Okay.
So maybe Gunn wasn't as much of an afterthought as she wanted to believe. But then again, who could blame her for not being able to get over sharing a roof with a murderer for several months?
"Where were you going so fast anyways?" he went on to ask when she didn't reply to his question before going to collect the contents of the bags that she had sent flying.
She took one look at the scene, muttered a quick apology and, in an admittedly selfish desire to work on her story, left without helping him gather his belongings, never realizing how the person stopped doing so and walked away as soon as she was out of sight. Neither did she notice how the real volus owner of the bags rushed by her, going on about a human thief and his property. If she hadn't been in such a rush, she might have also realized that this wasn't the first time she and the blonde man had crossed paths. He'd crossed her on her way to work, passed her outside of her apartment and shadowed her on the way to Shae's in the past. She might've also picked up on the fact that he was wearing a watch eerily similar to the one her murderous fake-boyfriend never seemed to take off. Additionally, there could've been a chance that she'd noticed how he'd been purposefully waiting at the corner, anticipating her appearance, and only put himself into position to be bumped into a few seconds prior.
But since there was only one thing on her mind, the best story of her life, all those observations went past the normally oh-so observant Emily Wong.
What also passed her observation, this time not because of her rush but because it was happening lightyears away from her, was that the actual person behind 'Solomon Gunn' had just booked a flight on Bekenstein. Unbeknownst to her, she actually had faded from the mind of her 'murderous fake-boyfriend' for the time being.
At the time she was rushing to break the reputations of Hahne-Kedar and the HSA, he was leaning over a sink in a cheap motel near the star port and washing off barely noticeable stains of the blood from the necklace he was wearing.
When she climbed the stairs to Shae's apartment, he was sitting on the roof of said motel with a bottle of wine not meant for him but for a thief and blaming himself for failing to save a man who should've been his enemy.
As she told Shae what she'd discovered and retold the story how that discovery had come to be, he stared at the makau nui, longing to live the life of the man he was, not the one he was pretending to be.
And right when both the asari and Wong gushed over the potential of Wong's discovery, Daniel Morneau, who on all accounts was a stranger to Wong, looked at Bekenstein's setting sun, poured an entire bottle of Donovan Hock's best wine from the roof in remembrance of Keiji Okuda and counted Day 186 of his undercover operation, repeating a single phrase to himself.
It was the mantra that he'd carried with him for the last fourteen years, something she might've heard him mutter in his sleep if she'd ever paid that kind of attention to it but would never be able to understand the significance of, let alone comprehend the mountain of deeds that was buried underneath said mantra.
'Put it in a box and don't let it rule you.'
Fifteen Minutes Later, 2158 CE, Citadel, Office of Chancellor Valern
"Will say this. Infiltration was surprisingly difficult, for a small fiefdom at least," Major Kirrahe reported with a shrug before pausing and glancing over his shoulder. His old comrade had reached the troublesome province of Xeltez some time ago, under the guise of being a construction contractor, and was now delivering his first report to Valern. Since he continued talking, the salarian councilor assumed that whatever Kirrahe had been worried about wasn't actually there. "Managed to enter, nonetheless. Spent last couple of days talking to levies and miners like you suggest. Kept eyes open for any signs of Reaper activity," he went on, still ignorant that he was there not because of the fear of a Reaper-Plot on the salarian homeworld, but because Valern believed that the League of One, which had shadowed him for years now, was the actual cause of the riots in Xeltez. It was his believe that they were actively trying to destabilize Sur'Kesh as part of a much larger plan that included the entirety of salarian space. While that might've sounded unrealistic for a small group working from the shadows, one could not forget that twelve, or rather thirteen, League of One operatives had thrown the entire Union into chaos once. That had been two thousand years ago and back then they didn't have two millennia to prepare. So who truly knew what they were capable of today?
"Found no reports of strange incidents with leadership or signs pointing to the appearance of cult-like structures. Furthermore discovered no anomalous energy readings in the province," the major continued to list. "Did however hear worrying rumor."
"What?" Valern asked quickly.
"Rioters appear to receive aid from Duchy of Raeka. Unofficial aid from official sources," Kirrahe went on, namedropping the other reason why Valern hadn't been entirely honest with him and feared the League's involvement.
Prior to sending Kirrahe to Sur'Kesh, Dalatrass Raeka had approached him with a request that was, for all accounts and purposes, treason to the feudal rulers of most of Sur'Kesh, the Linron Dynasty. The ambitious Raeka wanted his help in rallying the other minor dynasties of the salarian homeworld against Dalatrass Linron. Since the brief impression of Raeka that he'd gotten didn't make him believe that the Dalatrass, who's duchy had been loyal to the Linron Dynasty for centuries, would spontaneously get the idea to launch a rebellion, he'd grown suspicious. He believed that the group that had shadowed him was the one who'd planted that seed of treason in Raeka's head. And as such, what Kirrahe had just told him made him very curious, and not just because he found himself agreeing with a part of the League's sentiment.
"Possibility to investigate further?" Valern asked the holographic projection of his old comrade.
"Affirmative," Kirrahe nodded quickly. "Will follow up on rumor as soon as I've gathered more trust with locals."
"Understood," Valern said in turn. "Report back once you progress."
"Affirmative," Kirrahe repeated. Then his hologram vanished and Valern was once more left with the sour taste of lying to an old friend. This shouldn't become a habit, yet it was clearly turning into one. He took a breath and dialed in the next contact. There was another report he wanted to here, one that unlike Kirrahe's mission actually related to the Reapers. He punched the necessary security clearances into his terminal, sent off his request to Spectre Bau and received his answer a few minutes later. Due to the nature of their method of communication and Bau's current location, there was no holographic chat this time around. Just a few lines of highly encrypted text that Valern ran through a decryption software on his terminal. The details would be filled in at a later, more convenient point.
'Mission to New Canton failed due to Collector Interference. Member of Task Force Aurora killed in action by indoctrinated agent. Identity of Task Force Member: 'Doctor Garret Bryson'. Identity of assailant: 'Derek Hadley', Hahne-Kedar, further investigation warranted. Presence of indoctrinated agent and timing of assassination make Collector allegiance to Reapers likely. Collectors possibly related to Protheans. Corrupted beacon encountered during boarding. Transmission received by Spectre Alenko. Contents unknown. Enroute to Menae for deciphering. Combat footage will be delivered at earliest opportunity. Pieces still unaccounted for. Bau.'
After reaching the last sentence of the message, Valern closed his eyes and thought about what Bau had discovered.
This was troubling.
Very troubling.
6. April 2417 AD, Meane, Installation 237
Miranda considered herself a great number of things. While her good qualities were hard to count, the top runners were that she was intelligent, critical, charismatic, attractive, observant and, first and foremost, dedicated and hard-working. While most of those good traits were admittedly the result of her father, an eccentric industrialist with dynastic ambitions, a near infinite financial supply from his days at Hahne-Kedar and no regards for the ban on high degrees of genetic engineering and cloning, she wasn't entirely designed. The dedication and the hard work she displayed day in and out were rooted in nothing but her own, personal standard to herself. Some twenty-five years ago, the combination of who she was and how she excelled at everything she did, had landed her seventeen-year old self on an HSAIS recruitment list. Originally, as she would later find out by taking an unsanctioned look at HSAIS's recruitment criteria, there had been an attempt to expunge her form the list by some misguided recruitment manager who believed that her 'arrogance and unparalleled self-righteousness made her incapable of functioning as part of a team, let alone an effective field operative'. The same recruiter had also taken it upon herself to ban her from the field offices of HSAIS. However much to the dismay of this misguided fool, Cerberus, which back then had still been much more interlinked with HSAIS than it was today, had seen her potential and robbed HSAIS of the opportunity to decide whether or not she was good agent material altogether by recruiting her themselves. Ever since then, she'd poured every ounce of her energy into Cerberus, and not just because it provided an easy escape from her overbearing father and his previously mentioned dynastic ambitions for his genetically engineered daughter or because she hoped to lead the division one day. The core of her motivation stemmed from the fact that she believed in Cerberus' inherent idea of protecting humanity, no matter the cost. Because of that she'd completed every task with full dedication and the results had always been perfect, be it something as crucial as the revival of Commander Shepard or something as mundane as supplying the Blue Suns with weapons.
Protecting this task force would be no different.
Although Director Harper had been ambiguous about what she should keep an eye out for, she'd already deduced that they had a traitor in their ranks. And while she'd be cautioned to not rush into finding him by going around and suspecting people left and right, Miranda had taken initiate in another form: 'introduction interviews'. That's what she was calling the interrogations of selected personal that she had been conducting for the last few days. On the surface her reasoning was simple. She was one of the leaders of the task force and as such she wanted to get to know the people she'd be supervising. That explanation was accepted by the majority and made everyone she invited to talk to her show up. During these interviews Miranda did actually try and get to know who she was working with, she felt that an integral part of leadership was knowing what your subordinates could and could not do and give them assignments that matched their skillset, but there was of course an ulterior motive.
She was looking for signs of indoctrination.
That of course came hand in hand with a problem.
Regrettably, she hadn't yet had the opportunity of working with indoctrinated individuals or fighting the Reaper. While that was no shame in itself, there were few humans who could claim to have done so, the problem arose from the fact that everyone who wasn't Harper was either dead, unavailable or, as it had been the case of one particularly rude Section 13 agent who'd had the most recent run-ins with indoctrination, flat out locked up to any and all attempts of her persuasion. That particular case stood out to her because of how strange she considered it to this day that his only reaction to her proposal to privately talk about the events of Akuze and Noveria had been 'read the report and fuck off'. It was rare for anyone, and especially a man, to turn her down. And although she shouldn't have been particularly surprised about the reaction, in her experience the rank-and-file specialists that hadn't risen to the ranks of Directors like Harper or Rei were solitary creatures, she had to admit that this event still bothered her. It wasn't as bad as the missed opportunity of talking to Commander Shepard before her departure on the Normandy in early March, but it bothered her nonetheless. It was a failure to learn something new and that was something that Miranda could just not let go.
However despite the regrettable lack of personal experience on the subject matter, Miranda was still confident in her ability to apply what she'd read about the signs of indoctrination to the people she was talking to.
After all, she was the best at what she did.
As such it was with a confident smile that she greeted her next interviewee. He was a salarian and he was also immediately familiar to Miranda. Although they'd only met briefly, he'd been in the lab with Doctor T'Soni when she'd searched for the asari to tell her about Jasintho, Miranda's sharp mind instantly made the connection, even without needing to look at the file on her terminal.
"Hello Janon," she greeted as the red salarian when he entered the room.
"Operative Lawson," he replied far less reluctant than she'd expected him to. "I was told that you wanted to talk?" he asked.
"Yes, please sit," she said before gesturing for the chair that sat opposite to her own. They were only divided by a small desk that hid little of Miranda's body. This was of course an intentional choice on her part to turn the interviews of the human and the asari members of the task force more into her favor. But with the salarians being a mostly asexual species that had little appreciation or Miranda's looks, the Cerberus operative knew that playing that card with Janon wasn't going to do her any favors. So instead she switched to the part of her she knew the salarian would react to best, the analytically polite one.
"You're not in trouble," she assured him from the beginning. "This is simply-"
"-an inductionary interview. Yes. So I've been told," the red salarian said before sitting down on the chairy. "I will admit that I do not understand the purpose of this meeting. You have my file. You have my resume. What could you possibly want to know?" He folded his arms in front of his chest, displaying the tattoos on his hands in the process. Since she'd obviously done her research, she understood that these tattoos marked Janon as a follower of a minority religion called 'the Wheel of Life', which was practically extinct in Union Space and made him an obvious deviant from the rest of the salarian populace.
Instantly Miranda got suspicious of him. While the slight hostility he was displaying could either be annoyance from being pulled away from work or simply a character trait of the salarian, it could also be a sign of indoctrination.
Still, she went through the usual steps of her interview. She questioned him about his life before the task force, his abilities, family, hobbies, anything to keep him talking long enough for her to watch for the paranoia and the speech patterns indoctrinated people supposedly displayed. After thirty minutes of talking about Janon's life, his faith and his fascination with signal technology, which had landed him this job, the Cerberus operative put on a plastered smile, sent Janon on his way and wrote 'to be observed' into her personal notes regarding the salarian. As she watched him leave, she felt her suspicion about him change. She no longer believed that the red salarian was afflicted by the Reapers. But something about his demeanor made her pull the name of the Spectre who'd recommended him before beginning the next interview.
Jondum Bau.
Now where exactly had she read that name before?
Codex: Human Critisism of the Salarian Feudal System
In addition to the split of governmental responsibilities between individual Dalatrass dynasties and the Salarian Union, salarian territories are also governed by a web of complicated system of smaller states reminiscent of a mixture of a feudal medieval system and modern nation states. The order of this hierarchical systems can be described as a feudal system that begins with the administrators of individual cities, who answer to the Dalatrasses ruling over their immediate neighboring cities and rises all the way to Dalatrasses ruling over Duchies that cover significant portions of a planet. They in turn only answer to the Inner Cabinet itself, effectively creating a net of federated feudal governments overseen by a single, centralized government entity.
In that fact the system shares remarkable similarities to the Asari Republics, which are made up of small and independent city- or colony-states, that all share the same believe of regional governance and further believe that it's the question as to how one wishes to be governed is always the choice of those being ruled. While usually democratic, this believe does not explicitly exclude a feudal system, as long as it is approved by the people.
Additionally, there as similarities to the Turian Hierarchy. While not based on the asari believe of self-governance or inheritance based, the turians share the same ruling concept as the salarians, albeit expanded to a much grander scale and based on a meritocracy, not inheritance. Like the Dalatrasses, who enact full authority over their respective territory, the Primarchs are in full control of every decision made within their respective Colonial Clusters. As the Dalatrasses do to the Union, the Primarchs only answer to the Primarch of Palaven himself, who in turn is the defacto ruler of the entire Hierarchy.
Because of these similarities, neither of the salarian's long standing allies have ever expressed any concerns with the Salarian Feudal Hierarchy.
The only Council member that does not share any noticeable similarities with the system of governance of the Salarian Union and has made its concerns about the 'legitimacy of an inheritance-based system' vocal is the most recent one, the Human Systems Alliance.
A study of the T'Lav University on Thessia created in 2391 AD sees the root of this issue in several factors related to the development of human society.
Firstly, there is the ugly reality that human history has seen an unparalleled share of the worst sides of inheritance-based feudal systems or autocratic governments. More than any other Council Member, humanity's development is filled with cases of autocratic ruling brutality on par with that of the batarian people, a concept that is strangely absent within the arguably autocratic systems of the Turian Hierarchy and has been increasingly rare within the feudal system of Salarian Union.
Secondly, human society has seen far more violent revolutions against (perceived) autocratic rule than any other currently spacefaring society. As time went on, these revolutions became larger and more destructive until reaching their zenith in a series of planet-spanning conflicts over the course of the late 21st and early 22nd century of modern human history that culminated in humanity's second-most destructive civil war.
The third factor identified by the experts of T'Lav University is that the dawn of the HSA saw the subsequent unification of all human nation states and colonies under a single, Arcturus-based, democratically elected parliament. This marked the end of all nation states and royal titles still held within human society and handed all governmental responsibility over to a single, overarching government with no tolerance for ideologies or groups with divisive intentions. This principle of a shared, egalitarian identity of a humanity united under a singular, unchallenged government has become one of the several principles that are deeply engrained in the ideology that the T'Lav University called 'Panhuman HSA-Nationalism': the desire for a single, centralized, all-encompassing human government, which the study identified as the driving social factor of the last three centuries of human history.
Although problematic in the fact that the study of the T'Lav University was only conducted on human core worlds for the fear of separatist attacks at the time, a follow-up study from 2414 AD included the region known as the Fringe Worlds. This study has found that the theory of 'Panhuman-Nationalism' seems to be proven in the fact that the majority of the formerly rebellious populace of the Fringe Worlds share the same desire for a single, centralized, all-encompassing human government. It should be added that twenty percent of those who partook in the study mentioned that said government does not necessarily have to be the HSA. This lead to the rebranding of the theory from 'Panhuman HSA-Nationalism' to 'Panhuman Nationalism'.
The study of T'Lav University identified the source for this shared believe across the entirety of human space as 'Infighting Fatigue', another theory stating that humanity had collectively become tired of armed hostilities with itself. Unlike with 'Panhuman Nationalism', the asari study failed to deliver sufficient examples of this theory of 'Infighting Fatigue'.
A/N:
Hey again.
Fast update, mostly because this is a transition chapter and I can write these quickly. (especially after the last three huge mission chapters, where I have to pay much closer attention to internal consistency than I have to when there are several scenes in one chapter)
So, what I guess I'm saying is don't get used to this pace. I won't keep it up.
Either way, this chapter, which I creativly named answers... gives us answers to several of the plot points that have been left hanging since we embarked on our big spree of missions. While obviously not all arks got their time to shine (Nihlus, Tali, the geth subplot and others were neglected here)... we did finally learn what the beacon did to Kaidan.
Since I'll just assume you can guess what he was shown, I'll tell you.
Kaidan just became SV's opener to the Crucible.
Unlike in canon, it won't just show up out of the blue at the beginning of the Reaper invasion.
I always found that stupid.
So we won't be doing that here.
Other than Kaidan, we got the intro to Garrus' loyalty mission, the next step in Wong's codex plot, Valern catching up on all the treason he's involved in and Miranda being... Miranda.
I considered to let her genetically engineered part fal of the table, but then I decided against it. I think it's just too connected to who she is to just ignore it because SV's humanity doesn't fuck around with gene therapy on the regular.
So yeah.
She's same-ish as in canon. (unlike so many other characters in this story.)
Other than that, I don't have a whole lot to say, except of course that I want you to let me know what you think (as ususal.)
For the record we're at 719 reviews, 1120 favorites and 1216 follows. The growth is exactly as you'd expect it from a five day update schedule.
See you around next time.
