Chapter 99. Strangers In A Strange Land


Forty-Three Minutes Later, 2158 CE, Haestrom

Tali stepped of the ramp of their ship. They had landed hidden in the shade of an ancient industrial crane that had somehow survived nearly three hundred years without caretaking. Once she was properly standing on Haestrom, she couldn't help but stare at the sight in front of her. From the roof of one of the higher buildings that she was now standing on she could see from one end of the settlement all the way to the dried-up beach at its other end. It was the first time she'd seen quarian buildings in person, let alone a city.

And while all sorts of words like 'wonderful' and 'awe inspiring' floated through her head, it was first and foremost strange. It was the only word she could think of to describe the feeling of standing on an actual quarian colony and looking at a real, physical building constructed by her ancestors.

Tali obviously knew what her people's architecture had looked like. Because of the continued believe that they would one day take Rannoch back, every quarian child grew up surrounded by images of what had once been one of the most promising space faring civilizations in the galaxy.

But despite this knowledge, the light-grey facades of the enormous building blocks, which had been bleached by three centuries of aggressive sunlight, the rusted metal walkways connecting the various buildings, which had been rusting ever since the opening shot of the Geth War, and the long-broken solar arrays on their roofs that shimmered like shards of broken mirror glass still mesmerized and angered Tali.

This was what their people's lives had once been like and what the geth had robbed them off.

How could anyone ever forget that?

Reegar took a knee next to her and aimed his rifle at a circular structure sitting somewhat excluded from the rest of the settlement. Unlike the rest of the colony, this building wasn't a shade of grey or white composite concrete – the go-to building material of the once beautiful quarian cities. Instead, it was made of dark-blue metal and silver panels shimmered on its roof. Both looked very much intact. While it was hard to tell form a distance, she assumed that the panels of silver were mirrors that redirected light at a central solar collector, which very much unlike the rest of the city had a distinctively geth appearance.

After a second of realizing that her suit wasn't registering what was going on, Tali squinted to protect her eyes. The plating reflected the already uncomfortably bright sunlight in a way that made it seem like Haestrom's surface had a sun of its own and her suit's systems were doing nothing to change it.

"Is that it?" she asked Reegar, manually locking her visor's filter settings before they could begin to shift between filtering out all the brightness and effectively turning her blind and filtering out none of the brightness and also effectively turning her blind. She had expected that the environment would make the electronics in her suit act in funny ways, but she'd bet on her shields failing her first, not her visor.

"Yes, Ma'am. That's the Kaziel factory," the lieutenant responded.

"Looks like the geth renovated before moving in," Prazza added from his right before moving past them and kneeling down at the edge of the building and peaking down. "Didn't clean up under the rug though," he added slowly, prompting Reegar to walk next to him.

"Keelah," Reegar muttered.

Tali, who was much shier of heights than the marines slowly inched her way to the edge of the roof. When she could see what they were talking about, she let out a shocked gasp.

A mixture of long-destroyed military vehicles and civilian transports jammed up the parts of the large avenue that hadn't been shelled to the point of no longer being recognizable. Facing them were the remains of various kinds of destroyed geth platforms that were coated in a thick layer of white ash and in the middle, where the avenue met a smaller street in an intersection, a large crater clearly split the two sides apart.

A three-hundred-year-old mass grave just below them.

It was already traumatic to hear about the systematic eradication of her people.

But to see it first-hand?

That was indescribably painful and it changed something in her.

This could never be repeated or forgiven.

Never.

"Well, I guess since the geth renovated the plant, we now know where the Kaziel drones are coming from. Mission accomplished?" Prazza offered before glancing back at the ship.

"Not yet," Reegar disagreed before Tali could. This wasn't enough to fulfill her father's request. "We need to get closer and confirm that they really are using the plant to build the Kaziel designs and not just regular old geth."

Prazza's shoulders dropped and he sighed.

"Fair enough," he agreed. "It looks like the fastest way to the Kaziel plant is across the roof tops. Shouldn't take us more than twenty minutes," Prazza offered while tracing his hand over the joined roofs of the city and the brown walkways between them.

"You're forgetting the sun," Reegar responded before inching back from the brightness encroaching on the shade that he was standing in. "We need to go through the buildings. Or what's left of them anyways. Otherwise our suits will get fried before we ever make it to the factory."

Tali looked around the roof and wondered how they'd get off it right until one of the marines followed Reegar's orders and put a blowtorch to the ceiling they were standing on. They cut a neat circular hole into the oddly resilient roof material and then jumped inside with the intention of simply forcing their way through the buildings until they reached the plant. While that meant passing the even more depressing insides of the war-ravaged colonial city, Tali had to admit that this was preferable to walking through the devastated streets or running across the sunny rooftops. Inside the buildings there might have been more personalized destruction to behold up close, but on the outside the sun and the sheer scale of the fighting was waiting for them.

She wasn't sure how long it took the quarians to cleave their way through the various buildings or how often they stopped to observe the skeletal remains of ancestors who had died in these very buildings – there were plenty of those around – but by the time Reegar informed them that he could see the Kaziel plant through one of the windows, the sun had set considerably to the point where a long shadow was being cast in between them and their goal. Due to the location of the settlement on Haestrom's northern pole – everything below this latitude was far too hot to be hospitable at this stage - and the current season of the planet, this was about as dark as it would get. She moved to join the lieutenant to take a look for herself but stopped when she heard a faint whistling noise in the distance and saw how Reegar pressed himself back into the dark shadow of the wall adjacent to the window.

"Crap. They've got drones patrolling the perimeter," the marine officer explained while waving for them to hit the deck.

She hit the dirt next to Prazza, who turned to look at her.

"Geth solar panels, geth drones. I think it's safe to say the geht have taken over Kaziel. Let's turn back while we still can," the marine reasoned.

This time Reegar did not speak for her, so it was up to Tali disagree.

"We need to be sure," she stated, clearly seeing the frustration radiating through Prazza's body language. Still, he complied.

"In that case, we need to figure out how to outsmart these drones," he turned to Reegar. "What's the order, Sir?"

"I'm not the one in charge here, Prazza," the lieutenant responded. He then turned to look at Tali. "Ma'am, if you remember something from the files or got a smart idea of how we get into the plant without those things shredding us, now's the time."

Tali looked at the floor for a second and in an uncommon stroke of luck actually did remember something useful when she saw the brittle stone underneath her feet.

"The canal system," she muttered.

"The what?" Prazza responded from her left but without looking away from the sector he was supposed to cover.

"The files I got mentioned that the Haestrom colony had the same issue as most of the settlements on Rannoch's equator. Because of the heat, there's hardly any water to go around, so the original settlers built an enormous underground aqueduct system to supply the city from places that did have water. If it survived the war, it connects every building in the city," she explained before walking past Prazza and out of the door with her omni-tool opened up. She aimed it down the stairway to the extensive basement of the building and grinned behind her mask. "All we need to do is cut our way down there and we'll be able to walk right underneath them!"

She turned around and found that the marines didn't share her enthusiasm.

"That's a great idea and all," the quarian carrying the blowtorch stated before dropping it by her side and producing a hollow clanking sound. "Only problem is that this thing's been empty for two blocks. I don't see us cutting down to anywhere, sorry Ma'am."

"Not to mention that the geth are probably covering the subterranean layer as well," another marine added. All the while no one had noticed that Reegar had crept back up to the window and was looking at something in the distance.

"How fast of a runner are you, Ma'am?" he asked before Tali noticed the crater that had piqued his interest. It was a good way in between their current hiding spot and the Kaziel factory and from her first impression it seemed like it had been produced by an underground detonation, not one from above.

"My father always forced me to keep up with my physical education," she responded earnestly. "Why?"

"Because I think your underground plan's still an option after all. It looks like that crater was made by the geth blowing the ground out from underneath the Conclave forces and unless they specifically dug a tunnel just to get there," the marine suggested.

"They had to have used the canals," she realized before trying to measure the distance and searching for the drones buzzing about the perimeter. "How long do you figure we have?" she asked with new-found confidence.

"It's hard to tell, the drones don't exactly move in a strict pattern," Reegar muttered in response. "A minute? Maybe one and a half?"

Tali squinted.

That couldn't be much more than the length of a frigate, could it?

She could make that with a sprint.

She had to.

"We need to try," she said, prompting Reegar to get up and nod.

"Charging across open ground and hoping that crater isn't a dead-end? This is a bad idea, LT," Prazza injected.

"So sit it out. You're all welcome to," the lieutenant offered to his squad as he walked to the rusted door of the building and cracked it open so he could see the drone's movements. "Get ready to run as soon as I'm out of the door," he told her while the marines stacked up behind them.

"We both know that's not an option," Prazza responded before folding up his assault rifle and attaching it to the magnetic locking system on his back. "If I let you run out there on your own, you die. And if you die, I'll never hear the end of 'Kal'Reegar, Hero of the Flotilla'. That's not happening. No way."

If the words affected anything in the lieutenant, he didn't let it show. Instead, he simply shoved open the door, yelled 'move' and began his sprint. As Tali found out three steps out of the building, her 'keeping up with her physical education' didn't amount to being nearly as fast as the marines. Most of them overtook her quickly and only the last two members of the squad stayed on her height, presumably to make sure she didn't trip and die without any of them knowing.

The distance they had to run turned out to be a little more than the length of a frigate and when she hit the edge of the crater, she halfway expected herself to look at a dead-end and get swarmed by geth drones.

In another uncommon stroke of luck, this wasn't the case.

Instead of looking at an inescapable trap, she saw Reegar standing next to a blown-apart entrance to the subterranean canal system, waiting for the rest of his unit.

"Down there, now!" he ordered after they had slid down the side of the crater. Without as much as thinking about how deep she'd fall or how hard she'd land, Tali complied with his rough order and jumped into the dark gap. She landed on a stone walkway barely illuminated by what little sun got through the gap and was pulled to the side by one of the marines so Reegar could jump inside as well. It took several seconds for her to orient herself but when she did, she let out another gasp.

While it wasn't as massive as she had expected and the water it had once transported had obviously dried up in the last three hundred years, the sloped aqueduct they had landed on was still intact, despite the explosion.

The ancestors had certainly built to last.

"Keelah. I can't believe this actually worked," one marine muttered as the unit began to move into the darkness, night-vision filters helping them along.

"And I can't believe this place isn't crawling with geth," Prazza added before stepping over a rip in the aqueduct that revealed a very long fall below. "Say, did anyone think about how we're going to get back to the ship when we're done in the plant?" he added unceremoniously.

Tali nearly froze in her step.

She hadn't.

"We'll worry about that when we get there," Reegar responded coolly while leading the way through the canal system. If it hadn't already been clear that he was the leader despite Tali technically being in charge, this mission certainly made it obvious and showed her just how much she still had to learn. When she made a decision, she didn't think long-term. She just solved a problem and got nervous when it produced two more. Reegar on the other hand simply took things in stride and adapted to every challenge before overcoming it. It was admirable, reassuring and amazing to look at and the more she saw of it, the more Tali was sure she'd never be able to reproduce it.

Maybe her father was wrong and leaders were born, not made?

It'd certainly explain how she hadn't improved in the slightest-

A low whistling interrupted her train of thought and prompted her to look up ahead instead of the cracked aqueduct floor.

"Well I guess we know how the geth got inside," Prazza muttered as the quarians looked at the clean hole that had been cut through the massive reinforced door in front of them. He and Reegar approached the opening and risked a peak inside. Meanwhile Tali and the rest of the squad stayed behind. Only when they gave the all-clear did they follow. As expected, the door led them into the equally dried-up water reserve tanks of the factory. While it seemed inescapable at first, it could be left by a very long and very instable looking ladder. But despite its appearance, the ladder still held in place when they climbed it.

As she had previously noted; the ancestors really had built to last.

The marines and Tali left the water reservoir and found themselves in the rest of the foundry's basement, which seemed to have once been used as living quarters but had since been repurposed to house large rows of teal-glowing geth generators. While that sight was obviously worrying since it suggested that they were now well within hostile territories, Tali couldn't help but get excited at the prospect of being this close to getting her father what he wanted; conclusive proof that the new geth really were coming from this plant.

"Great. We found geth solar cells, geth drones and now geth generators," Prazza stated in a whisper while Tali, Reegar he and the rest of the quarian marines lingered in the darkness just outside of the shine of the plasma generators powering this place. "I'd say this is conclusive evidence that the platforms are coming from here, wouldn't you agree, Ma'am?"

"No," her answer surprised Tali herself. She wasn't sure if this was her own logic speaking through her mouth or if this was her desire to impress her father, but for one reason or another, she disagreed. "They could be using this place for anything. Until we see where and how they're building the Kaziel drones, we can't leave."

"Are you serious?" Prazza said in a snarly tone. This time he wasn't immediately accepting of the decision to carry on. "We've got all the evidence in the world. What else do you want us to do? Casually stroll past a bunch of generators and motion sensors and wake up every geth in the vicinity so we can ask them if they copied our secret military designs?" his whisper was dangerously loud and if not for his noise-cancelling mask threatened to trip every auditory sensor in the vicinity. "Sir, with all due respect, this is a dumb decision. Call it off."

"Prazza, for the last damn time," Reegar responded. "I am not in charge here. She is."

"Sir, if we go any further into this-" the marine began to disagree again.

"Careful now, Prazza. We've got a clear line of command here."

"But Sir-"

"Enough!"

Surprisingly enough, the silencing command didn't come from Reegar, but from Tali.

All the marines turned to look at her, surprised by the sudden outburst of the otherwise timid young quarian.

She understood the marine's frustration.

But they had a mission.

Her father's mission.

There was nothing more important than that.

"The safety of the Fleet depends on what we find here. Before we leave, we need to be absolutely certain that the drones leaving the Veil are from the Kaziel line. Until that happens, we are staying on Haestrom," she declared while looking at the pulsating generators and feeling a semblance of reason flood back into her brain. "I understand that we can't just walk into the plant. But we still need to stay until we confirm that the geth are building the Kaziel designs," she inched back into the shade and away from the teal glowing.

"So what are you proposing?" Reegar asked without interrupting her spree of decisive leadership.

"Patience," she stated. "We've got supplies for a couple of days. For now, we pull back into the tunnels and see if we can't borrow one of the drones to stand in for our eyes," she suggested.

"You want to take over a geth? Do you even know how to do that?" Prazza questioned.

She grinned underneath her mask.

"I've had enough parts to practice on," it was true, her last mission had provided her with enough pieces to understand how geth worked.

"But what about the ship? What if the geth find it?" another marine suggested.

"The piece of junk looks like it fits in right with the rest of this dead city," Reegar injected. "If they haven't blown it up now, they won't do it anytime soon either," he nodded towards her. "Back to the tunnels?"

"Aqueducts, but yes."


17. April 2417 AD, Cronos Station

"What do you mean 'no'?" Robin asked while looking at Yo-yo, who could only shrug in response. "We gave them all our findings. All the evidence in the world to greenlight the mission. And they still say no?"

"HSAIS isn't a fan of suicide missions when they can help it," the specialist replied, prompting the blonde engineer to sigh. "Haestrom's a geth stronghold. Even if we took the Ain Jalut, we couldn't guarantee that we'll get out again. So no. We aren't going."

"It's our best lead."

"I know."

"Then why are we still sitting here?" the other woman asked again.

"Like I said, HSAIS isn't a fan of suicide missions," Yo-yo repeated. She omitted the fact that if this was just someone from Section 13 requesting this, HSAIS would very much have approved. The problem wasn't her safety. It was theirs. She glanced at the strangely silent Aiden Ardrey. Out of the two of them, she had figured he'd be the one to get worked up. After all, it was his discovery they were being denied.

"If we don't do this, we'll never figure out why they're trying to come to our colonies or what that message about the servants of Nazara is supposed to mean," Robin said.

"Hey, I'm not the one you have to convince," Yo-yo responded. "Neither's my boss. The problem's the guy above of you and the one above all of them," her request had been green-lit by Director Rei. But the director of the scientific department that Robin and Aiden belonged to and the director of all of HSAIS had shot the proposal down. With those vetos, not even someone with the prestigious title of 'Director of Section 13' could wiggle out a change of mind. Unless they walked up to the chancellor and asked her, there was nothing they could do. And since Yo-yo was hardly in the pay grade to just waltz into Goyle's office and ask if she'd like to giver her the permission to take one of the HSA's most advanced stealth ships and two of its most promising minds for a joyride into a geth stronghold, Yo-yo had reached the end of her rope.

"Okay. No fieldtrip," Robin sighed. "So what do we do now?"

"Office work?" Yo-yo suggested, trying to be helpful.

"There's no office work left to do," Aiden injected before pushing himself away from the desk. "We've done everything we can with what we've got."

"We haven't, actually. We could still-" Robin retorted before quickly interrupting herself. "No. Forget that I said anything. It's stupid."

"What's on your mind, Robin?" Aiden asked before Yo-yo could.

"Like I said, forget I said anything."

"Oh for the love of- Just say it," the Scottish man demanded in a sudden fit of frustration, prompting the blonde woman to comply.

"We haven't tried talking to them yet," she said before glancing at Aiden's custom terminal which they had used to get the message in the first place. Ever since the incident of the geth jumping from their damaged platform to the operational computer, the device had its power core removed and been placed in the same isolation chambers that the other geth. As far as HSAIS was concerned – and much to Aiden's dismay – the piece of hardware was now just as dangerous as the combat platforms and had to be treated accordingly. So unlike Robin had promised there had been no 'fixing it later'.

"What?" both Yo-yo and Aiden said in unison.

"We only listened in on what they were saying to each other and put them back to sleep. We didn't ask them anything," Robin responded.

"They wouldn't talk to us even if we tried," Aiden responded. ". Besides. They're broken. It won't work."

"But how can we be so sure about that?"

"Because they're geth," he said with a touch of disdain. "They killed the quarians. They killed everyone who went into the Veil and they killed everyone on Eden Prime. Pardon me if I don't believe them to be the talking type."

"That's right and all. But now they're trying to tell us something. The servants of Nazara are within," she quoted while walking to the containment case and looking at the deactivated terminal holding what had to be the only live-bits of geth code in HSA space. "If we just ask them what that means, maybe they'll answer."

"Do I need to remind you that they were saying that as a threat?"

"If we isolate the terminal again, what's the worst that can happen? That they insult us?" she asked challengingly. "Or blow your terminal?"

"For example, yes," the engineer replied.

"It's our best shot. And the only one we can take right now anyways."

"It's pointless."

Now both engineers turned to Yo-yo, as if she somehow could help them with where they needed to go. Without the myriad of degrees they held, the only thing she could offer was perspective.

"Robin's got a point. Before we sit around all day, we might as well give it a try. Like she said, what is the worst that could happen?"

"Blow up my terminal, for example," Aiden repeated.

"You know, considering how much you dislike him, it's funny how you are like Daniel in that regard. You are both strangely attached to inanimate objects," Robin said before standing in front of the containment pod and receiving a nod from Yo-yo telling her to go ahead with it.

"If by 'strangely like' you mean 'him only ten times smarter', then yes," the male engineer stated. "Otherwise, I resent that comparison. Either way, I still think it's a stupid waste of our time. Especially mine, since I'll be the one translating what the translator screws up."

"Oh come on, Aiden, where's your sense of adventure?" Robin chuckled as she attached something to the terminal, presumably to activate it remotely in case the geth actually did try to blow it up.

"I think it drowned alongside the imaginary crew of the mini-sub I build when I was eight," the engineer shrugged, prompting Yo-yo to throw him a look demanding more explanation while Robin powered up the geth programs. "I took it for a test run to see how deep it really could go. Long story short, it couldn't go as deep as I thought it could. Poof. Science-fair winning project gone below the depths of the Scottish North Sea."

"At least you won the fair," she offered.

"Well, not exactly. I kind of sunk it before the fair and only won place four for the back-up project I made the night before."

"Well, that's something, isn't it?"

"I build a robot who waved at you when you passed his motion sensor eyes and got the fourth place for it. The only thing that was, was a sad statement to the intelligence of my classmates."

"Not everyone can be a boy-genius, Aiden," Robin muttered before the terminal beeped and the process of the geth repeating the same phrase to each other began anew. "Here goes nothing," she said before typing her question into the translator and having Aiden double-check it so that it actually meant what she was trying to say. "Huh," she exclaimed before cracking a mischievous smile.

"Huh what?" Aiden questioned before she turned the terminal.

"They responded," she said. "And it looks like who dares wins is true after all," the other engineer and Yo-yo leaned down to check the screen. While Aiden seemed to immediately share Robin's excitement and declared that he'd go work on a more eloquent translator, the brunette specialist didn't know what to make of the numbers she was looking at. It was just a bunch of ones and zeroes and-

Oh.

"You're talking to them in binary?" she realized.

"I wanted to start small. It's not much, obviously, but at least we know they can talk," Robin explained.

Yo-yo glanced at the numbers again.

Just because she knew what they were didn't mean that she could translate it. It was kind of like the chicken-scratch that passed as batarian writing. She knew what it looked like and could replicate it, but she was lost when she was supposed to interpret it.

"What are they saying? And what did you ask them?" Yo-yo asked, prompting Robin to look at her as if she was asking what colour the sky had.

"Well. Like I said. I wanted to start small," the engineer repeated. "These are damaged programs after all. So I first gave them a basic task. I asked them to replicate what I wrote."

"And what did you write?"

"Hello," Robin responded. "I know this isn't the kind of interrogation you're used to, but like I said. Baby steps. We need to get them there gently."

Out of reflex, she wanted to propose truth serum or one of the elaborate verbal maze runs Morneau favored whenever he was asked to get someone to tell him something.

But then she realized that this wasn't going to work on geth code.

"This is going to take a while, isn't it?"

"Afraid so. It's less of an interrogation and more of a get-to-know process."

"Great."

Getting to know a line of code. Talk about being attached to inanimate things.

"You know if you're bored, you could always distract Aiden from the fact that his terminal's gone. Knowing him, he's gonna be sobby about that all day," Robin offered.

"I heard that!" the other engineer called from the other end of the lab.

"Or maybe all week."


Meanwhile, 2158 CE, Haestrom

The jet-black geth platform lay perfectly still on the ceiling of the sunny roof and observed the small band of quarians through the magnification of its optical devices.

The programs making up this platform had departed from the Veil twenty days, four hours, three minutes, fifty-six seconds and five-five-three milliseconds ago. Their purpose: to deliver a message that zero percent of its predecessors had managed to deliver.

Because of the statistical evidence, the programs making up this platform had decided that the approach of direct contact and immediate attempts to pass on the message were too vulnerable to failure. Therefore, they had altered their strategy accordingly. Instead of approaching organics with the message, the programs had opted to investigate the failure of its predecessors and make the corrections necessary to finally succeed in delivering the warning.

To that end, they had initiated sixty-four relay transits, observed sixteen systems, visited five planets, encountered three organic lifeforms – two of which had to be terminated due to clear hostile intent and one of which had fled in what its behavioral analysis had determined to be a case of 'fear'. Additionally, they had also visited the two locations where most platforms had failed, a recently abandoned human settlement and a colony in the Terminus that the organics inhabiting it revered to as 'Talarila'.

Due to these visits, the programs had been able to determine that no one other than the creators themselves were responsible for the continued failure of the emissaries. They were misunderstanding their intentions as hostile and deactivating emissary platforms in misguided attempts of self-defense.

'If we were hostile, we would have destroyed their craft before they could ever reach Haestrom. Instead, we tolerate their presence and let them wonder on the surface freely,' a minority of programs suggested in response to the logical check that ran through the platform upon that statement. In response, all remaining programs agreed. The creators' assumptions regarding geth hostility were flawed and the fact that all geth knew of the creators walking around Haestrom's surface and ignored them proved that they had no intentions of harming the creators.

Because of this misunderstanding, the programs had realized that before they could pass on the warning, they needed to remove the obstructive misunderstanding. This could only be achieved through creating trust.

The platform registered the destruction around it and once more a minority voiced its observations.

'They will never trust us as long as they do not understand the reason for the Morning War.'

Instantly, the majority of programs agreed with the assessment. Only three opted to disagree on the grounds of the creators' ability for forgiveness.

As the platform's sensors registered the damaging sunlight creeping up on it, all programs unanimously decided to alter its position to the left to avoid a critical system failure. Meanwhile, the creators it was observing continued to stalk around the edge of the crater they were hiding in and tracking the movements of the platforms patrolling the foundry.

Their plan was obvious. They sought to deactivate a drone and reprogram the programs within to do their bidding. Normally, this would be considered an act of hostility that required immediate action. But since any reaction to their actions would only further the hostilities and decrease the successful delivery of the warning – which in turn would increase the chances of a galaxy-wide shut-down event – the shared conscience of all programs on and around Haestrom had decided to remain passive and fake ignorance for the time being. One platform was a small loss compared to permanently destroying all chances off a successful message delivery event.

It watched as the female-creator it had determined to be the leader of the creator-group – an observation based on the reactions of the other creators – stumbled outside of the crater ruin and unleashed an electric burst on a floating patrol platform that incapacitated the programs within.

This had been anticipated.

The small floating platform and the incapacitated programs within were carried away by the creator into the darkness of the aqueduct tunnels that they were using as a hiding spot from the geth prowling the surface. While the creators went about their sabotage, which the programs within the capture platform had agreed to allow for the greater good of all of them, the platform remained in its position and continued its observation. Although this obviously clashed with the task of delivering the warning, the current hypothesis was that in the event of their success on Haestrom, the creators might become capable of acting as a conduit for the warning. Hence, the Consensus had agreed that this platform should remain in a loose pursuit of the group until something…

- A ping from half-way across the galaxy bounced off several relaying platforms and hijacked comm buoys suddenly reached the programs and prompted the platform to peak up from its observation post. -

…changed.

In an instant and fluid set of motion aided by the enhanced Project Kaziel design their platform was based on, the body carrying the programs leapt up and rushed back to its personalized covert transport.

Something had changed.

The contact message had been received by a recipient who was capable of understanding it.

The localized group of creators were no longer of interest.

They had to find the ones who could communicate more efficiently.


18. April 2417 AD, HSASV Normandy

After the very strange mind meld had been concluded, Shepard had said her brief goodbyes to Liara and Kaidan. While she'd obviously wanted to catch up with both of them, especially after what had happened, there had been no time for any such pleasantries. They, alongside General Arterius, had headed back to turian space where they apparently had the infrastructure needed to make sense of whatever Liara had seen.

Shepard had obviously tried to wrap her head around what the asari had told them about the meld but ended up drawing as much of a blank as Liara.

They knew that they knew something important now. But they didn't know what to make of it. To say that this was frustrating was an understatement.

The N7 exhaled a sigh, passed the armory where Leng waved her hello – she was still curious about what kind of compromises her fellow N7 had talked about prior to Liara and the others arriving - and stepped into the conference room.

Originally, she had planned on talking to Thane, who had expressed a desire to get to know her better. While he had joined her mission upon Callius' request, he had pointed out that he knew next to nothing about Shepard and that this needed to be rectified whenever possible. She wouldn't blame him. It was only human (or in his case drell) to want to know whose suicide mission you had signed up for.

But just as she had been about to knock on the life support bay where Thane had taken up permanent residence, EDI had informed her that Harper wanted to talk to her about the continuation of her mission. More specifically, he wanted to talk about her returning to the original task of recruiting Tali'Zorah.

So here she was.

Once more looking at the hologram of a man with whom she had shared a very unpleasant conversation with the last time around.

After resolving to not bring up the fact that he had talked Alenko into becoming a replacement-her or pointing out how she believed that he knew about Sovereign's missing pieces because of Alenko -something she shouldn't have been able to know if not for Liara's slip of control during the meld – Shepard greeted the director, who after briefly commenting on what had occurred on the Normandy two days earlier, went straight to business.

"As I previously mentioned, I believe that Miss Zorah will be a valuable addition to your team, should you be able to locate her," Harper said while drawing in a breath of smoke. If he was harboring any bad feelings for how she'd called him an 'obnoxious secret keeper with a badly tailored suit' the last time around, he wasn't letting it show.

"Should?" Shepard asked.

"Unlike the last time around when my colleagues at Section 13 tracked her down, locating Miss Zorah has been," he paused while Shepard remembered the fateful encounter on the Citadel and the results it had had on the quarian, "difficult. We know where she was and we believe we knew where she was going, but our men in the flotilla have not been able to determine if our believes are actually correct."

Shepard picked out only one thing from that sentence.

"You have men in the flotilla?" she asked while raising her eyebrow at the plural form. She got that Cerberus had been able to buy and bribe its way to informants on Illium and the Citadel. But how exactly could the HSA have infiltrated the quarian Migrant Fleet? Diplomatic relations between the two of them ranged from non-existent all the way to borderline violent whenever a navy formation had to chase quarian prospectors off of Traverse worlds that lay within HSA territory but had still ended up as the sight of a quarian strip-mining operation.

"You seem surprised."

"I am surprised. How did you get people inside the fleet?"

Harper puffed out a cloud of smoke.

"When you've been practicing spy craft for as long as I have, you pick up a thing or two," he clearly didn't want to show her his cards, which was strange considering they were allies but also expected considering he used to be an HSAIS operative. "The how isn't important though," he went on. "Not to you at least." And there it was. The classic 'need-to-know-basis' comment. "To recruit Miss Zorah, you only need to know where we believe she went."

Shepard folded her arms.

"And where might that be?"

Harper stuffed his cigarette into what she assumed was an ashtray next to his chair. Since she'd never actually been in his office, she didn't know anything about its interior design other than it had a chair and a holoprojector. For all she knew, he could be broadcasting this from a pitch-black villain-lair style office located somewhere on Cronos Station, or a tool shed in the backyard of his family house on whichever planet he was from. Sure, one of those was more likely than the other, but both were possible.

Harper grabbed his drink from outside of her view, took a sip and then responded.

"Have you ever heard of a place called Haestrom?"


19. April 2417 AD, Citadel, Kithoi Ward

The journalist lowered the blinds of her apartment, powered up her terminal and looked at the state of her investigation.

She had made little progress in regards to who was sending her all of this information. There were a lot of people who could have an interest into knocking the HSA and Hahne-Kedar down an inch or two and as such narrowing it down the pool of suspects hadn't exactly been possible.

Furthermore her research on the 'Reaper' conspiracy and the supposed Council cover-up had hit a brick wall the size of which she'd rarely seen, which was actually a decent sign that there was something to those claims.

But despite these two setbacks, Wong was in good spirit because she had made significant progress into the whole Hahne-Kedar business.

In addition to what she'd already been told and shown, namely that HK had plucked geth off of the battlefield in the wake of the Eden Prime invasion, an expedition into the more tin foil head-y parts of the Extranet had yielded quite the results. Not only had she found undoctored footage of what she believed to be the HK cleanup crews, which had taken the shape of human commandos in grey and white armor suits with yellow markings that had been sighted picking up geth pieces and various other more disturbing bodies around the epicenter of the Eden Prime attack, she'd also been able to get in touch with someone who was chasing the same thing as her. He was a conspiracy theorist - despite his insistence, Wong refused to call him a journalist – who lived in the CIP and he had been rambling about the very same topics that she'd gotten information on through his blog for the past six months.

As it turned out, 'Steve' - that wasn't his real name but with a lack of a better stand in, Wong had decided to call him 'Steve' - had been curious about the Operation Sentinel bots for quite some time now and collected a lot of information on the way they worked and behaved. According to himself, he'd even managed to 'catch one with a net gun' and taken it apart without the local HSA security forces kicking down his door as a direct consequence. She'd been skeptical at first and called bullshit- But the pictures he'd sent with the drone and a picture of her face had convinced her. While that move had also creeped her out since she hadn't told him who she was, the possible gain was stronger than the creep factor so she'd stuck around and learned more.

So while her meeting with the volus geth expert that Shae had dug up was only tomorrow, she'd already gathered quite a lot of proof.

For example, 'Steve' had conclusive evidence that showed that the small buzzers that were 'upholding public security' in the CIP were basically a human take on geth tech. Except for the exterior paintjob and some of the internal wiring, they were pretty much a poor man's copy of the flying gun platforms that had descended onto Eden Prime as part of the first wave. Additionally, 'Steve' had also told her that he believed that the 'automated HK grunts' that had recently made their first public appearance during the attack on New Canton were also mostly geth tech and that he generally believed that HK was trying to help the HSA build a surveillance state of unprecedented scale and attempting to control their minds by lacing the drinking water with small nanites that would activate as soon as Arcturus gave the signal. In fact, he also had conclusive proof that said nanites had made Saren Arterius take action and that the turian wasn't actually the villain in the story, but rather a misunderstand hero who had tragically died before he could liberate all of them from the human supremacist nanites looking to overtake the Council.

Yeah.

Good information on the geth or not, 'Steve' was still a crazy and that made him difficult to market. Even if half of what he was saying was actually true, the other half was certifiably insane enough to make him an easy target for every halfway decent lawyer to dismantle.

What she had to do to make his information publicly presentable wasn't like what she was planning with Gunn and the Wave.

Sure, her murderous fake-boyfriend was an asshole and a killer, but he was objectively sound of mind. Barring a few kicks of PTSD or whatever else it was that was keeping him awake at night, of course. This meant that everything she got from or through him was sure to dent the Wave's reputation beyond repair.

Wong bit her lip at the thought of the story that she'd been treating with the bare minimum of attention for the last fourteen days. Despite torturing herself to continue to pretend that Gunn was in fact not an asshole and a killer to continuously get something out of him, she wasn't actually actively exploiting him the way Shae had instructed her to. She was just kind of passively waiting for him to do something that she could use, which wasn't working at all because Gunn had become suspiciously withdrawn and at times paranoid ever since his last business trip. Although it was obviously somewhat entertaining to see someone like him show shades of the same fear she had no doubt he had put into quite a lot of people, his behavior also made it very unlikely that she'd get anywhere if she tried something now.

Hence, she was left with nothing to do than to continue to ignore the Final Wave in favor of Hahne Kedar.

What a shame.

She looked at the three charts that she had created to help her keep an overview over what had been distracting her and gave them her full, undivided attention.

The 'HK stole geth tech' story was already pretty fleshed out and she figured that she had more than enough proof to actually shake someone with the power to further investigate awake, so that part wasn't the issue. Neither were her sources. She'd find a way to make 'Steve' presentable and while the anonymity of the other guy obviously would raise some questions, the proof they had delivered was undoctored and conclusive. She could worry about who was sending her this after the fact and in private.

The whole Reaper-shenanigans, Council cover-up and the missing colonies connection that the source had talked about were a different story though.

Beside what her codex-source had told her and the official and very detailed explanation that the 'Reapers' were a group of renegade geth that had left the Veil on a failed genocidal quest to blow up the Citadel, she had only found rumors and stories from the Terminus about something called the 'Reapers'. Pretty much all of them had popped up following Saren Arterius' demise and the subsequent attack that had made his vanquisher, Commander Emily Shepard, go MIA. They spoke of an imminent galactic cataclysm that was making the turians so nervous that they were fortifying everything in between Palaven and the galactic rim and pointed to what it called 'cyclical' pattern of extermination that was clearly visible on the galactic landscape.

However all of this proof was conveniently only obvious in certain locations of the Terminus. Once she'd punched those into the Extranet, she'd gotten nothing but travel warnings and news reports. Apparently, exiled salarian gangs were using these stories to abduct science expeditions from prestigious salarian universities and then demanding ludicrous sums of ransom only to quickly and mysteriously meet their demise at the hands of totally-not-STG and no one ever speaking another word about it.

While her research into the subject had brought up the possibility of this being an STG false-flag operation designated to actively discourage people from looking for further signs of these Reapers and the supposed conspiracy, Wong had to admit that she found the idea that the salarian government would first spread rumors of a galactic conspiracy, then install gangs to abduct people who came looking and then distmantle said gangs by their own hand only to discourage people from further looking into the rumors they themselves had spread ridiculous.

Salarian intelligence did complicated things, no doubt.

But not that complicated.

Other than this very strange web of news stories and the official version, there was nothing there. The word 'Reaper' was a hollow term that only floated around the much less hollow 'Saren Arterius'.

She clicked on the collection of images she'd picked for the article and looked at the image of the white-plated rogue Spectre. By turian standards, he'd certainly been attractive. Well, at least back when this picture had been taken.

The circumstances of his death had been the hottest story for all of 2415 AD but after that, the name and everything surrounding it had drifted out of focus. There had been an investigation into his connection to the Reaper-geth and the death of Councilor Benezia, but it had gotten closed quickly since Arterius was dead and there hadn't been a need to convict someone who'd already crossed the Jordan river. There'd also been memorials remembering the people who'd gotten killed by him, but even those had been hush-hush procedures with a lot of condolences from a whole lot of important people who'd held a whole lot of speeches but still somehow managed to not give a single conclusive answer on why what had happened had happened.

The same and more could be said about the missing colonies.

While New Canton, Vuori and the other recently attacked settlements had proven that the HSA had indeed somehow managed to end up on the shit-list of a species that some voices from around Omega were calling 'Collectors'- who as the name would suggest apparently had a thing for abducting people- she had no idea how this could probably be related to the previously mentioned 'Reaper' conspiracy and Council cover-up that was supposedly going on.

If there was a connection between what Arterius had done and the current 'it's not an actual war because then we'd have to vote on it before being allowed to spend billions of your taxes to ship two hundred thousand angry core-world army grunts to the colonies'-situation that Arcturus had jumped into, she wasn't seeing it. Doubly so for how all of this was supposedly also linked to Hahne-Kedar.

Those three topics didn't seem to have anything in common with each other. Well, except of course for the obvious 'see, the galaxy is dangerous and full of terrors and we do need more of the new dreadnoughts and robots and guns that do just the same thing as the dreadnoughts, robots and guns we bought two years ago when we worried the geth would overrun us' connection. If the HSA had learned to love something since First Contact, it was pumping money into the military-industrial complex while deliberately ignoring that everything else that wasn't their military - or their direct administrative responsibility- was still a thousand years behind the living standard of the poor parts of the galaxy.

Transportation, medicinal services, civilian industries, communications, for crying out loud, even toothbrushes. Whereas the galaxy did everything with sleek futuristic – or rather present-day technology – the HSA blew its money on new ways to kill people and insisted on hanging on to crappy and archaic technology that had been 'state-of-the-art' before the Fringe Wars had kicked off.

She'd done the math, actually.

If the HSA bothered and stopped blowing astronomical sums on the navy, the army, the 'hardening' of colonial infrastructure and the maintenance and distribution god damn emergency wartime stockpile (which Wong knew they'd never ever need now that they were a part of the galactic community) the average human could be flying a skycar, living in a sweet, self-sufficient arcology, eating food twice as nutritious and healthy as the current human diet and brush their teeth with mass-effect assisted tooth brushes.

But instead of living the sweet tartar-free utopia the rest of Council space was enjoying, humans were getting generation-whatever of HK warbots-whatshisface and being told that the HSA had entered an unprecedented era of prosperity and peace thanks to continuously jumping from one fear-inducing conflict to the next one and 'always being vigilant' for the next threat.

She reached for her coffee, rubbed her eyes and took a sip to calm herself.

Why the hell was she getting so worked up over this?

She knew the answer, obviously – it was hard to ignore when it was lying next to her every other night or so – but still, Wong felt like today was worse.

And because of that, she felt like it was time to balance herself out.

And, just like every other reasonable and mature person in their late twenties would, she decided that her balance would come in the form of turning her coffee irish.

That always did the job.


20. April 2417 AD, Citadel, Presidium, Final Wave Headquarters

"See you tomorrow," Morneau lied with a wave towards the volus manning the reception of his office before leaving the floor he worked on. At this stage, he was convinced that even the polite, old volus secretary reached for a volus-sized gun taped underneath her little volus-sized desk whenever he approached her. As it had been commonplace since he returned from Bekenstein, he caught Aganian glancing at him when he passed the window of the turian's office and also noticed how one of his asari coworker turned at her desk and didn't do anything until he was past the office of the turian and well within the elevator.

His alter-ego had an entire floor of trained killers nervous just by being there. Normally, this would've been something Morneau would've found ridiculously hilarious or oddly flattering. But since his life was kinda-sorta in extreme danger with every step he took through the Wave's headquarters, he couldn't bring himself to laugh or brag about it. With the way he strolled through the building with a smile, it might not have looked like it, but with every step he was taking he expected to have to fight his way out of the building.

The doors of the elevator pulled close and Morneau leaned against the wall and let out a sigh. That was it. This was the last time he was taking this ride. As soon as he realized that, he had to resist the urge to burn the entire place and everyone inside – well everyone except for maybe the janitors - down to the ground.

It was done.

Two hundred days of this false pretense were now behind.

He might have lost his bet with Yo-yo as of today, but tomorrow, the twenty-first of April, he would depart for the Shadow Broker's location, where he'd arrive on the twenty-fifth. The scouting was done, the ship was there, the snare was in place and all he had to do was pull it.

While that alone was already a hell of a mood-booster, there was something else keeping him cheerful. Tomorrow would also be the day Solomon Gunn would cease to exist. The message that this would be the case had reached him two days ago, curtesy of HSAIS.

And the good news hadn't even stopped there.

In addition to getting the all-clear for the op and therefore the date ending his undercover assignment, he had been informed that someone up the chain of command had already taken the liberty of mobilizing a company worth of Biotic Assault Regiment marines for the hit. This meant that in addition to finally getting the satisfaction of kicking the Broker's yahg-teeth all across his shp– which were apparently very similar to shark-teeth in the fact that they always regrew and as such could be kicked out multiple times, making the Broker the perfect nemesis for him– he'd also get to run with his old Grissom pals. Or at least the post-Ascension Program generation of Grissom pals that had come after the first trial runs of human biotics that he'd been a part of.

He was careful to say it too loud, but things were really looking up for him for a change.

The elevator door binged and opened and Morneau stepped into the lobby just around the same time as the same female turian that just happened to have clocked out at the exact same second as him for the last couple of days.

What an utter coincidence that was. Some might even have called it destiny, if not for the small fact that this was obviously one of his trails.

He kept himself from commenting on his observations or throwing the pale-green plated alien a knowing smile that would start a fight right this instant. Instead he stuck to returning her polite greeting and simply stuffed his hands into his pockets on his way out of the building without letting it show that he was officially done with this place.

While he was obviously ecstatic at the prospect of bagging the Broker and returning to his actual life, Morneau had to admit that something was gnawing on him.

Or rather, someone.

He and Wong – who had shown up at his door drunk at one in the morning - had gotten into a pretty bad fight slash break-up earlier when he'd jokingly suggested that he could make the stalker that seemed to have bothered her for the last couple of days by making him disappear.

Wong had reacted in a very uncharacteristic burst of anger, shouted something along the lines of 'how could you even say that? What's wrong with you, you fucking lying murder-monster, I hate you' and then attempted to kick him out of his own – or rather Solomon Gunn's – apartment. The verbal attack had been coupled with a few poorly placed and hardly powerful slaps, which had all failed to connect with the very much unintoxicated specialist - mostly because he'd been standing two meters out of reach but also because he kind of had been trained in military hand-to-hand since was twelve and a drunken journalist a head smaller than him wasn't exactly in the grade of his usual opponents.

Despite her continued aggression, Morneau had managed to extract himself out of the apartment peacefully. This had again been made possible partially because Wong had been shit-faced and partially because drunken journalists weren't a threat to one of HSAIS's top-level field operatives. Given her clear state of intoxication, his own lack of attachment to the apartment and some common decency, a quick evacuation had seemed like the right call – if only because it gave him time to try and understand this disruption of his otherwise perfectly planned departure from the Citadel and spare him from adding 'knocked his girlfriend out' to the list of things he'd done while being Gunn.

After some reflection on what the hell could've set Gunn's girlfriend off like this – at this stage it was very important that he began thinking of Wong as someone attached to Solomon Gunn and not himself because frankly that was exactly what she was, a part of the life of a person that didn't exist– Morneau had only been able to draw three conclusions.

Either she believed Gunn cheated on her, had figured out something about Solomon Gunn that horrified her or uncovered that Solomon Gunn wasn't Solomon Gunn at all and been mad about the deception.

Two Morneau could deal with, namely the prospect of her having something against Gunn.

However the last one, which wasn't aimed at Gunn, was problematic.

If Wong knew who he was (or at least knew that he wasn't who he said he was), there was no telling what she'd do and no way for him to control or protect her when she got herself into the crosshairs of this operation, something he thought her fully capable of. She had never been one to run away from what she considered a good story. Her persistence in that way had made him-

- Morneau took a mental break and corrected himself-

- had made Gunn like her so much in the first place.

Even if the specialist knew that he could let her go without any remorse – he had gotten exceptionally good at the whole letting it go shtick in the last fourteen years – he still felt responsible enough for her to keep her out of trouble. Although she was only his fake-girlfriend and he had no real personal attachment to her despite the last six months (god damn that sounded like a convincing lie now that he though it out loud) Wong was still a citizen of the Human Systems Alliance. Therefore, as a civil servant of the HSA and an active-duty officer of the Human Systems Alliance Intelligence Service, it was his sworn duty to make sure that no harm came to her.

Thus, now equipped with a false justification, Morneau resolved that he had to take care of this matter today, even if the option of running away, never looking back and burying what they had had with each other under his favorite mantra was a very tempting and much easier decision.

He'd never been one for the easy way anyways.

While reflecting on Gunn's relationship with Wong, Morneau reached the public transit station he used to get home and noticed that it was delayed, which was unheard of for this part of the Presidium. Nothing around here was ever late unless someone wanted it to be late, the geth were barring down on the Citadel alongside a Reaper or the krogan were cutting the station into tiny occupation zones.

On a hunch, he threw a glance over his shoulder. After a few seconds of scanning his surroundings, he noticed the increase of familiar faces and activity behind him and frowned in realization when he caught a glimpse of the pale-green turian darting out of his presumed field of vision. Out of all the days Aganian could've picked to make his move, why did it have to be the last possible one? Dammit, he was busy with sorting out and letting go of Solomon Gunn's life and girl. He didn't have time for a clandestine chase around the Presidium, no matter how cathartic it would be to bash in a few Final Wave heads before he took care of their best yahg buddy.

Time for the back-up plan.

With a subtle set of moves he sent a prepared message over his watch and set out to his bug-out location that he'd prepared in the days leading up to today; the HSA's military dock on the presidium ring. There, a platoon of BAR troopers just happened to be waiting for further orders until tomorrow. As the message – which contained nothing but a set of instructions for the squad to gear up, move to the secondary dock entrance and prepare to look as intimidating as possible and maybe to shoot a couple of people if they shot first – was received, his watch turned from blue to red, indicating that he'd also just fired off an emergency signal to the closest agent; Lancelot, the man who'd talked enough sense into him to prepare something like this. While the BAR unit would be waiting for him behind closed doors, Lancelot would give the MPs stationed at the dock another set of instructions and then shadow him all the way to the docking area, just in case something bad happened until he got there.

If his pursuers noticed that Morneau had just changed his daily route and was heading too far west to possibly hit Gunn's apartment, they weren't letting it show. Instead of rushing to action or breaking off their observation, they continued to linger behind him. This wasn't a problem though since Morneau would obviously only spring his bug-out plan in the case that they actually made their move when he lingered in front of the sparsely visited secondary entrance. Otherwise it'd just look like he'd meet one of his buddies, played by none other than Lancelot, and no one would be more alarmed than they already were.

For the next fifteen minutes Morneau led the Final Wave operatives on his tail on a goose chase through the Presidium, stopping for a few seconds at some shopping stand as if to check the ware and doing everything else he could possibly come up with to buy his BAR backup plan the time needed to set up the perfect ambush for his ambushers.

In his own very unbiased opinion, he was currently executing some of the worst and most obvious clandestine work he'd ever delivered, but for one reason or another, it actually seemed to work. No one was getting suspicious of his stalling. That either meant that the Final Wave operatives underestimated him and didn't think he had spotted them, that they were a lot worse than they advertised and didn't realise what he was doing or alternatively, that they were really fucking desperate to get him. If that was the case, he might have a huge problem when he sprung his trap. His plan was running on this working without bloodshed, something that would become unlikely if they were desperate. While he obviously had entertained the notion of getting rid of any pursuers the violent way, he'd decided against it because he didn't want to cause an actual shoot-out on the Presidium between a Council member and the Citadel's most prestigious security contractor.

Additionally, he really, really, really didn't want to die one day shy of finally getting rid of the moniker Solomon god-damn Gunn.

Come to think of it, he probably hated that guy even more than Wong did.

The fictious Solomon Gunn really was a grade-a asshole and if he were an actual person and not an HSA construct, he -as in he, Specialist Daniel Morneau - would be the kind of person the HSA would send to kill Solomon Gunn.

He made the final turn towards the empty street of the side entrance and figured that the realisation he had just stumbled on would probably make for a fantastic psycho-therapy session – if there was such a thing as a shrink with Section 13 clearance and if he'd ever reach the point where he'd considered talking to one.

Up ahead, he could already see the blonde specialist and – more importantly – the large sling bag that held the guns he had brought for this occasion. He walked towards Lancelot with purpose, well aware of the footsteps picking up behind him now that the Wave operatives were realizing that this was the best window they'd get. With a small leap forward, Morneau reached his colleague and the small holographic line on the floor that clearly marked the entrance to the military exclusion zone of the HSA's Presidium dock, which was akin to sovereign human territory.

Now that he was 'safely' within HSA space, he turned around to smile at the turian from earlier. She was standing just outside the line and leveling a Kabalim-style Carnifex at his heart and was now joined by five other plainclothes operatives holding various kinds of submachine guns, pistols and in the salarian's case, a onehanded shotgun. These guns were also aimed at him, which told him that they were either profoundly serious about killing him or very scared of the unknown factor he represented.

He waited for a second and when he didn't get shot, he innocently raised his hands and cracked a cocky smirk.

"Hey there."

For some inexplicable reason, the turian facing him didn't seem to be in the mood for a friendly conversation. She didn't return his greeting or his friendly smile.

"We've got you three on one, Gunn. If you and your pal come quietly, nothing's going to happen to either of you," the turian said. Then her pale-green mandibles locked against her jaw as the door behind them opened with a smooth hiss and a pool of troopers in black-grey digital-camo armor streamed out. If not for the purple stripes on their shoulders just above where the HSA's flag had been stamped on to identify them as lawful combatants, they could've just been normal marines. But since those stripes - which they had borrowed from the cabals that had helped trained them mind you - were there… well. The cabal in front of him seemed to release exactly what those indicated.

"Care to count again?" he offered before looking at the Carnifex. "I took the liberty of calling ahead. I hope you don't mind." At this distance, neither the concealed shield generator in his bag nor his biotic barriers would save him. One trigger squeeze and his insides would be mush, exclusion zone or not. The turian narrowed her amber eyes. Both of them were well aware that neither of them would walk away from this if she fired. He because he'd be killed by her shot and she because the exclusion zone line wouldn't magically stop the rounds of the BAR marines who wouldn't just stand by in the event that she iced him in front of them.

"Numbers and biotics aside, I've got you," she pointed out correctly and confidently. "You don't have to die here, Gunn. Do the right thing. Come quietly," she added. He wasn't sure if it was the overwhelming situation itself that was keeping her from asking 'how come Solomon Gunn suddenly has a bunch of HSA marines at his back-and-call' or if she was simply hanging on to the one thing she could still control- ending his life – and blending out everything else.

Morneau nudged his head to the right to look at the collection of Wave operatives. There was one asari, three other turians and the previously mentioned salarian with his onehanded shotgun. They were holding their ground in face of what was essentially a biotic wall of death wrapped in HSAMC black. That was impressive in itself and a credit to each of them. But despite this display of resolve, he knew that none of them were ready to die here.

He'd been around their type for long enough to understand how they ticked.

They were mercs.

They were doing this for money.

And money wasn't worth anything if you were dead.

"I don't think that's happening," he said flatly before lowering his hands and looking straight into the turian's amber eyes. He thought about how they looked strangely alluring and complimented her pale-green plates and yellow facial markings. Then he thought about how that would be a very strange last thought to have if she were to pull the trigger in this instant.

"Do you want to die here, human? Shot in some lonely corner of the Presidium far away from everyone you care about. Is that really how you want to go out?" he noticed how she was no longer calling him 'Gunn'. She seemed to have caught up with that at least.

"Hell no, I don't want that," he responded with an earnest shrug before deciding to see if his hypothesis about them being mercs who also didn't want to die was correct. "But I'm still ready for it, if that's what it takes," he said. "You see, unlike you, I don't do what I do for the money or the thrills. I do it because I believe in it with every fiber of my body. Always have, always will," he took a measured step backwards, just enough to maybe buy his biotics and shields a chance.

He meant what he said.

He didn't want to die.

Especially not as Solomon motherfucking Gunn.

The turian didn't seem to notice what he was doing, so he went on. "Way I see it; all you gain from bringing me in or killing me is money. Or maybe a favor with Aganian. I don't know," he admitted. "But whatever it is, it's not going to mean shit if you shoot me and then immediately get riddled by my mates over there," he nudged his head at the still maneuvering BAR troopers and recognized their formations. Some things clearly hadn't changed since he'd left Grissom. "And trust me. They are going to riddle you if you do as much as breathe into this zone, let alone shoot me." Riddle might have been the wrong word. BARs were good and very effective shots. He'd even bet his life on them being able to nail the turian's head while he was standing in front of her, if it came to that – which again, he was trying to avoid.

He could see the consideration on the turian's face. She just needed a nudge in the right direction and he had a feeling he knew exactly how to deliver it.

"Like I said. I don't wanna die. But I'm still ready to lay it all on the line for what I believe in. If it happens right here and right now, then I'm fine with it," he narrowed his hazel eyes. "Question is, are you? Do you want to die in some lonely Presidium corner far away from everyone you care about?" he threw her words back at her intentionally, hoping that they'd stick. "I know the HSA's worth dying for to me," he said with a tone that'd make any recruiting video blush. He could probably only muster it in this situation because he actually believed it. The HSA had after all literally made him who he was and as far as he was concerned, it was the best thing that had ever happened to humanity. Even with all of its bumps, rough edges, dark secrets and questionable military deployments in certain regions of the galaxy, it was an idea worth fighting and dying for and so he would, if it became necessary. "Is money worth the same to you?" he added before determining that if she were to pull the trigger, she should do it now. As far as last thoughts and considerations about his own life went, he figured that this was about as good of a moment to die in as possible. One thing was for sure, it was far better than spending his last seconds thinking about the pale-green turian's alluring amber-colored eyes-

- fucking hell.

There was a moment of silence and a spark of something in the turian's look. For a second, he wondered if he'd miscalculated and if Aganaian or the Wave or someone else had somehow installed the kind of loyalty in the merc that made her willingly lay down her life for the mission as well. But then he heard the sound of a safety being flicked on again and saw the determination in her look vanish.

"Crap," the turian muttered. "Pull back!" she said while raising her gun to his head and slowly backing away. When she reached the height of the other Wave operatives, they also started to withdraw.

Meanwhile, the armored BAR soldiers were moving in front of him way up to the line – which was as far as they could go without causing a major diplomatic incident. By doing so, they were blocking both his view and bullets that might hit him. While some might have thought that they'd impulsively unload on the Wave operatives now that Morneau was out of the line of fire, the specialist knew better. He'd told their commander not to shoot anyone without being shot at and considering that that commander – just like every other BAR trooper – had gone to a Terra Novan military academy. The man would follow his orders to a letter. That kind of behavior was drilled in the heads of everyone, whether they attended Grissom or any other of the various 'normal' academies.

When the Wave operatives reached the corner, they turned and ran – something that he had of course also accounted for. While these BAR troopers held their ground, a whole lot of C-SEC officers – who could actually act outside of the HSA's limited military zone on the Citadel - had been called in by the MPs in accordance with Lancelot's instruction would intercept and detain them right about –

-he waited for his watch to flash blue again in reception of the MPs confirmation, which it did a second later-

-now.

While he knew the Wave's lawyers were good enough to get these guys out of holding long enough to smuggle them off-world and 'disavow' them before subsequently putting them to work in the Traverse and doubling their pay for the small inconvenience of now being a wanted criminal in Citadel Space, Morneau was still satisfied with how this had turned out.

No one had died and no one, especially the Shadow Broker, was any wiser as to what was coming for him.

"Smooth," Lancelot observed while walking up next to him. "Think they managed to get a warning out?"

"Even if they have, the Broker can't go anywhere now," he responded. On HSAIS's suggestion, the navy had put a couple of Iwo-Jima stealth frigates in the Sowilo System where Hagalaz was located. Officially, they were just waiting for new orders. Unofficially, they were an insurance policy. With their sensors, nothing short of the Normandy-Class would be able to leave without them noticing and with their Devastator Torpedoes, nothing short of a heavy cruiser would escape them. "We got him in our sights, now all we need to do is pull the trigger," Morneau observed before his – or rather Gunn's omnitool buzzed.

"You sound like you're looking forward to this," Lancelot pointed out while holstering his sidearm.

"Because I am," the biotic specialist responded before going to open the automated message that the app of Gunn's apartment had sent him. "Dragging that yahg bastard from his hidey-hole is going to be-" he wanted to say 'delightful', but then he read the automated message from the app informing him of a break-in and remembered that Wong had been there "-personal," he finished with a dreadful suspicion. "I need a gun."

Lancelot, who had read the message alongside him, registered his worries and handed him a mass accelerator pistol from the up-to-now unused sling bag. It wasn't what he preferred or even his own service weapon – which was already waiting on his ride alongside the rest of his gear which had been collecting dust since October- but it'd do the job. "You think this is a hostage situation?"

Somehow that word stung way more than it should.

Wong was Gunn's girlfriend.

Not his.

He wasn't impacted in any way other than his previously established standing as a sworn-in officer of the Human Systems Alliance Intelligence Service.

So why exactly was he suddenly boiling with the murderous kind of rage and 'kicking the Broker's teeth in' had suddenly become 'kicking the Broker's head off'?

"We'll see when we get there," Morneau replied grimly.

"Lead the way, Magic."


Twenty Minutes Earlier, 20. April 2417 AD, Citadel, Apartment of Solomon Gunn

Turning her coffee Irish had helped yesterday-Emily calm down and allowed her to catch a break from her investigation and the general shit-show that was her current life. But sadly, today-Emily was now suffering the consequences.

Wong had never been one to be particularly resistant to the 'liberating' effects of alcohol. As such, she was still feeling the fact that one Irish coffee had escalated into half a bottle of whiskey and a sip of wine. While it wasn't so bad that she had to reschedule today's meeting with Shae's geth expert Barla Von, Wong had to admit that she was still feeling a bit foggy on the details.

She obviously knew that she had eventually left her own place to go to Gunn's apartment sometime after midnight since that was where she'd woken up. Additionally – and shamefully – she also remembered yesterday-Emily's moment of weakness which had somehow resulted in her jumping Gunn's bones despite being confident about her hatred for him.

Sadly, the part that had followed – namely the argument and fight immediately after the conclusion of said bone-jumping which had led to her kicking Gunn, a hardened merc-killer, out of his own place in an awesome fashion– was very hazy. She wasn't sure what she had said and done or if she had permanently damaged any chance of using him to reveal the kind of fucked up shit that the Wave was up to, but she somehow remembered that it had been pretty deserved on his part and that she'd definitely nailed the bastard good one or two times.

While that probably wasn't very good for the piece she was trying to write, it definitely felt good to her to finally tell Gunn just what she thought him and show him too. It had in fact felt so good, that she had decided to declare Gunn's apartment as occupied territory for the time being and make the meeting with Barla Von take place here.

This little piece of Presidium was now proof of her victory and everyone, starting with the volus, would see it!

Okay, so maybe that last part wasn't true.

The reason she had rescheduled was because she'd woken up late and she couldn't make it back to Kithoi in time. Additionally, she also kind of sort of felt bad for the way she'd hit Gunn and may or may not have waited for him to return from work to apologize. Asshole or not, violence should never be an option. Alcohol was no excuse for her to give up on her pacifistic resolutions.

Luckily for her, Barla Von was a kind soul who'd said that he didn't mind the sudden change of location.

So, after recovering from her hangover, Emily Wong had prepared everything for the volus' arrival, which should happen any minute now-

- as if the universe were reading her mind, her omni-tool buzzed.

'Probably Von who can't find the place,' she thought to herself. The apartment was after all kind of complicated to locate, even with a good map app.

She opened the message.

It was not from Barla Von.

It was someone claiming to be her source on the whole Reaper and HK mess.

Unlike before however, they weren't contacting her through a sneaky backdoor in the codex.

They were writing her directly.

This was fishy.

She decided to open the 'proof' that this was really who they said they were and narrowed her eyes when she looked at the same footage from the HK Galilean Moon Laboratories that had kicked off this whole working relationship.

'Okay. I believe you. What do you want?' she typed. As soon as the message was sent, it was received, read and the person on the other end started to type. They were writing choppy blocks of sentences instead of a coherent text and sending every sentence as their own message as if they wanted to make sure the information reached her as fast as possible.

At first she wasn't worried by this behavior. The person was just telling her how she needed to ignore their advice to stay on the Citadel and leave.

But then things got strange.

'Pack your bags and go. Right now,' she read. Now the source was telling her to go to Earth and not stop for anyone or anything. 'I figured it out. The mystery ship, the abductions, Hahne-Kedar. I finally understand all of it,' the next message read. At this point, Wong was so focused on what was being written that she didn't even notice the faint sound of the apartment door reluctantly opening at the hands of an overwrite program.

'-they know that I was talking to you-' she continued to read before suddenly registering footsteps in the adjacent room. For a second, she thought Gunn had come back or that Barla Von had somehow let himself in. But then she realized that there were a lot of steps. Far more than any one person could produce at a time.

She got up to check just as the door to the bedroom that she was in was violently shoved open and a small cannister was thrown inside. It landed with a metallic clank in front of her feet and, Wong realized what was happening in the exact moment it began to hiss.

It was too late though.

"What the-" she began before a cloud of paralyzing green smoke expanded from the cannister thrown into the room and a figure – probably a turian – dashed inside just in time for the knock-out gas to do fill her lungs and do its job by sending her tumbling to the floor.

The last thing she could clearly see before everything became cloudy and smudged was a white-armored turian with a red, three-pronged star on his chest armor kneeling down in front of her and staring straight in her face while multiple figures in black armor were silently standing behind him.

"-positive ID. It's her-"

She wanted to curse Gunn for doing this to her because in that moment the only reason she could think off why the Final Wave would come after her was Solomon Gunn. The idea that whatever her source had been delivering to her could've made her a target or the realization that it was awfully coincidental that these guys had shown up instead of Shae's volus contact never crossed Wong's mind. The gas was already clouding it too much for that to be the case.

As the cuff's went on her hands and the two black-armored men picked her of the ground, she wanted to think off creative insults and thrown them around.

But all she could think of while the gas reached her brain and all the lights turned out inside her head was how difficult it had suddenly become to stay awake and how tempting a quick nap sounded.

She closed her eyes and drifted off.

By the time she'd wake up, she'd no longer be in Gunn's apartment or on the Citadel.


Codex: Development Index of Galactic Civilizations

The Development Index of Galactic Civilizations, or short GDI (Galactic Development Index), is a statistic composite index created to rank the social development of the various regions of the galaxy. The GDI considers factors such as life expectancy, education, infrastructure, public security and per capita income and was established by the Volus alongside the galactic standard credit as a measure to help guide Council funding into appropriate regions.

The GDI is produced by a non-profit, non-governmental organization based on Irune.

Because the nature of galactic colonialization through the mass relay network makes it hard to clearly define geographic regions and draw clear borders, the GDI instead evaluates every system independently and subsequently determines a GDI-score that is then applied to a scale of one to seven, with one being the worst possible ranking and seven being the best possible ranking.

- Category Seven: very high (1.0 to .85)

- Category Six: high (.85 to .7)

- Category Five: above average (.7 to .55)

- Category Four: average (.55 to .5)

- Category Three: below average (.5 to .35)

- Category Two: low (.35 to .15)

- Category One: very low (.15 or lower)

On average, developed colonies in core worlds of the Council are usually placed in either category six or five, with the homeworlds of all Citadel member nations ranking in category six (with the exception of Earth, which ranks in Category Three and Thessia and Dekuna, which rank in Category Seven).

The average GDI scores of the member states of the Citadel Council as ranked by the 'Investors Guide for the fiscal year 2158 CE / 2417 AD' are:

Asari Republics (.093)

Vol Protectorate (0.928)

Courts of Dekuuna (0.911)

Turian Hierarchy (0.909)

Salarian Union (.843)

Illuminated Primacy (.841) (Note: the GDI of the Illuminated Primacy is lowered by the below-average life expectancy of its drell citizens)

Human Systems Alliance (.339)

Note to Illuminated Primacy: the GDI of the Illuminated Primacy is lowered by the below-average life expectancy of its drell citizens. Hanar space continues to be a lucrative place for investments.

Note to Human Systems Alliance: While seemingly extraordinarily low, the fact that humanity only entered the galactic community roughly thirty years ago and as such has had only little time to catch up to the galactic living standard has to be considered before passing judgement. Additionally, it has to be considered that .339 is considered to be an above-average rating for a civilization that has only been spacefaring for three centuries.

Historic average GDI scores of former associate members of the Citadel Council include:

Quarian Conclave (.882)

Batarian Hegemony (.697)

Krogan 'Empire' (.333)

Note to Krogan 'Empire': The quotation marks indicate that the Krogan 'Empire' was never formally recognized as a sovereign state by any member state of the galactic community.


A/N:

Did somebody order a fast update?

Because I delviered it! Hah!

Ok no seriously, since the Shadow Broker plot is the one that's mostly set in stone, all I actually have to do now is write it all, so the usual structuring process falls flat. And with Germany having another lockdown (this one I can actually participate in because I won't be back 'out on the streets' until january) I find myself witha lot of time.

Hence, I figured you'd get an early christmas present (and if I manage it... you will also get another story over Christmas, in addition to the FANTASTIC XenoNoir (yes dude, I can hype it more. you asked for it and you know who you are.) which will be coming to you on the holidays anyways. (I haven't actually decided if I'm picking german christmas or american christmas, so i guess that's going to be a surprise :p)

Settting aside how I continue to be back to fast updates, this chapter actually has a lot of important shit happening other than Morneau's plot entering its final stage. We've got Shepard setting out to haestrom, we've got Tali setting out to do something on haestrom and we've got Legion and his warning, which I assume all of you can guess what it's about. So yeah. Like I said. Our plots are merging FAST and we're heading for Mass Effect 3 at full speeds.

Speaking of Mass Effect.

I think I totally passed over the fact that we are getting a FREAKING NEW MASS EFFECT GAME the last time I wrote an A/N.

If that thing actually continues the milky way saga... I might actually have to consider if SV gets a proper sequal after all ! (I am specifically saying sequal because well, after Mass Effect 3 THIS story is going to be over. Not the universe though, obviously.)

So yeah.

I am pumped for that.

For the record we're at 759 reviews, 1171 favorites and 1260 follows.

See you around next time.

(In case you are wondering why I didn't wish you a merry christmas on the off-chance that I don't manage to update in time. Like I said. XenoNoir. SV Anthologies. Go follow it now. do it. NOW!)