Chapter 93. Desperate Measures

Three Hours Later, 7. April 2417 AD, Cronos Station

"Okeer's loss at the hands of the Blue Suns is regrettable, but the data you recovered will make up for it," Harper said before placing his hand in front of his mouth and looking at Commander Shepard. The N7 had returned from her mission on Korlus only half an hour ago and as such, she was still wearing her armor.

"You can tell that already?" the revived Spectre asked before raising an eyebrow.

He considered his next words carefully, after all, he hadn't been entirely honest with the commander. Harper knew that she had not been in favor of recruiting Okeer. She had made her reluctance clear from the beginning. As such he had rephrased her mission perimeters some time ago. Originally, he'd wanted her to recruit Okeer as a scientific advisor to help Solus come up with a countermeasure. But with Solus seemingly not being in need of any help and Shepard continuously voicing her continued displeasure at the prospect of doing as much as lift a finger to help the now dead krogan, Harper had altered her objective. He had refrained from asking her to recruit Okeer or follow up on something else on Korlus. Instead he'd given her the easy out of only recovering the data and called upon an old ally to handle the other part of his interest on the planet.

"I'm confident that we'll find what we are looking for," he responded vaguely before igniting a cigarette. "As soon as I know more, I will of course reach out to brief you on," he pulled on the cigarette, savored the taste for a few seconds and exhaled a puff of smoke. "Until then I suggest you head to Illium at once. Field intelligence suggests that your window to recruit Krios is closing. He'll make his move soon and once that happens, he'll be gone," he dipped the cigarette into his ashtray and looked at the mostly blank dossier of the assassin. If not for his friends in the Illuminated Primacy, he never even would've gotten the drell's name. But thanks to them he could now give Shepard the general outline of the assassin's life and skillset. "Unlike Okeer, Krios' contribution to your mission can't be replaced by a hard drive. So I suggest you depart at once."

Shepard stayed silent for a few seconds and then folded her arms.

"I was planning on going to Illium anyways. But before I drag an assassin on board of my ship, I'd like to know what exactly his contribution is supposed to look like. What can Krios do that my team can't? Why should I risk trusting a hitman?"

In response Harper placed his cigarette on the ashtray and got up from his chair to meet Shepard's hologram face to face, showing no indication as to what he'd originally intended for her to do on Korlus or how eagerly he was waiting to her that the rumors were wrong.

"Thane Krios might be the most effective weapon the Illuminated Primacy has ever produced. He's an extraordinary marksman, a master hand-to-hand combatant, an unparalleled stealth expert and an incredibly gifted biotic. He combines every talent your team has into one incredibly deadly individual," he responded calmly, "and most importantly, he's used to working without a team," he looked into her holographic eyes.

"I fail to see how that makes him a worthwhile addition to the Normandy," Shepard responded.

"Because you aren't used to working alone either," Harper retorted immediately. "Krios is a safety net if you will. Until now, your mission to stop the Collectors has been made up of standard military operations perfectly suited for the unit of soldiers you've gathered around yourself. You never needed to resort to sending in a lone operative," he threw one more look at her and then walked back to his cigarette. "If it stays like that, you are right and recruiting Krios is a pointless waste of your time," he paused for a second to take in a breath of smoke. "But if you suddenly find yourself in a position where using a team isn't an option," he began.

"I'll have someone to fall back on to get the job done."

"Exactly," Harper nodded, happy that Shepard was still as good at catching on as she had been two years ago. There'd been some concerns that Lazarus would alter her personality. Up to now, he had made no such observations.

He was about to say something else when he noticed the blinking of the control panel hidden in the armrest of his chair. Since there was only a limited number of people who could call him directly and he already had a suspicion that this was related to Korlus as well and therefore far more urgent than discussing Krios, Harper decided to cut things short. "I'm afraid there's another matter that requires my attention, Commander. Please inform me as soon as you arrive on Illium. I'll update you on Krios' exact whereabouts and the details of his mission when you're planetside."

"Understood," Shepard responded before they shared a nod. Her blue hologram arm made a move for something out of sight, presumably the button to power down the projector. But just before she was able to do so Harper's mind caught up with the rest of him and interfered.

"There is one more thing," he said after remembering what he'd intended to say before the blinking had started. Shepard pulled her hand back and listened. "The dossier on Tali'Zorah has been finished and forwarded to the Normandy. After you're done with Krios, I suggest you focus your recruitment effort on her. Our investigation into the geth has recently yielded some rather interesting results and having an admiral's daughter to talk to will no doubt help our specialists to better understand their findings."

The N7 again folded her arms.

"I take it that means I'm not actually recruiting her for the Collector mission?"

"You are," he countered. "Miss Zorah is a skilled technician who I believe will be of great value to your operation," Harper went on while the blinking of the incoming call continued to demand his attention. "She just happens to also be useful for something other than stopping the Collectors as well."

She looked at him for a second and somehow Harper got the feeling that Shepard knew just as much as him that the guise of the Collector mission was just meant to draw the quarian in to help them with their geth problem. But despite that feeling and her otherwise very vocal nature, the N7 didn't seem to voice that thought. Instead she just told him that she'd 'get on it' as soon as she could and then terminated the hologram.

He managed to take exactly one pull on his cigarette before the next one appeared.

Like Shepard, the figure in front of him was clad in armor. However unlike Shepard, this set of armor made the Cerberus operative a head taller than Harper.

"Director," the veteran strike team member greeted, his voice deepened by the suit of experimental heavy T5-V Destroyer armor he was wearing.

"Commander Holderman," he returned. "I take it your little departure from Machai's training was a success?"

"Yes, Sir. The mission's complete."

"And you remained undetected by the Normandy's ground team?" the question was just for the record. He already knew the answer since Shepard had said nothing about running into a Cerberus field operative in an experimental suit of what was basically downscaled Paladin armor.

"Naturally. We got in and out without anyone seeing us. The Suns provided the perfect distraction, just like you said they would," He'd expected no less. That was after all why he'd specifically tipped Massani off on where Okeer was hiding. The former Army sergeant turned vigilante knew how to put on a show and not ask too many questions. The fact that sending him to Korlus ensured that Cerberus wouldn't have to worry about any hostile witnesses was just an added benefit.

"Very good, Commander," Harper said. He extinguished his cigarette in his ashtray and watched the orange flicker extinguish for a few moments. He was stalling because he dreaded asking the next question. If the answer was a 'yes' and the rumor that had kept him awake for the last week was true, then everything he'd planned on would have to change and nearly every person he trusted would have to be reevaluated. However if it was a 'no', it still wouldn't remove his doubt either. Now that the possibility was raised to him, he'd always have to ask himself who he could trust at this point.

He looked back at Holderman and steadied his voice. There was no point in dragging this out.

"Were the rumors true?"

"Yes, Sir," he felt ice shoot through his veins in response to those two words. This changed everything. "Your intel was accurate. Okeer was in possession of the package. He had it sitting right in the middle of his lab, actually," Holderman explained and not a second later, Harper frowned and rubbed his brow. In that case it was a good thing the krogan was dead. Even if it would've been very interest to know where he had gotten it from, that was one less loose end to worry about. "It's on the way to the Virmire black site for final destruction as we're speaking."

"Were you able to positively identify it on site?"

"No, not on site, Sir. I couldn't take a closer look at it without risking detection by Shepard and her crew. And after I got out of sight, I obviously wasn't going to risk any more exposure for the sake of identification. I immediately put it into containment," Holderman responded.

"Then how can you be so sure that the intel was accurate?" it was another question for the record. The Cerberus field commander wouldn't have reported a positive find had he not found a way to identify the package.

"I had Tas compare my helmet cam footage with some of the scans taken of other pieces before they got melted down. Going from there, I'd say we've got ourselves a processor from one of Sovereign's weapons."

Harper lifted the glass standing on the small table to his side, took a sip of the expensive bourbon and looked at Holderman with his artificial eyes, knowing that if Alenko had known about this and not warned Cerberus, the commander would be officially vindicated for his lack of faith in choosing the biotic as Shepard's replacement two years ago. Cerberus had put a man into the Council's inner circle, yet they hadn't learned of what might turn out to be the Council's last big mistake until a week ago. This was without a shadow of a doubt the single biggest problem he could've run into today short of waking up to a Reaper Armada bearing down on Cronos Station.

"Then that's one accounted for," he replied stoically and devoid of all the uncertainty that was crawling through him right now.

"Permission to ask a question, Sir?"

"What's on your mind, Commander?"

"Tas' actually," the soldier responded, not that it mattered. It was his impression that the two were quickly becoming inseparable. "How many others are still missing?"

Harper took another sip from his glass.

"I don't know, Commander."

Holderman visibly let the reply sink in.

They'd both been here from the beginning, so they knew exactly what this meant for the bigger picture. Unless there was a miracle, this was a race Cerberus, and by large the rest of the galaxy, was going to lose.

"We'll be ready whenever you need us, Sir," the voice of the AI that shared the Destroyer armor with Holderman responded. The man wearing the armor only nodded his agreement to the statement, feeling like his artificial companion had said all that could be said.

He glanced at the tablet lying on his armrest and the black-market add it contained. Originally the chief analyst that had plucked it off the extranet had determined it to be just another scam. There were hundreds of sites that claimed to sell pieces of Sovereign for every purpose from decoration to arms dealing. Up to now, all the ones Cerberus had followed up on had turned out to be flukes run by salarian scammers with decent enough image manipulation skills, just as Harper had expected due to the utter lack of Council acknowledgement regarding pieces of Sovereign being unaccounted for. But for some unknown reason, maybe instinct, maybe luck, the analyst had still doubled down on this particular rumor, learned that the final buyer was located on Korlus and brought it to Harper's attention that they had an operative headed there who could check up on it. Upon this discovery and despite the overwhelming evidence that suggested it would be a waste of their time, Harper had decided to continue the investigation and given the all-clear, if only to silence the slightly paranoid nagging in the back of his head. He'd called upon Holderman to head to Korlus, ordered the analyst to keep an eye on other sales related to this particular site and waited.

As expected from Cerberus' chief analyst and chief field commander, both had delivered. Whereas Holderman had found one of the pieces, the analyst had drawn up a list of this particular seller.

He tapped his finger on the small x that closed the add and looked at the rest of the list.

Just like the piece found in Okeer's lab, most of them were related to Sovereign's weaponry and even if those were all the pieces that the Council had lost, there was just not enough time to feasibly locate, secure, contain and destroy all of them.

"That might be sooner and far more often than either of you expect."

"Just give the word, Sir," Holderman replied.

"I will," he muttered while typing up a message to Alenko and demanding that report back at once. He hadn't heard from ever since New Canton and with the reveal that the Council had apparently lost several tons worth of Reaper debris, Harper felt like he was overdue a chat with one of the Council's Spectres. He would obviously give the man the benefit of doubt and assume that Alenko hadn't known about this and therefore couldn't have warned Cerberus. The same obviously couldn't be said for Councilor Udina, who he was just one bad day away from having kidnapped and questioned as to what exactly he'd been thinking when he'd decided to keep the existential threat his Council had unleashed on the galaxy a secret.

"You're dismissed, Commander," Harper muttered while abandoning the idea of borrowing the Ain Jalut for a little trip to the Citadel. Holderman's hologram vanished without another word, leaving the director alone with nothing but the red and blue light of Anadius' flicker. He hit sent on his message and then did something he only rarely indulged in during working hours.

He took a moment for himself.

First he emptied the contents of his bourbon in one gulp more fit of a bar in the Fringe Worlds than his office and set the glass down on the table hard enough to nearly break it. Next he pulled out another cigarette, lit it and stared directly at the sun Cronos Station orbited. The usual battle was waging on its surface and as always, it was a captivating sight with a slight advantage on the red side.

Harper got up from his chair, walked to the edge of his office where a railing separated him from the safety glass - as if that would somehow bring him closer to the show - and pulled in a very long breath of smoke that burned down all the way down to his lungs. Much like his display of bourbon drinking, this gesture fit in much more with his young and brash Section 13-self than with the Cerberus Director-persona he had cultivated over the last thirty years. On the contrary to his usual mindset, he didn't care about keeping up that appearance right now. He flicked his cigarette, making the ash drop to the black holo-tile floor instead of the usual ashtray and littering his office in the process, and continued to stare into the star's light, his artificial eyes allowing him to admire it in all its unfiltered glory.

Cerberus had worked too hard and sacrificed too much just to end up losing now because of the Council's screw up.

The Harbinger had one upped them, yes, and fixing this would require desperate measures others might not be ready to take and were too afraid of to even consider.

But incidentally, that was exactly what Cerberus had always been intended for; to do what others would not dare to even consider.

Noé had chosen him to lead Cerberus when there'd been a thousand other more political choices for the posting. At first he'd wondered why, but about three years into the job he'd understood. Unlike all the political choices Noé could've made back then, he didn't let fear stop him or hesitation cloud his judgement. He did what needed to be done, no matter what it took or which line he crossed in the process.

No matter the circumstance, in the end, he'd be the victor.

That was who he was.

He allowed the hint of a smirk to cross his lips, entirely unconcerned with the smoldering paper that was now burning his fingers in the same spot where several similar burn marks were already visible in the dim light of Anadius. There was only a single thought in his mind and it was more than loud enough to temporarily overshadow something as trivial as the minor pain of a second degree burn or the faint humming of the barrier generator that sat underneath his office and was clearly audible from where he was standing right now.

He would beat the Harbinger.

He would win this war.

Not to secure his own personal future or to add another ten years or so to his life expectancy, but for humanity and all the people who had yet to be born.

He'd make a world free of war, free of the Reapers, even if it killed him.

As he finally felt the stinging in his fingers, he dropped the still burning cigarette in reflex.

That was his signal.

He snapped out of his thoughts.

Time for the desperate measures to begin.


Ten Hours Later, 2158 CE, Citadel, Presidium, Final Wave Headquarters

Aganian peaked through the blinders and looked at the dark-haired human idly typing away at his workplace. Gunn had been back for a day and a half now and seemed to be the same person he'd grown to consider one of his more trustworthy employees, which was strange in the fact that he'd only worked here for a couple of months. He obviously understood why he liked Gunn and considered him one of his better subordinates. The man was committed, hard-working, punctual and could keep his mouth shut. He'd even go as far as call him a good example of a stereotypical turian, if not for the fact that Gunn being human kind of rendered that comparison impossible.

The turian in the white suit narrowed his eyes and felt his plates lock into the turian equivalent of a frown.

His personal sympathies sadly didn't alter the fact that reality wasn't looking good for Gunn right now. The human was blissfully unaware of what he was being suspected of and that was a good thing because if the suspicions turned out to be true, they'd have to catch him off-guard.

To summarize the issue and understand why Gunn was a suspect, they needed to go back a couple of days, all the way to the death of Donovan Hock. The gun runner had died on the same day the Bekenstein trip of the very same Project Group Insight team that had been to his office some time ago had taken place. Back then they had incidentally run into Solomon Gunn on their way out, who just happened to be unaccounted for during the time of the attack and, as the stake-out of the space port he had ordered had revealed, had very clearly been on Bekenstein the last couple of days.

The Final Wave veteran let the blinders fall back in place and walked back to his desk.

Things weren't looking good and despite his personal sympathies, the former cabal had brought his suspicion up to his own superior, the head of the Final Wave's operational wing. In response he'd been given a very clear set of orders.

Determine if Gunn was a traitor and if so, figure out who he was betraying the Wave to and subsequently stop any acts of treason.

To that end he'd been cleared to put the human under surveillance. Whenever he was at work, Aganian had a pair of operatives keep an eye on the human alongside him. Whenever he left work, the pair of operatives turned into three pairs and followed the human wherever he went. The logic behind this observation was rather easy. If he was a traitor, he was bound to eventually do something treacherous. This act of treason would then be observed and give them proper cause to bag the human and make him tell them who he was working for under the use of precisely applied electro shocks.

From his perspective biding his time and waiting for the observation to produce a result was more than enough to take care of this problem. It would deliver a clear answer and in the event that he was wrong, prevent the Wave from losing a decent employee due to some overeager interrogator.

Sadly Aganian's bosses in the operational wing didn't feel the same way.

Because of the stakes attached to Hock's death, which had made the gun runners own superior very unhappy to the point where he'd sent a strongly worded letter to the Wave, and the connection to Project Group Insight, which's significance went without saying, his own superiors had given him a two-week ultimatum. If he could not prove that Gunn was not a traitor within the next fourteen days, they would have the human interrogated and subsequently terminate his contract in bad faith. That was Final Wave corporate speak for 'put a bullet between his eyes'. From their point of view the choice was obvious. Lose one operative or two of their best paying clients. So why delay the inevitable?

But Aganian felt different.

Maybe it was down to him being turian or rooted in Kabalim Vitallion's stupid speeches about comradeship and taking care of your soldiers, but Aganian was set to do his hardest to keep Gunn alive and breathing until the latter's treason as actually proven.

The human was his employee, so he felt responsible for saving his life.

Simple as that.

He sat down in front of his terminal and got on with the task of distributing the work messages that had reached him ever since leaving work yesterday and going over his own personal mail. On the work-side there was the usual, assignments to be distributed, status updates to be filed and a report on PGI's progress and yet another request to increase Final Wave security in their compounds outside of the Jovian Moons. Nothing all to exciting really.

The same could be said about his private mail. There were advertisements from Hahne-Kedar Citadel, which had been crashing down on him ever since ordering one of their stupid door locks, and the weekly newsletter of Cipritine Armory's premium members.

Then there was the monthly plea of his former cabal comrade Hepsus. From what Aganian had been able to gather, the fool was still in the Cabal Corps and had relentlessly insisted that the two of them needed to meet and talk for some time now. Although he'd never answered Hepsus' messages, Aganian had been able to gather that whatever Hespus wanted to talk about had something to do with that damned traitor Saren. That alone was more than enough of a reason for Aganian to ignore him.

Finally there was a message his mail program had flagged as spam which was simply titled with a set of coordinates. Out of curiosity and with the knowledge that his Final Wave working terminal had the best firewalls money could buy, he clicked on the message and suddenly stared at the sigil of the unit that his youngest daughter was currently a part of. The he noticed the familiar audio player that was attached to the message.

Aganian's mandibles twitched outward and his finger froze.

That player was as close to the Shadow Broker's signature as things got.

After a lot of hesitation, the former cabal brought himself to look at the rest of the message. As with the assignments the Broker sent to the Wave, there was no written text. The Broker never actually wrote something, he only ever spoke and sent audio files. This combined with the strange sentences and phrases that the Broker tended to use had led to Aganian regularly joking that the Broker was actually illiterate in all Citadel languages and too embarrassed to type anything because of it. He always made that joke and it usually got a good laugh out of at least one of his colleagues, usually it was Stan from PR.

But as he opened the attached image that was titled 'Happy Father's Day' and saw the far-away picture of his daughter standing in a military base secluded in the Digerian hill land with a crosshair over her head, he didn't feel like being humorous.

If this would come from literally anyone else, he would've laughed at the clear threat and ignored it. In addition to her being a biotic and being surrounded by a cabal of turian cabals, the odds of anyone successfully attacking a Hierarchy base, let alone specifically killing a single soldier within it were next to zero. Sniper attacks were impossible due to the high-powered barrier generators that shielded them, infiltrations always failed due to the advanced security systems surrounding them and a frontal attack on a cabal base was nothing but a vain and suicidal maneuver.

But this wasn't just any plain old assassin.

This was the Shadow Broker.

He'd find a way.

Before Aganian listened to the message or opened the third file attached to the mail, he quickly walked to his door and closed it. This concerned no one but him and he'd make sure it stayed like this. When the door was locked, he practically ran back to his terminal, lowered the volume so that he could barely hear what was being said and activated the audio file. As with all the other messages of the Broker, it was spoken by the same deep and distorted synthetic voice.

"As I am sure you and your colleagues in the Final Wave have noticed by now, Toran Aganian, there has recently been an interference with one of our joint ventures," the voice growled. He could only mean PGI. That was the only joint venture between the Broker and the Wave that Aganian knew of. "And although the humans have taken care to keep my other operatives from accessing the site of their recent attack on Bekenstein by only putting their most obedient vermin on guard duty, I was able to successfully acquire a piece of footage hinting at the identity of this assailant," there was a very long pause and Aganian almost got the impression that he could hear teeth rubbing together before the Broker continued to speak. There was also a strange rustling unlike anything he'd ever heard from anyone. "From what I've gathered, you already seem to have come to the same conclusion as I have. If not, consider the other file I have attached to this message as a favor on my part. Open it and take note of the human male that is highlighted. You have one minute," even if it was just a recording, Aganian felt obliged to follow the order as if he was fifteen all over again and listening to his bootcamp instructors. The file loaded for a few seconds, bypassed the firewalls of his Final Wave workstation and suddenly extended itself to show a very luxurious driveway.

In the corner of the image, highlighted by a red circle next to a salarian line of text that read 'partial distortion caused by unidentified facial obstruction technology', was a human with a blurred upper body. He seemed to towards the mansion with his jacket slung over his shoulder and passed the guards without as much as a glance of suspicion. Although the blur that lingered over most of his figure made it impossible to identify this human, there was another line text next to the circle.

'Movement pattern, height, ethnicity and statue identical to Final Wave Operative Solomon Gunn (compared with recording from Operative Kosh-Five and Final Wave Human Resource Department files). Identification through search of known public human data bases inconclusive. Identification through search of known military human data bases inconclusive. Other identities unknown. Final Wave superior: Toran Aganian. Recommendation: In depth interrogation of 'Gunn'.'

He continued to stare at the text and after much more than a standard Citadel minute had passed, the Shadow Broker continued to speak.

"If you have not yet come to suspect that this file has already reached your superiors, you may also consider me telling you this as yet another favour," the voice continued. "And if you have not yet come to suspect that the picture of your daughter which I had taken by one of my operatives is supposed to act as an incentive for you to conclusively identify Solomon Gunn and deliver him to me instead of the Final Wave, you may consider me telling you this as a favor," there was a pause where Aganian heard the same rustling. "In case you were not keeping count, that adds up to you owing me thrice, turian," the Broker's voice declared, full with a sense of superiority and clear hatred for the word 'turian'. "I am aware of the time limit the Wave has set you and for the sake of simplicity, I will give you the same ultimatum. You have two weeks to comply. Further instructions will follow once you've successfully captured the Shadow Broker. I suggest you succeed. Otherwise your daughter will personally learn how penetrable the compound of the 61st Digerian Legion and their cabal detachment truly is."

Aganian looked at the audio file, paused to take in the information he had just received and then watched the file, the message it was attached to, the image of his daughter and his entire terminal shut down with flashes of red, salarian skulls and a 'better luck next time' message.

He closed his eyes and weighed his options.

All concerns he'd had regarding Gunn's life and Vitallion's speeches paled in comparison to his daughter's safety. He also knew that warning the 61st would only get her killed quicker.

So there was only one thing left to do.

Comply.

Ina moment of fatherly desperation, Aganian opened the drawer where he kept his old service Carnifex and got about halfway to the door before commons sense caught up with him and he realized how stupid it would be to kidnap Gunn in the middle of the Final Wave headquarters. Even if they were all to ready to terminate him, his bosses definitely wouldn't let Aganian take Gunn to the Shadow Broker. Otherwise he wouldn't have demanded him to specifically go against their wishes. Hence he walked back to his desk, put the gun back in the drawer and opened his omni-tool.

This would require more finesse.

He'd never had that, but luckily for him, he knew some people who did.

Naturally everyone in the Wave was only loyal to themselves and their paycheck. That was the way mercenary job works. You were in it for the money and yourself, not for others. But despite that general rule, there were a select few operatives who shared something akin to a friendship to one another. In Aganian's case those were the members of his old field team and the three cabals from his former unit who had gotten this job because of his recommendations.

For various reasons they all still owned him a favor or two.

Now was the time to collect.


9. April 2417 AD, Menae, Installation 237

While their trip to Jasintho had been rather quick, the ride back had taken nearly twice as long. In addition to having to dodge a batarian patrol fleet that had responded to the Mirage's orbital strike on the spire, the salarian stealth cruiser had also been forced to stop in order for their new passengers to be checked and for the ground team to be examined before entering Hierarchy space.

Since they were all back inside the secret SLD base now, Haugen simply assumed that that examination hadn't produced any negative results.

He climbed down the ramp, dragging his gear behind him in a wheeled locker. As he went, the remaining batarian farm hands and Doctor T'Soni, who hadn't said anything to any of them ever since the ride back from Jasintho's surface, passed them. While the asari and her new batarian friends were greeted by a compartment of turian soldiers and General Kryik, the only one waiting for Phantom Squad was the ice queen herself, Operative Lawson. From her look alone he could tell that they were in for a 'serious conversation' and that he'd have to listen to her rant about how much better she was all over again.

Haugen halted in front of her and waited for her to speak up about how the operation had gone to shit, question how he could allow one of his soldiers to get injured, state how she'd have to file an investigation into the incident that Doctor T'Soni had reported regarding Miller's actions and declare how Phantom Squad and him would be benched for the remainder of the operation, if not outright send back to Terra Nova. Additionally, he readied himself for the 'this never would've happened had I been in charge' part of her speech.

Surprisingly enough none of that happened.

She seemed to muster him for a second and then nodded her head.

"Congratulations on a job well done, Captain. I knew Phantom Squad was the right choice for this mission." His three teammates and him all looked at her with confusion, but she didn't offer a real explanation. As a matter of fact, she didn't offer much of anything. "Consider yourself debriefed," she looked at Miller, "and cleared of any accusations Doctor T'Soni might have brought forward," she finished before turning to the left and walking to where Doctor T'Soni was standing.

They watched her walk away and only Mav spoke out what all of them were thinking.

"What the fuck was that?" the injured african NCO muttered.

"Someone with common sense, apparently," Miller returned. If he was relieved to her he wouldn't have to go through an investigation, he didn't let it show.

Hofmann walked up next to Haugen, who was watching Lawson talk to T'Soni, Kryik and one of the farmhands.

"Not what you were expecting?"

"No, not at all," the ASOC officer admitted. While he didn't have a doubt that they'd done everything right within the circumstances of their mission, he had at least expected to have to justify the part where a bunch of dying batarians had gotten caught in HSA crossfire. 'Civilians cut down machine gun fire' wasn't exactly the type of complaint you could sweep under the rug easily, yet that seemed to have happened just now. "You ever heard of someone dropping a collateral damage report outside of an actual war?" The last time he'd recalled something like this was the Blitz.

"Nope," Hofmann shrugged. "I guess that's a black op for you. Come on. Let's drop this off in the armory and hit the canteen. I'm fucking starving, aren't you?"

"Mhm," he murmured before starting to walk again.

Lawson had an angle. He knew she did.

There was something she'd ask him or one of his team to do something for her and if they refused, Miller's report would become her bargaining chip. He looked at the soldiers walking in front of him and came to the conclusion that he'd have to keep an eye on all of them from now on.

Lawson was like a shark and he'd be damned if he let her snatch away a member of his team because of his fuck-up plan.


Meanwhile, 2158 CE, Menae, Installation 237

"You did what?" the asari nearly screamed at the human.

Realising that he was now caught in the middle of the argument, Nihlus briefly considered rushing after his soldiers and the farmhands. If he'd learned one thing while being in the auxiliary corps and training with the cabals, it was that nothing was worse than standing in between two angry, female biotics. Granted, this fight wasn't a romantic dispute that involved him and two veteran cabals, which couldn't be claimed about the incident that had taught him this lesson, but he still took a cautious step backwards. Getting flung across a training room once had been more than enough for his liking and he had no desire to repeat that process now that he was a general.

"I said that I reviewed your complaint and decided to drop it," Lawson repeated with zero emotion and just loud enough for the leaving batarians to not hear her. Maybe that meant she wasn't going to start throwing around metal crates like one of the two cabals back then? "Given the circumstances, the actions of Sergeant Miller were justified." As the commander of the task force, he'd obviously already heard of the incident and personally come to the same conclusion, albeit only because he had been on the bad end of a varren attack himself back when he'd still been an auxiliary platoon leader. Once those beasts had latched on to someone without armor, being caught by a machine gun was the preferable and merciful alternative.

"How could you- he killed them! He needs to stand trial! It's a war crime-" Unlike Lawson, T'Soni definitely sounded like she was about to throw around metal crates.

"I understand that you're upset, Doctor T'Soni," the human began, "but I also ask that you understand that the very nature of our work here leaves little room for the regular rules of war," Lawson exhaled and put up a concerned look. "You are angry, and you have every right to be. But for now I think it's best that we focus on who we can still save, not who we failed to save," he looked at the asari but couldn't tell if the human's words had any impact on her. Unlike some of his fellow auxiliary comrades, Nihlus hadn't spent a lot of time around any asari. Most of his soldiers had either been Terminus-born turians or batarians and as previously established, he'd been more inclined to keep his private company turian, not asari. "TNI will handle the interrogation of the batarian farmhands and the data you collected will be analyzed right away. In the meantime, I need you to take a look at something else that has just reached used."

The asari seemed to linger on those words for a moment.

"What is it?"

Lawson looked at Nihlus.

That was his part.

"You have been briefed on the incident on the human colony New Canton?"

"I have," she replied. She still sounded angry but apparently the prospect of a new mystery was already captivating her. It didn't really surprise him, her dossier had indicated that T'Soni was drawn to work like magnets were drawn to each other. "Do you need me to lend a hand with understanding the ship?" Her first thought was already telling.

Nihlus glanced back to where the newest arrival to their base was waiting.

"No, not exactly," he waved his hands towards the human, who stepped out of his shadowy corner. After a second or so, he watched the asari's face light up ever so slightly.

"Lieutenant Alenko?" she asked, somewhat unsure at first. Then the human nodded and waved his hand.

"Hello, Doctor T'Soni. It's been a while," the human Spectre who Arterius had dropped off only hours ago replied.

He shared a look with Lawson.

"I think it's best if we leave you to it now," he stated. He had an interrogation to observe and from what Lawson had told him, she also needed to take care of something with Spectre Bau.

"Agreed," the Cerberus officer added. She threw one look at Doctor T'Soni. "If you still feel like discussing your complaint, my door's always going to be open."

Even if he wasn't an asari expert, Nihlus could tell that T'Soni had stopped paying attention to Lawson the moment her old acquaintance had shown up.


Fifty-Five Minutes Later, 2158 CE, Menae, Installation 237, Scientific Barracks

"And yeah. That's pretty much it. From the beginning, just like you asked," Alenko finished before rubbing his neck.

Liara placed her hands in front of her mouth and considered his retelling of the attack and the incident with what he believed to be a beacon. Then she pushed the mixture of excitement and horror she felt at the suggestion that the Collectors were enslaved protheans out of mind and banished them to the same corner the dead batarians of Jasintho and the spire currently occupied. Even if they were all equally important and worthy of her full attention, she needed to focus on the problem at hand.

"I understand why you'd come to me expecting that I can help you the same way I helped Commander Shepard," the asari replied calmly before adressing the major problem of Alenko's idea. "But I believe that the only reason I was able to help Emil-" she caught herself and fixed the way she addressed Shepard, "Commander Shepard was because she had already received the cipher at the time of our mind meld. You on the other hand haven't."

The Spectre got up from the chair he'd been sitting on and looked at Liara, who was still seated on the lone and hard bed of the small room she was quartered in. Not that she'd complain, at least the foreign scientific staff didn't have to share rooms like the rest of the military or the turians stationed in the installation.

"I get that. But trying won't hurt, right?" he replied.

"As a matter of fact, it might," Liara replied carefully before twisting her hands around an invisible ball made of air. It was a habit she'd developed whenever she explained something that she was only beginning to understand herself. "Decoding the prothean message had a profound and lasting impact on Shepard and the mind meld we shared was different from any other ordinary mind meld," or at least so she'd read. Up to now the mind meld with Shepard had been the only one she'd ever been a part of, so she didn't have any practical examples to compare it to. For the sake of keeping up his confidence, she wouldn't tell Alenko that, unless of course, he asked directly. "I don't know what deciphering the message of a corrupted prothean beacon might do. To you or to me."

Alenko looked at her for a few moments while she started to ponder on their possibilities.

The most obvious risk was that accessing the full message would overload Alenko's or her nerve system and render either of them unconscious or worse. If that didn't happen, there was the obvious issue of neither of them having the cipher that allowed Shepard to understand the messages of the beacon. So even if they could successfully unlock the message, neither of them would be able to comprehend it. Hence, getting Shepard would obviously be preferable for their success. But it wouldn't guarantee it either. Even if she were to be able to summon the commander, which wasn't very realistic given Shepard's current mission, Liara wasn't sure if she could produce, let alone maintain a three-way mind meld between herself, two prothean-touched consciousnesses and the very intangible construct that was the cipher. She was just too inexperienced in that regard and with mind melds, particularly if they were initiated by a pure-blooded asari, nothing was more dangerous than experimentation. Although only Ardat-Yakshi continuously overloaded nervous systems, that didn't mean that they were the only asari who could accidentally or intentionally kill someone with a mind meld. Goddess, there was an entire branch of hitmen who did nothing but murder people with mind melds. Because of that fact alone, a three-way mind meld wasn't something she could realistically consider.

Hence, there would be no cipher.

Hence, she wasn't sure if she could do what Alenko needed her to do.

"It's urgent. The message was trying to tell me something very important. I need to know what it was. I need you to help me."

"I understand that," Liara muttered before the spinning of her hands stopped and the spinning in her head started.

What if she didn't need to get a cipher?

Mind melds were two-way streets. Shepard had received the cipher through a mind meld and she had used it during their mind meld.

So maybe it had also transmitted to Liara?

She had understood the message as well, hadn't she?

The only way that would've been possible was if at least a part of Shepard's cipher had somehow latched itself onto her own mind. Asari could learn entire languages through a mind meld, if it was executed carefully. On a very abstract and simplified plain, the cipher was just a translator.

So theoretically-

"Ah, christ. If you understand it, then I don't get why you won't do it," the recently anointed Spectre suddenly snapped before dropping back in the chair and rubbing his brow. She looked at him surprise, which quickly turned to sympathy. "Sorry, Doctor. Didn't mean to explode like that. It's just that everything up here's been kind of killing me ever since New Canton. It's like someone's blowing up dynamite in he-"

"I think there might be a way after all," Liara interrupted before taking in a long breath. What she was considering was highly theoretical and entirely unproven.

But it might just work.

"You do?" Alenko replied with a hint of confusion before watching Liara shift on the bed.

"This is all based on an assumption," the asari archeologist clarified. "And I need you to understand that there's always the risk of me being wrong," the human biotic nodded slowly after realizing that Liara was waiting for his approval.

"What's your assumption?"

"When I melded with Em-" she caught her slipup again and once more fixed it. "Shepard, I understood the beacon's message just as much as her. That might indicate that a part of the cipher or its entirety transmitted to me during the meld," she explained before nervously folding her hands together and rubbing her thumbs against each other. She was playing with both of their lives and it didn't feel good. "Like I said, I could be wrong and the results could be disastrous-"

"Let's do it," the biotic stated, interrupting her. Then he jumped up from the chair and held out a hand. "Come on. We'll go to the medical bay and try it right now," she hesitated and he sensed it. "It'll be fine."

"By disastrous results I mean-"

"Liara, I've got a feeling that if we don't unlock whatever that beacon put in my head, the Reapers are going to steamroll us and we'll all be dead by the end of next year," Alenko stated. "So whatever disastrous results the meld might have on either of us, not doing it is definitely going to get us both killed in the long run. So let's do it. Let's crack this message and get it to Shepard."

She looked at the man, realized how sound his logic was and took his hand.


Seventeen Minutes Later, 2158 CE, Menae Installation 237, Infirmary

After arriving at the infirmary and exchanging a few words with General Arterius, who still hauntingly reminded her of his late younger brother, Liara and Alenko had informed the resident turian physicians of what they intended to do. After their outright refusal to have any part in Liara possibly killing either herself or Alenko and the general's orders that they most definitely would to make sure neither of them died, the asari and the human gott themselves wired up to all kinds of medical machinery. They were now standing face to face with one another, a turian medic behind each of them ready to catch them in case something went wrong. Liara lifted her hands to the Alenko's head and touched his dark hair.

"You really are sure that you want to do this?" she asked cautiously.

He only stoically nodded in reply. Going by the look of fear in his eyes, Liara assumed that he refrained from speaking because he didn't want to sound uncertain.

Bravery in the face of complete fear. She smiled and finally understood why Shepard respected Alenko the way their mind meld had shown her.

Liara closed her eyes and felt a ripple of electricity go through her body, starting at the tip of her spine all the way to the palm of her hands. While her eyes opened wide and her mouth spoke the words 'embrace eternity', Liara already found herself elsewhere.

At first it wasn't actually all to different to the mind meld with Shepard. She was standing inside of an indescribable emptiness which seemed to encroach on her from all sides while simultaneously stretching into infinity at the same time.

"Kaidan?" she asked carefully, hearing her voice echo off invisible walls several times over.

At first there was no reply and she watched as her breath started to turn into fog due to how cold her surroundings where. Then she suddenly started to feel the sun beat down on her worse than any Thessian summer ever had. The air turned hot, humid and unpleasant and Liara found herself standing on an alien planet next to what appeared to be an HSA military school. It was a complex of white buildings with fine blue lines etched into their walls, assembled across a vast spacious plain and shadowed by a much larger city with towers of white metal, grey steel and clear glass.

She could hear a lot of human voices.

A lot of very young human voices.

Just where was she?

"It's Grissom Academy," a familiar voice from behind her stated. She spun around and found Alenko standing there. "Don't ask me how I know you were asking yourself that question," he went on before she realized that he looked and sounded younger than she remembered him. His hair was shaved down to where there it was just a patch of thin black bristles and his face looked less aged and weary.

Shepard's memory had taken her elsewhere as well, so in retrospective she probably shouldn't have been surprised to suddenly be standing on Terra Nova of all places and being faced with a fifteen year old Kaidan Alenko.

"It's the mind meld. Our minds are-"

"-joined?" he asked before a blink of the eye turned him back into his older self.

"Yes."

"Hm," Alenko murmured before stuffing his hands into the pockets of the black and grey digital uniform he was wearing. He threw a look at the compound, which seemed to slowly grow further and further away the longer he looked. He let out a sigh. "Don't get me wrong. I'd love to get hung up on the good old times at Grissom. But we've got a job to do here, don't we?" he stated. "How exactly do we go about unlocking the message?"

Liara blinked and all of the sudden they were standing inside a dig site she recognized as her first significant discovery of prothean ruins. Then she thought back to how things had gone during the last mind meld.

"Back when I did this with Emily, the message of the beacon simply showed itself after some time," this time she didn't fix her slip-up regarding Shepard's name. In the environment everything felt more personal, so her first name felt fitting. After all, she still remembered the connection they had shared and the way her perfect auburn hair had flown in the wind of her garden. "I went in with the intention of fixing whatever the other asari had broken and the beacon's message just kind of popped up," she remembered.

"That was back on Feros, wasn't it? Before the entire mess on Noveria-" he began before they were suddenly standing in Peak 15 and looking at Liara's dying mother with a human in broken armor and peeled-off grey armor standing over her broken and bleeding body. "Ah shit, I didn't mean to-" Alenko began before several voices began to echo through the chamber they were in.

'No matter what I achieved in my life, you were my greatest gift to this world, Liara," every word of her mother's voice stung, but nothing came as close as what followed.

'Either way, she already hates me. It won't make a difference to her if I pull the trigger. But if you do it,' that voice. That damned voice.

Rationally, she understood that the man had done exactly what her mother had asked him to and was thankful for the fact that he had kept Shepard from becoming her mother's killer. It had been a sound and empathic decision that had produced the best outcome for a terrible situation. But emotionally she had grown to despise the person behind that voice as nothing but the monster that had ended up as her mother's killer.

'Okay. Fine'-

'My Little Wing'-

'It's gonna be fine.'

A loud gunshot finished off the exchange and suddenly everything but the figure in the broken armor and her mother's body vanished.

"Liara, are you-" Alenko began.

"I will be," Liara muttered before closing her eyes and replacing the scenery with her home on Thessia.

After what had happened with Shepard, she'd taken it upon herself to learn of the extend to which she could control a mind meld. After all, the experience of being incinerated by a reaper had been enough of an incentive for her to sacrifice a little of her time to prevent that from ever happening again. "As I was saying, the message just sort of revealed itself back then. I could go prying, but I don't want to," she fidgeted with her fingers again before noticing that a small blue child was digging a hole in the garden in the distance; that would be her younger self. "Maybe if you think back to the collector ship," she suggested.

"Alright. I can try that," Kaidan stated before Liara suddenly felt herself drop into an ugly brown cave.

'We'll see about that, won't we?- won't we- won't we-' a confident turian voice flanged before a horribly loud blare caused Liara to clutch her head in pain.

'No. We won't. There is no escape. There is no hope. There is no victory. There is only the harvest. Prepare yourself for your doom. Prepare yourself for our perfection. Prepare yourself for our arrival,' a voice that sounded more like a legion than one singular entity declared before the very walls around Liara started to meld to an orange-yellow goo. She looked around and found Kaidan simply staring at the wall of yellow, oily mist that was encroaching on them and on instinct alone, yanked his arm.

And just like that, they were falling again.

She wasn't sure how long it lasted.

Maybe it was a second, maybe it was an eternity.

Inside of here it all felt the same.

She closed her eyes and when she opened them again, Liara found herself and the unresponsive human Spectre standing in front of a four-eyed, shadowy figure. The only distinctive feature she could make out where its four, horizontally aligned, yellow-glowing eyes. She sat aside her curiosity and turned to her companion.

"Kaidan, you need to wake-"

All of the sudden, a shadowy hand reached out to her and a deeply accented and raspy voice began to speak.

"For now, your companion has to remain a mere guest to our conversation," the figure said. "His mind could not bear the strain of unlocking this information and processing it at the same time."

Liara looked at the figure.

"Who are you?"

Who I was in life, does not matter. The only thing you need to understand is who you were supposed to become. Look within yourself. It has always been there, sleeping, lingering, waiting."

She considered the figure's words for a second and then admitted to herself that she had no idea what it was talking about.

"I'm afraid I don't understand."

"And that is our biggest failure," the figure declared. "You were to inherit our legacy. You were to walk in our place. You were to be our vengeance, our defiance and our weapon," the figure declared before its eyes shot towards Alenko, who continued to seem asleep. "Yet here his kind stands as the recipient of our message. Not yours. Not ours. Not any other. His," the black figure went on before a court of other equally shadowy beings appeared behind him for as far as she could see.

Some of them were easy for her to recognize. There were turians, salarians, asari and members of all the other current races. Bu the rest she could not place at all. In the front row she could see a bulky humanoid being with no visible eyes, a slender and tall tentacle figures not unlike the statues she'd seen on Ilos, a jittery rodent with the proportions of a child that radiated something she could only describe as a menacing aura and a creature that carried itself on six hind legs and towered over all the other beings, including the already massive elcor shadow. Who were these beings? And why were they standing out among the rest? The other shadows she could see were indistinguishable from one another. Well, all save for the one that was rising in the distance. That one was very clearly a Reaper.

"What do you mean we were supposed to inherit your legacy?" Liara asked after her attempts to shake awake Alenko failed.

"It matters not. All will fight or all will perish," the shadowy hand suddenly clasped her arm the same way she'd done to Alenko minutes ago, freezing the Reaper that was closing in on them. "You must begin the search anew. Find the pieces of the Crucible. They will be scattered over the galaxy just as they were during our cycle and during all those who walked before us," the figure said, his last words echoing through the space they occupied several times over. "I wish to give you more answers, but in life, I never learned of where all the pieces were hidden. We were beaten before we could find the remainder of the Crucible. We never found the Kaleidoscope and never identify the Catalyst. We never stood a chance at finish the Crucible," Liara felt Alenko jolt awake next to her. Simultaneously, the Reaper awoke again, and the other shadows continued to be consumed and assimilated by the ever-larger monstrosity. One by one, the distinctive figures faded out of existence to be added to Reaper. The first to go was the bulky figure with no eyes, then the jittery rodent and the giant six-legged being followed in rapid succession. After some time the figure from Ilos that disappeared as well. Now it was just them, the shadows of the current races, the figure in front of them and a rapidly vanishing assembly of vague humanoid shapes standing in line with the four-eyed shadow.

Before she could ask what the Kaleidoscope, the Catalyst or the Crucible were, the shadowy figure's companions vanished and it too began to fade away at the hands of the Reaper that was now towering over them. However unlike all the others, there seemed to be an intense struggle. The Reaper didn't immediately consume it. It could only slowly chip away at the four-eyed figure, taking it away piece by piece.

"What the hell's going on here?" Alenko muttered while shaking his head. Meanwhile the figure looked at Liara.

"You were touched by a cipher before. You understand more than him. The first piece of the search now rests with you. Both of you. Begin where it all started, only then you may find the end," it stated before everything up to its neck faded away. "Continue the search in our place. There is still time to for your cycle to finish the Crucible. And as long as there is time, there is still hope to beat the Harbinger. You can avenge us. All of us," in one last burst of yellow light, the glow of its eyes vanished and the shadow disappeared. In its place, thousands of fainter yellow glowing lights appeared in the chamber, giving the appearance of thousands of eyes staring at all of them. With the figure gone, Liara and Alenko were now alone with the shadowy spectres of the current species and the Reaper that was now looming behind the shadow-batarian, ready to add it to his collection.

"What was that guy talking about?" Alenko asked, still sounding very confused.

"I-" Liara began before noticing that the eyes had turned into a wall of yellow mist that was appearing from behind the reaper and shooting at them impossibly fast not unlike a cloud of poisonous gas.

Her eyes widened and before she could ever think about finishing her sentence, she yanked both herself and Alenko out of the mind meld and got greeted by the sight of the ceiling of Installation 237's infirmary and Arterius' face.

She blinked once and shot up.

"Kaida-"

"He's fine. Asleep, but fine," the turian general said quickly.

Liara glanced at the clock hanging on the wall. The time of day was earlier than when they had started, which could only mean one thing.

"How long was I out?"

"Sixteen hours," Arterius replied. "Were you able to decipher the message?"

Liara closed her eyes and suddenly felt a wave of information crash down on her.

"I need something to write," she declared urgently. When no one moved after a second, she decided to reinforce her request. "Now!" Without pause, Arterius ripped off his omni-tool and handed it to her.

"What did you find?" he asked while she began typing down everything she could remember.

She closed her eyes for a second and visualized the exchange again.

Crucible.

Catalyst.

Kaleidoscope.

The instruction to begin 'where it all started' because only then could she find 'the end'.

She typed all of that down first and then replied as honestly as she could.

"I'm not sure yet."


Fifteen Minutes Later, 10. April 2417 AD, Menae, Installation 237

Ever since talking to Janon as part of her ongoing investigation into the question as to whether this task force had been infiltrated by indoctrinated agents, Miranda had been itching to talk to the person who'd recommended the salarian; Jondum Bau. Naturally, she'd quickly remembered where she'd heard the name before. He was the Spectre who had trained Shepard's replacement, Kaidan Alenko.

Needless to say, Miranda had been more than rejoiced when the universe had worked in her favor and literally put Bau in front of her.

While she was obviously interested in knowing why he'd brought Alenko here, even more so now that she'd told Director Harper and been subsequently ordered to instruct Alenko to report back to him at once, she was also interested in finding out how the strange salarian Janon had managed to get someone as respectable as Bau to recommend him for this operation.

She'd looked at Janon's work after reading up on his field and from her very informed opinion, she'd gotten the impression that he was by no means extraordinary at what he did. Although she obviously couldn't be the standard others were compared against, she was after all indeed extraordinary at everything she touched, she'd at least have expected that she'd need some time to do what Janon did. Yet it had only taken her a couple of nights to comprehend his field and work enough to be able to replicate it.

So what exactly had convinced the Spectre to put him here?

Well.

She'd find out now.

The Cerberus operative wiped her hand across the barrack door and used her master keycard to overwrite the 'locked' status that Bau had put on his temporary quarters. Then she stepped inside and, contrary to the fact that she'd just seen him walk out, came face to face with a distinctively uncaring salarian Spectre clad in nothing but the grey undersuit of his armor.

After a second of thinking about how she'd just been made a fool of and wondering why Bau was still going about the maintenance of his Scorpion pistol as if she hadn't just tried to break into his apartment, it dawned on her.

"A holo-decoy with a behavioral VI. You knew I was watching," she figured, hiding the fact that she was boiling with rage at being shown up like an amateur. It'd do her no good to lose her cool now.

"Extraordinary method of distraction. Has gotten me out of many situations, on and off the field," the salarian Spectre responded before lowering the muzzle of his Scorpion on the desk, putting down the cleaning brush and exhaling. "Have noticed you stalking me. Glad you finally decided to make your move. Nearly ran out of things to keep me busy in here," he stated.

"Stalking's a very harsh word," Miranda replied. "I just happened to wait for the right moment to catch you alone," she went on. It was a calculated reply because of how many ways it could be interpreted in. It could be a flat-out statement, a threat, even a seductive proposal. It all depended on the recipient and they he'd interpret it would tell her something about the person she was talking to.

Bau seemed to take it as the first.

"To what end?" he replied casually.

"I've been meaning to talk to you about the technician you recommended for this operation," she stated. "Janon."

The salarian blinked again and got up from his chair.

"Ah. Janon. Extraordinarily gifted individual," he stated. "Reason of interest?"

"Due to some recent events, I've been vetting the task force members. He seemed-"

"Strange?" Bau suggested before seemingly trying to smile. If it was supposed to be disarming, it didn't work. Something about a scarred and wrinkly salarian trying to smile just didn't sit right with Miranda.

"Yes," she responded casually, ignoring the uneasiness she felt at the alien smile or the fact that Bau seemed to not be interest in what she meant with recent events. Then again, he had been around to witness the murder of the Task Force Aurora member at the hands of an indoctrinated Hahne-Kedar employee, so maybe he was already suspecting a thing or two.

"Not surprising," Bau nodded. "Janon is an outsider. Has been for as long as I've worked with him."

She picked up on that.

"I take it your history's why you recommended him?"

"No. Talent," Bau replied while Miranda noticed the hint of a circular tattoo peeking out at his grey-black wrist. It seemed to be some kind of golden salarian writing, but the translator contacts she was wearing failed to turn it into readable human words. Since her contacts were up-to-date, that might indicate that it was no writing after all. "Janon not be the best at his field, true. Better signal technicians exist. Still, none as good as Janon at translating own skills to other areas," the Spectre stated before turning his hand in a gesture that showed his palm and revealed a single phrase to Miranda's contact lenses. "Adaptability makes him excellent choice for assignment regarding unknown alien technology. SLD agreed. Hence, recommendation and assignment."

'Jeshesh'.

Judging by the lack of any further translations, she determined that it had to be a name of some kind. Immediately the alien word etched itself into her mind and shifted her interest.

Hadn't Janon had a similar tattoo?

"I see," she stated, probably sounding a hint too distracted for Jondum to not realise that she'd noticed something. Despite the slip-up, she still tried to stick the landing. "An outsider with a strange talent," she pondered. "In retrospective that kind of makes him the ideal fit for an operation like this," she smiled disarmingly, using the fact that Bau didn't know her to her advantage. "I will admit that this is very embarrassing for me, Agent Bau. I intruded on you and ended up becoming a victim of my own paranoia. Silly me."

"Following up on suspicions never silly," Bau said before slashing his hand through the air and then folding both of his arms behind the back and adopting a tone that very much reminded her of one of the teachers of one of the dozen schools she'd gone to before running off with HSAIS. "Leadership always justified in closely observing subordinates."

"You are taking this very well considering I just broke into you barrack," she pointed out, continuing to play up her embarrassment. "I appreciate it, but apologizes are still in order."

"Nonsense. Never necessary to be embarrassed for concerns about operational safety," he repeated in the same teacher-voice. "No apologies necessary. Encounter will stay between the two of us."

Miranda nodded, excused herself out of the room, went back to her office and then immediately went ahead and looked up what a Jeshesh was.

The extranet results left her with two possibilities.

Either Bau and Janon happened to share a similar love for botanic to the point where they tattooed flower names on their skin, or they were religious outcasts by the standard of the Salarian Union.

Needless to say, she had no idea what to make of that.


Sixty-Three Minutes Later, 10. April 2417 AD, Citadel, Presidium

"And you're sure no one followed the two of you?" the asian journalist said before nervously looking behind her and eyeing the pair of salarians sitting at the table behind them. Were they acting suspicion? To her it certainly seemed like they were. He'd caught them glancing at her every now and again while she had waited for Shae and her geth expert. "Should we even be doing this out in the public?"

"Goddess. For the last time, Emily, relax." Shae sighed before placing a hand on shoulder of the volus to her right. Wong wasn't sure where the asari editor had found a geth expert this quickly or why he was a volus and not a quarian like she'd expected. "If you'd stop being so paranoid, we'd just be three old friends catching up over a cup of tea. Nothing to worry about," Shae retracted her arm and inspected the new bracelet she had recently bought. In Wong's opinion it looked way too expensive for someone with an editor salary to reasonably afford. Then again, Shae had been working as an editor longer than she had been alive, so maybe she'd just saved up. Where the money had come from wasn't really important right now anyways.

She looked at Shae and then at the volus.

"Don't you want to introduce us?" she suggested towards Shae, who was still playing with her bracelet like a kid with a fancy new toy.

"Right, right," the asari muttered before looking at the volus with a smile and waving her hand towards Wong. "This right here is my colleague Emily Wong. I've known her for several years now and as I've already told you, you'll be working together with her very closely," then she moved her hand over to the volus. "And this, Emily, is my dear old friend-" she seemed hesitant.

"Barla Von," the volus suddenly interrupted before extending his weird, three-fingered hand for a handshake. "My name is Barla Von." Although the claw-crane arrangement of the volus' fingers obviously made a traditional human handshake impossible, Emily still extended her hand. As a curtesy, she also kept herself from cringing when the volus grabbed on to two of her fingers and pinched them with three of his before moving his entire arm up and down for an awkwardly long time as if this was the first time he'd ever shaken hands with someone. He continued to do this for five long breaths from his exo-suit and then let go. "It is a pleasure to meet you, Earth-Clan."

"So you're Shae's expert on robots," Wong stated putting on a friendly smile.

The volus turned his head towards the asari, who nodded her approval as if she'd first have to be proven trustworthy by Shae before the volus could speak to her.

"Yes, I," the volus said before a mechanical breath, "am that expert," another breath. Either he was even more nervous than her or this particular volus had a particularly tiny lung. "As Shae has said," yet another breath interrupted him. "I can help you with Hahne," breath, "Kedar."

While she felt like he'd said that a little too loudly, her asari friend seemed entirely unconcerned. "You can trust him, Emily. Vor's the best there is," she muttered nonchalantly.

"Von," the volus corrected after his head had spun at her much faster than she'd thought the volus capable of. "My name is Barla von."

"That's what I said, no?" the asari stated, sounding almost aggravated at the volus' correction. "Either way, I already told Von everything he needs to know, so at this point the two of you just need to find an appointment to fuck HK over," the asari went on.

Before Emily could comment on that statement or realise how strange it was that Shae would get the name of her dear old friend wrong like this, her omni buzzed with a new message. Up until she brought it up, she was excited, figuring it'd be another chunk of the story curtesy of her source. But then she realized that it was just yet another message from her murderous fake-boyfriend Solomon Gunn. He'd been back on the Citadel for a few days now and judging by his increasingly needy messages that went along the lines of 'hi, I'm back, see you later?', 'hey, you still with us?', 'it's fine, just come by when you get this' and the by far most needy one 'Hit me up with a life sign when you get the chance' he was seriously clinging on to the shitshow that was their entirely fake relationship.

His concern was kind of pathetic, really.

She read over the fifth message he'd send her just now.

'Emily, I haven't heard from you in three days. Everything alright with you?'

As before, she refrained from replying, even if it got her Shae's disapproving look.

"If you want this story to work, you'll eventually have to talk to him," the asari suggested before emptying her cup of tea. Then she brought up her own omni, which Wong now realized wasn't her old one but rather a state-of-the-art, incredibly expensive salarian model that was just as far away from her salary as the bracelet. Had Shae inherited money or won the lottery or something along those line? Last she'd checked, the asari lived in a small apartment and barely could barely afford her rent, let alone luxurious jewelry. Editing was an important job, but it hardly made someone rich.

"Easier said than done. He betrayed my trust. It's hard for me to ignore that about a guy, especially when I'm supposed to sleep in the same bed as him or let him touch me with his murderer hands," the journalist replied while the volus' rhythmical mechanical breaths sounded off.

Shae let out a laugh.

"You're making this way worse than it actually is, darling."

"He's a killer, Shae."

"Some women find that attractive."

"I don't."

The asari let out another laugh.

"If I were you, I'd look on the bright side. At least he's a good looking human and not, you know, an ugly batarian or a volus or something like that," the asari shrugged while Wong frowned and Von stayed awkwardly silent, "no advice, buddy," she said before tapping Von on the shoulder and then looking back at her. "Word of advice form an old friend?"

"Anything that helps," she meant it. At this point she'd take anything that would help.

"Trust and morals are overrated, at least when the person it's about isn't going to be around much longer," Shae said before getting up from her chair. "Make the most out of Gunn. The quicker you do, the quicker it'll be over."

She watched the asari make a move to leave her alone with the volus.

"Where are you going?"

"I've got to take care of something," she said before minimizing her omni-tool. "Tea's on me by the way," she slid a credit chit on the table.

"Won't you be needing that?"

"I've got more than one. Just bring it by my place tomorrow. You and Vor take as much time as-"

"-Von-" the volus began before earning himself a death stare.

"- you need," Shae finished with a weird look on her face. But just like her continued slip-up with the name of the volus, Wong didn't pay too much attention to how weird it was. This was after all her old friend Shae. "Just make sure that you text me the date of your appointment. I want to be there when we kick HK in the ass," then she started walking away, in the exact wrong direction of the Rapid Transit.

"Uhm Shae," Wong called, prompting the asari to turn around.

"Yes?"

"Rapid Transit's that way," she pointed out with her finger pointing behind her.

The asari only smirked in response before flashing her a set of keys.

"My times of flying transit are officially over," she cracked another smile. "Remember what I said about your man. Trust is overrated. Focus on what we need."

She bit her lip in response and thought about it for a second.

Gunn had betrayed her trust and probably killed a hundred people with a gleeful smile on his stupid face already.

But the fact that he was a ruthless murdere without the hint of empathy or a single regard for any lives other than his own didn't mean that she couldn't make the most out of the miserable fact that the asshole still seemed to think of her as his girlfriend. She'd do what Shae had told her and use the opportunity to the fullest, that way it'd be over even quicker.

After all, Shae could be trusted. She wanted the same thing as her. Whereas Gunn was pretty much the captain of team evil-merc-douchebags and chief cheerleader of corporate-scumbags-in-suits, Shae was standing on the same side as her and her new ally Barla Von. In a few weeks' time, they'd be on the right side of history and Gunn and the Wave and everyone at Hahne-Kedar would be in jail for what they'd done. Then she'd finally have written her big story and earned her place in the investigate hall of fame for her effort.

With a sigh and entirely unaware of the world around her, she typed up a message saying that she'd come by Gunn's place later and explain everything then. Then she pictured kicking the guy off his stupid balcony or sabotaging the bar he did pull-ups on so that he may have an accident and die so that justice could be served prematurely.

The mechanical breathing sound of the volus snapped her out of her own murderous fantasies.

"Earth-Clan," Von began while his claw-crane fingers tried and failed to pick up the far too thin credit chits to hand them to the waitress. "Do you mind," he breathed out, "rendering assistance? My suit's gloves," he breathed in, "are not designed for this task," just like the waitress, she had to try her hardest not to chuckle at the volus' struggle. "The chit is," another mechanical breath, "too thin-"

"Yeah, sorry," she said quickly before picking up the plastic card and handing it to the turian waitress. "So what do you say, some time next week?"

"For what?" Von responded in between his breath.

"For our meeting?" she replied. "About HK?"

"Right, of course. Yes."

This geth expert really wasn't all that attentive now, was he?

Maybe he was one of those people who were only really good at one thing?

"So next week?" she asked again.

"No," the volus exhaled. "I only have time in exactly ten days from now."

"So the twentieth?" she figured after checking her calendar and being handed the piece of plastic again. As it fell into her hand, she failed to notice that Shae had only let this chit be printed a few days ago and that its limit also exceeded the earnings of a normal editor.

"Yes. The twentieth. Yes," Von replied with a nod before Wong's omni-tool buzzed with the response of her murderous fake-boyfriend. She could read it at one glance because it was just a stupid smiley, which incidentally happened to show the very thing he very clearly lacked: a heart.

She entered the twentieth as their chosen date into her calendar, said her good-byes to the strange Barla Von and made her way to the dreadful apartment building as if she was walking to her own execution. She made up some stupid excuse about a family emergency regarding a cousin she didn't have and then endured the stupid but mercifully brief 'welcome-back' kiss he put her through.

Had she not been so caught up in her idea of who Solomon Gunn was and the prospect of writing the story of her lifetime, Emily Wong might have been able to tell that something about not just her boyfriend but also Shae and Von had been off. With that realization, she might have also further noticed Gunn's sudden lack of Gunn-ness, reflected on where Shae's sudden wealth had come from, considered Von's strange behaviour or questioned the critical design failure behind the volus making the gloves of their suits incapable of picking up thin plastic cards.

But because of how caught up she was in the events of the last days and how overwhelmingly out of her depth she truly was in regard to this entire ordeal, none of these things ever became apparent to Wong. She didn't know that she was no longer the protagonist of an investigative journalist thriller like se assumed. Neither was she aware that she'd stepped right into the shoes of a side character that lived in a spy flick portraying a shadow war between HSAIS, a galactic terrorist, two factions of a mercenary company and a clandestine division of the human military-industrial complex. Adding to that, she also lacked knowledge of the fact that the only things keeping her alive right now was the fact that three of those groups were interested in the source of her knowledge and assumed that she was aware of who had told her all these things. Finally, and most crucially really, she also failed to understand that only the presence of the very person she was hating so badly right now was keeping them from making their move. Unbeknownst to Wong they, much like her, hesitated to act because they had yet to figure out who exactly the man behind the kitchen table was. They didn't know his name, they didn't know what he was capable of and, most importantly, they, much like Wong, had no idea that he was practically on his own and as such, simply kept an eye on him for the time being.

In that regard they were again acting very similar to Wong.

The young journalist sat on the couch of Gunn's apartment, watched him cook and smiled at his jokes, despite resenting everything she believed he stood for.

In two weeks from now she'd come realize how wrong her perception of not just Solomon Gunn, who would no longer exist at that point, but her entire world was.

But today, two weeks from that crucial day, Wong was still stuck with her own flawed perception of her being the hero of this story, Shae being her trusted sidekick and Gunn being their villain.

And with that in mind, she switched back to into pretending that everything was well and truly fine.


Codex: Non-Prothean Precursor Societies

Although prothean society appears to have dominated the galaxy for much of its known history, as indicated by the mass relays and the Citadel, there have been several discoveries of alien societies over the course of Council history which could not conclusively be linked to the known history and structure of prothean society.

These societies, while vastly different, are collected under the broad and unifying term 'Non-prothean precursor societies', abbreviated as NPPS, and have been the source of many debates, chiefly in regard to how they could have existed alongside prothean society without being influenced by it.

As of this year (2417 AD / 2158 CE) the list of known NPPS numbers at two hundred and sixty-seven certain NPPS and four hundred and two uncertain NPPS, with certain NPPS being those that have been conclusively determinted to not be prothean and uncertain NPPS being those that have only partially been proven to not fit into the currently known structure of prothean history.

Although most of the NPPS do not appear to have crossed the threshold of the iron age and well over fifty percent seem to have become extinct during the Neolithic period of their development, ruins of twenty-one NPPS indicate a stage of development referred to as 'extra solar colonialization'. These twenty-one NPPS have in one way or another managed to spread out beyond the borders of their home star, making their extinction at the hands of a natural disaster improbable.

Among those twenty-one societies, five NPPS have shown conclusive signs of heavy 'relay-like colonialization', meaning that they have been found to have spread across their home clusters in a pattern consistent with what would be expected of mass relay travel instead of regular faster-than-light travel. In addition to the relay-like colonialization, the ruins of these five societies, which range from being several million to 65,000 years old, have displayed clear signs of in-depth understanding of mass effect mechanisms and other 'prothean' relic technology. With three of these five NPPS, there is also conclusive evidence pointing to a massive population spread across large swaths of what is nowadays the Terminus Systems, making their extinction at the hands of a single natural disaster impossible.

The fate of these five NPPS, which are also nicknamed as 'the Missing Five', 'the Anomalous Five' and 'the Wrong Five' remains the subject of many studies and discussions and has been a driving factor in the historical thesis of the 'Flawed Perspective Hypothesis'. This hypothesis, which challenges the generally agreed upon notion that the protheans dominated the galaxy for most of the time prior to 50,000 BCE, claims the Mass Relays and the Citadel were not created by the protheans but rather by some other NPPS which predated them. Additionally, it suggests that many ruins dated prior to 79,000 BCE that have been misidentified as 'earlier stages of prothean architecture' and claims that they are actually not prothean ruins at all but rather the remnant of other NPPS that fall in line with the development of the Missing Five.

Another factor that makes the NPPS noteworthy and challenging of the generally agreed upon history of the galaxy is the fact that the ruins of seventeen of the societies, which would have existed during the height of prothean civilization and galactic dominance in 65,000 display clear signs of orbital bombardment. This indicates that they met a violent end and stands in stark contrast to the proposed idea of a 'pax protheana'. (The pax protheana states that the very existence of a galaxy spanning, single-entity empire such as that of the protheans would rendered armed conflict within its borders improbable to impossible.)

As such the study of these NPPS, which has been spear-headed by elcor researchers for centuries and blocked by the Illuminated Primacy for religious reasons for just as long, remains a highly volatile and interesting field of xeno archeology.


A/N:

Holy shit.

This is the longest chapter of SV up to now (with nearly 15k words) and a lot of this is down to how much story just happend.

In a single chapter we got:

Harper learning of how fucked everyone is

Aganian suspecting Morneau and then being blackmailed into kidnapping him

Liara being disappointed by Miranda and learning of the Crucible

Miranda growing supicious of Bau, Janon and their weird tattoos. (geeh. waht could be up with that? I wonder.)

Us learning that Nihlus totally used to juggle two cabal chicks and got his boney ass kicked for it

Wong consistently getting closer to something terrible happening

And Morneau consistently getting closer to having a bridge dropped on his mission.

... I don't think there's been a chapter where this much has happened yet...

Moving on from that, we officially crossed the one million word treshhold last time around and I just want to say how utterly insane that is.

... over the course of the last four years, I wrote a million words in this universe.

... that's a lot of fucking words my dude...

moving on from how much time i have (justifiably) invested int his oh so strange hobby of mine, I jsut want to say taht I don't have a lot to say.

This chapter's heavy on the foreshadowing again, obviously, and it also tells you that SV's ending is going to be an ALTERED version of mass effect's ending (I won't say improved because god knows I'm not nearly arrogant enough to prematurely promise you I'll do better than Bioware... alright. Maybe I am but that's beside the point)

So for anyone who was counting on a non-crucible ending...

I'm sorry.

Just bear with me allright?

I promise to do better than EA?

Does that work?

For the record we're at 729 reviews, 1138 favorites and 1232 follows.

The view turn out on last chapter was... surprisigly low.

But tbh, I really don't care about that.

I write this because I like it and unless something happens, I'll finish it. (don't take this too omnious or darkly please, I'm just seriously telling you that nothing short of me getting pwned in a car accident or something like that will get you out of the ending. We'll get there, even if I have to drag you across the 1.5 million word count... which I hope I won't hit... christ, I just jinxed myself, didn't I? This is going to drag on forever, isn't it? It's like the fast and the furious movies. It just keeps going, no matter what you do. Someone stop me. Please, someone-)

Ok.

Enough of that.

Time to end this overly long A/N.

See you around next time.