Chapter 19

Stolen

Kevin screamed.

What the hell? Arla wondered in sudden alarm, instinctively bringing her weapon to bear in tandem with the others. Her aim flagged, unsure of what it was she should be targeting. Where was the threat? She neither saw nor heard husks, no shots had yet been fired, and they had finally realized the objective of finding survivors. Yet there was Kevin, screaming in stark agony as his knees buckled. That terrible noise cut her right to the core and not even the familiar modulation of his exosuit dulled the blade. Every one of the negative emotions she had dammed up and bottled away came forcefully roiling to the surface of her conscience like overtaxed coolant. Her mind raced a thousand times faster than she could keep up with. Time slowed to a crawl as she watched Herj'Mokett and the other quarian survivors turn towards her group and break into a full sprint.

"Kevin!" she shouted in horror, still unsure of what was happening. The sound of her shout—no, her shriek seemed to echo through the entire ship and return a hundred times over in those lagging moments. Still the quarians barreled towards them for no reason she could discern as Kevin reached for his shoulder. He gripped at it helplessly before his strength fled him and he fell aimlessly amidst the lack of significant gravity. His boots still held fast, but the human slowly fell back at the knees until he hovered just above the floor's surface.

Arla's gaze swapped between him and the incoming sprinters. Were they running from some unseen danger or were they running at her? No, they had to be coming at her; they did not have the frantic gait of a panicking quarian. So why would they charge her and her team? It came to her in a sudden moment of clarity, and the implication hit her so hard it nearly knocked the wind out of her. It was all centered around Herj'Moket. The bits of information flashed in her mind and chained themselves together…

Herj'Mokett's appearance was incredibly timely and his disappearance convenient. The fact that there were dragon's teeth on the bridge should have been a clue. They had to come from somewhere. Arla suddenly recalled the discovery of the geth on that foreboding planetoid on the edge of the galaxy and the geth platforms stockpiled within. She recalled the sudden and grim reappearance of their dead captain and the sight of what was truly inside the suit when they managed to get back aboard the Kellius. She remembered how her eyes lingered on the needle installed in the wrist, built to extend out through the palm of the hand and deliver nanites.

The hand on Kevin's shoulder. The way he recoiled a split second before he screamed. Oh no. Oh keelah, no! No no no no! Not Kevin!

"Open fire!" Arla yelled. Time's normal pace had returned to her in a steady rush and she pulled the trigger with a fury she rarely knew. The others did likewise, some out of fear and some due to training. With Kevin on the ground, they were able to fire freely without worry of hitting him. When the burst of rounds fell upon the 'survivors', sparks filled the thin air instead of quarian blood. All five tumbled forward as their own magnetic hold vanished as they died. They continued to spark as they floated passed the team like little more than space junk, and the sight of those sparks quickly got the others to connect the dots.

Arla had already forgotten about them. Now that the immediate threat had been fully neutralized, she ducked under their fallen forms and sprinted in nigh-panic to Kevin. The human was crumpled up on the ground, convulsing and grunting between screams of immense pain. Arla knelt down next to him and holstered her Tempest before reaching to pull him up against her. Keelah, no. Kevin, don't do this to me again… She was so absorbed in Kevin's current state that she failed to notice Ralik had run up behind her. The arm he used to pull on her shoulder to get her attention was nearly broken by her terrified retaliation. The salarian yelped and backed off, opting instead to approach from the side.

"Arla! Stop!" yelled Tyr'Garloh. His voice was so distant from her that it he seemed to be shouting from across the galaxy. "Don't hold on to him, he's seizing! You'll just cause more damage!"

Arla looked to her second-in-command in a veritable daze, barely comprehending his words. Her mind wasn't working right anymore. She knew it wasn't and longed for the mental alacrity she held just mere moments earlier. Quietly, as if fearing too loud a noise could shatter Kevin's fragile condition, she asked, "What can I do?" She needed to do something. She had to help somehow.

"There isn't—" Tyr cut himself off as he quickly considered something. "Just… be there for him. Try to calm him and reassure him. That's—"

This time it was Ralik who cut him off. "Damnit. More than seizing. The nanites have already spread throughout, but they're not the cause." The salarian tapped away at his readings, frustrated in his confusion. "They should be pacifying him…"

As Arla positioned herself to be kneeling at Kevin's head, focused on simply keeping him from floating away and ready to give him whatever possible comfort she could for him. Meanwhile, the asari bitch pushed her way passed Gaal'Meshiir, shouting, "By the Goddess! He's having a neural cascade!"

On the floor, Kevin thrashed. He no longer screamed, but merely grunted irregularly as even his vocal cords ceased their proper function. His convulsions had kicked both feet off of the floor and loosed his last magnetic hold to it. He would have set himself to ricocheting off of the walls and floating uncontrolled down the hall had Arla not already taken to keeping him down. Arla cupped the side of Kevin's helmet with one hand, careful not to fight against the way it slammed against the floor repeatedly no matter how badly she wanted to stop him. "Kevin, it's alright!" she said as tears of despair welled in her eyes. "Kevin, it's okay! I'm here for you!"

The asari forced her way through the group around Kevin, and Arla thought she seemed on the edge of panic herself. "Out of my fucking way, I need to bond with him, now!" She was trying to get his suit off, but between his convulsions, the suit's armored plating, his unanchored movement, and her obvious lack of familiarity with quarian environmental suits, she made no progress.

That boiling coolant of emotion within Arla finally breached its containment and she abruptly lunged at the asari, howling and gritting her teeth. "No! You fucking whore! You ancestors-cursed piece of spaced shit!" She slammed into Maela, knocking her feet out from under her and causing them both to lose hold of the floor and tumble into the air, weightless. She threw frantic punches at the asari bitch, but none of them had any of the precision or refinement that Kevin had once taught her. "He's dying and all you can think about is getting in one last fuck! What is wrong with you?" She landed a particularly solid punch right in Maela's torso, causing them to split apart and bump into opposite walls.

Arla didn't bother to pursue Maela a second time. Her boots automatically grabbed at the floor as she bounced off the wall and she raced back to Kevin. She was panting hard from an exertion that had nothing to do with all the combat they'd seen.

Maela wheezed, but as her boots regained purchase on the floor, she stared pure vitriol at the captain. "Stop being a fucking moron! How do you think he's even still alive right now? Me! And to make things worse, he probably wouldn't even be having a cascade right now if you didn't make us stay in this deathtrap of a ship!" The emphasis on 'you' was heavy and condemning. The asari bitch glanced over to Kevin, a painful grimace painting her face. "I need skin contact now! Get that damn suit off!"

Tyr, Ralik, and Targold were each surrounding Kevin now. "Not here," Tyr said. "Not enough air pressure in this section of the ship and far too cold to expose him for long. We need to move him to one of the birthing rooms at the fore. They're climate controllable and we can seal it from the inside."

Without any further discussion, Targold had picked up the human with a surprising deftness and took off down the hall in a full sprint with the human tucked under one arm like a football. Kevin was almost as stiff as a support beam, but it made it easier for the krogan to handle him. Everyone followed, their urgency plain.

Tyr started off down the hall with the others but skidded to a stop and turned around when he realized that the captain hadn't yet moved from where she'd kneeled again. With quick and calculated motions, he grabbed her hand and pulled her to her feet. Overwhelmed as she was, all she could do was look him in the visor and let him pull her.

"He needs you, captain. Come on." He firmly dragged her after the others by the arm.

The sprint to the birthing room was a complete blur to Arla. She didn't remember looking for threats or wondering if she had remembered to holster her gun, but a quick check with her hand told her that she had unconsciously holstered it in place. The only sound she could hear were the thuds of magnetized footfalls and the thunderous cacophony that was her own heart. By the time she and Tyr had gotten to the clean room and sealed the door behind them, the barely powered and flickering pale light showed that Kevin was already on a bed. His legs were strapped down by a medical belt that wasn't even supposed to be in the birthing room. It took an eternity for the atmospheric conditions in the room to normalize. These were intended to be prepped in a hurry, but never for emergencies.

The moment it was 'close enough', Ralik gave the word and Tyr, Gaal'Meshiir, and he immediately set to removing his visor and helmet. When they managed that, the sight that greeted them gave them all pause. His face was deathly pale, and his sunken eyes showed nothing but white from rolling back so far. Dark, bulging veins were clearly visible and spiderwebbing across his face, neck, and upper body. Like with Kar'Welkas, the mutations seemed to start taking hold immediately. Spittle gathered on and fell from his mouth and his jaw was clenched so tightly that it almost looked like he'd break it just from the effort. His muscles were so tense Arla was worried he might break his own back, and his flailing had been reduced to aggressive tremors.

The trio's desperate machinations managed to dump the armor pieces to the floor and expose Kevin's body down to his hips before the blue bitch ran over and pushed the others out of the way. Arla no longer had the mental fortitude to confront her again, especially in knowing that she was, in all true likelihood, Kevin's only hope for survival. It was murder on her conscience to know that the asari, rather than herself, had be the one to save him. Tears streaming down her face, she stepped closer to watch in a horrified fixation not unlike how one can't seem to look away from colliding ships.

"Goddess, I hope this will be enough." Maela muttered as she tore off her helmet. With calculated urgency, she unclasped and removed the top half of her hardsuit and stripped to the waist, entirely uncaring that everyone there could see her quite topless. She turned to glance at the approaching Arla and threw up a firm, accusatory point. "You stay the fuck away! I can't afford you getting protective like some kind of klixen queen with her brood!" She climbed onto the bed and straddled Kevin's form, her knees to either side of his thighs to try and keep him in place. She wedged her feet through the small triangles of space between the bed, Kevin's legs, and the medical belt to help in an effort to keep herself in place as well. Once anchored, she laid down on him chest-to-chest, forehead-to-forehead, and with the palms of her hands cupping the sides of his head.

The way her breasts spread out against Kevin's chest reminded her quite sharply of how hers had done likewise, and it only further cemented in her mind the idea that the asari was doing this for fun. It served as a warning to just how close to madness she was; who would even think about such things at times like these? She knew it was all so irrational but at the same time was entirely unwilling to let the venom bleed away. Anger seethed within her, battling the dismay of the very real chance that Kevin could very well die here and now as she stood just a few paces off.

Maela adjusted her position, trying to obtain as much skin contact as she could. Whispering incoherently, she gently closed her eyes. When she opened them again, they had gone solid black in that creepy way asari eyes do.

Kevin's body lurched as his back arched and his limbs set to flailing again. This time Tyr, Ralik, Gaal, and Targold were there to restrain him, lest he throw both himself and the asari off the bed and set them to floating aimlessly about. Arla took a step forward in her helplessness, still needing to do something. A rather stern glance from the krogan, however, banned further approach. This violent madness went on and on as the asari occasionally gasped hard and loud, her face a mix of consternation and… something else. No matter what the asari claimed, Arla could hear lustful enjoyment in those hard breaths. Arla clenched her fists so tight she was afraid her suit might tear at the knuckles. Somehow, she managed to keep herself in check. She couldn't risk interfering. Not now.

Arla's sense of time was completely shot so she had no real notion of how long she had to stand there and endure the sight of the asari pant with exertion. It seemed like forever, and every heaving breath the asari took seemed more rapturous than the last. There was no explosive moment that signaled completion; Kevin simply went limp and fell back flat against the medical bed. The asari's eyes returned to normal and she went limp as well, toppling off both Kevin and the bed. Ralik and Tyr caught her and set her on her feet so she could re-anchor herself.. Looking quite exhausted, Maela stumbled as she sought out her gear with a dazed gloss to her eyes. She had just started the process when she glanced at Arla and gave a slow nod.

"I've done everything I can," she said, her fatigue slurring her words a bit. "We won't know if it was soon enough until he wakes." She let go of a heavy breath. "Goddess let it be enough."

Ralik was already on his omni-tool. "Curious. The reaper nanites are no longer spreading." He glanced at Maela as if to ask if she did that. She shrugged back. "More than that," he continued, "it looks like they are no longer functioning at all!"

"All of them?" Tyr asked with a look down at Kevin's pale, mutated, and swollen form. It wasn't a soft swollenness as if bloated by fluids or fatty tissue. Instead, it looked like his muscle mass tripled or else was otherwise forced to bulge out by something deeper inside. The dark veins remained, but they no longer looked ready to explode and they stopped creeping further across his skin. There was an obvious lopsidedness to his legs with one thigh slightly thicker than the other, balancing out at the knees beneath the hardsuit boots.

Ralik nodded. "As far as I can see, at least. It appears the first things the nanites attacked were his bones, his element zero nodules, and his muscle fibers. That might explain his… new bulk and how his NCI fried them all so quickly. They were already in the middle of working on the eezo in his body, all of which is directly connected to the nervous system. They were basically at ground zero."

Tyr sighed. "Well. At least this means we won't have to electrocute him."

"Say what?" Targold asked, half nonplussed and half amused.

"He didn't tell you?" Tyr asked. When the only reply was a big, meaty shrug, the quarian took up the explanation. "A little while back, when we first discovered the geth inside our old suits, another of our team had suffered a similar invasion. Reaper nanites injected into the body via a needle, as in example here. Kar'Welkas, our pilot at the time, had suffered the invasion for hours before we could reach him. By then, our only effective course of action to immediately halt the nanites' progress was to, in effect, electrically overload them all."

Targold nodded. "I see where this is going. You gave the kid a hell of a shock. Did the trick?"

"It wasn't the most refined or technically sound solution, but… yes."

"As you said, it looks like Kevin won't need it," Ralik reiterated. "All the nanites in his system have already been fried. The damage has already been done, but…"

"It might have been the neural cascade," Maela put in as she tiredly leaned back against a piece of nonfunctional medical equipment. "Kevin's entire nervous system had been shorting itself in full order by the time I was able to bond with him." She closed her eyes and shivered for a moment before continuing. "He's got a crazy-ass powerful nervous system, it's what lets him use biotics without an amp. He probably fried the nanites on his own." A weak, content smile managed to break through her obvious worry for a moment.

Targold folded his arms. "So… the thing that was supposed to kill him, saved him, while killing him. Triggered by stuff that should probably kill him but ended up saving him instead." He laughed, deep and guttural. "Reapers have no chance against his kind of backwards, self-destructive brand of shit."

Most of them had a genuine, if rather tenuous, laugh. A laugh they sorely needed.

Arla, however, didn't find it so funny. She stood next to Kevin and stared down at him, fearing he might die while they joked. The changes his body had been forced to endure might very well still kill him. What about his organs? His brain? Will he be subject to reaper indoctrination all the time now? Her stomach churned at the thought of Kevin being some puppet for the reapers. Her thoughts involuntarily went to Kevin's explanation of what happened to Kar'Welkas and how he'd been physically controlled by reaper influences at that last moment.

Not for the first time—and likely not for the last time, she knew—she feared she would never get to talk to him again. She would never get another chance to spar with him or confuse him with talk of the inner workings of tech. Never again get to feel the warmth of his skin, experience his taste, or feel his pleasure warm her from within. She began to hate herself for letting this happen. As the bitch asari had so eloquently pointed out, it was her own orders that kept them here on this deathtrap.

"I should… I should have seen it," Arla said under her breath. "Why didn't I see it?"

"See what?" Tyr asked as the mirth in the room suffocated.

"Herj'Mokett, the false quarians. All the warning signs were there. We should have known better. I should have known better."

Tyr looked to the others briefly for help, but when none came he stepped close to place a reassuring hand on her spaulder. "None of us saw it, captain. Not even Kevin, and he'd looked right into—"

"I was so stupid to think we'd find quarians alive here. To push for it. To insist on it. And now Kevin is dying or even dead." All because of me. The unspoken words hung in the air like dust motes. "I'm so sorry," she said aloud. The others seemed to think she meant it for them and made reassuring noises. Attempts at comforting her or to assure her the blame didn't rest entirely on her shoulders, she was sure. It was all clatter in her ears. She let out a long breath and felt herself deflate in an indescribable way as she leaned over her lover. Slowly, she wrapped her arms around him as he lay still. She laid her head down on his chest as she embraced him, and upon hearing a weak heartbeat, she began to weep.

Silence reigned in that small birthing room, save for the gentle weeping of a quarian.

Hours had passed as they waited for some sort of sign that Kevin might be able to function enough to leave the bed. They all feared the choice that would have to be made if he couldn't. Everyone found some way of keeping themselves occupied and distracted from the human embodiment of death in the room. The asari had passed right out while sitting in a corner of the room. Ralik and Tyr had been working to find a way to remotely divert the bits of emergency power they could to restoring some measure of gravity. The lack of it was a good idea until Kevin had become indisposed. Gaal'Meshiir and a few of the marines were inspecting the spaulder that Kevin had worn over his pierced shoulder, noting with dismay how the needle clearly punched right though the armor plating. Targold just leaned against a wall, arms crossed. It seemed waiting wasn't his thing. Or maybe it was, and he was quietly enjoying himself. Krogan.

For Arla's part, she had gone to check Kevin's pulse so many times that she finally wised up and found a portable heart monitor. She assumed it worked the same way it did for quarians, and with some guidance from Ralik, was able to get the sensors placed properly. Fortunately, the machine had its own power source and did not share in the electrical troubles the rest of the Ulansal had. After that, she let the steady, soft beep of the machine handle her peace of mind for her while she sat down and gathered herself.

She felt numb, both physically and emotionally. To her this was a good thing. She felt quite ashamed by the emotional and mental breakdown she suffered earlier. That's not how Siri would have handled it, you thrice-damned bosh'tet. Some captain I turned out to be. She couldn't help but place a hand on her helmet and shake her head. She blamed the breakdown on her exhaustion, but it felt a shallow lie to do so. The exhale that followed was surprisingly calming.

"Don't worry about him," Targold said unbidden. When Arla looked up, she saw he was talking to her. "Kid's stared death in the eyes so many times that sometimes I forget he's not actually a krogan. He'll be alright."

Arla didn't have the heart to reply.

"This time's bad, though," he continued as if talking to himself. He looked to Kevin, then to the floor. "Getting fried from the inside-out's bad enough, but getting shot full of husk juice too?" He looked back up to Kevin and stared for a while. "Keep fighting, kid."

"We need to consider our next move, captain," Gaal'Meshiir said. "And quickly. The power to this room won't last much longer. If we don't get him suited before it dies, he will too."

"How long do we have?"

"A couple of hours if were lucky. As little as one if not."

Damnit. She took another deep, refreshing breath so she could get her head back on her shoulders. At this point, one objective stood alarmingly above the rest. "We need to retake the Peravaash. Assuming, of course, Lan hasn't sabotaged the hell out of it already."

"Alright, that should do it," Tyr said with a note of triumph. "It'll take a bit to come up to somewhat normal levels, but I managed to get the artificial gravity back. Some clever electrical diversion tricks on Ralik's part should keep it going long enough for us to be finished here."

"We have, uh, more pressing concerns," Ralik urgently noted with a flicked thumb towards the door. "Remember that monstrosity we encountered on the way to engineering?"

Thump.

Everyone went silent and the lights flickered more than usual for a while. I hate this place, Arla thought rather abruptly. What could possibly drive a quarian to despise a homeship? A place meant for life to begin and bloom twisted and mutilated into a dreadnought-sized coffin. Death of her mother? Murder of children? Near-murder of her only shot at love? Being cuckolded by an asari right in front of her eyes? Death coming from the very bulkheads all around? There was so little of value left in her life now. The sheer volume of shit she was standing in at this moment was, to her, unbearably comical. After the deep-felt resonance faded, Arla started to laugh. A full-bodied, hearty laugh from her very depths. She laughed until she ran out of breath. Nobody seemed to share the mirth this time, instead looking warily amongst each other as if she'd gone completely mad.

"By the ancestors, I hate this damn vessel!" Arla screamed as her laughter descended into rage almost in an instant. The others looked to each other uncertainly once more and Targold, thinking that some order was about to be given, gave the snoring asari a kick.

"Fucking shit!" she yelled as she flailed against the wall.

Arla calmed herself again, then looked to Kevin. Somewhere deep inside, her heart was breaking. She kept it far away. Sealed it off. For now, at least. She absolutely could not afford another meltdown, and she was not ready to space herself just yet. "Let's get his suit back on if we can. There should be a hover-bed in here somewhere. We can push the lazy bastard to our ship."

Thump.

"Yeah, we're probably going to have to fight our way out," Ralik noted as he peered out the small window built into the door. "Lots of husks out there."

"As Kevin always used to tell me," Targold said with a cock of his shotgun, "there ain't no rest for the wicked."

"When did he ever say that?" Maela said as she hurriedly put her hardsuit back together and gathered up her helmet. She was summarily ignored.

Tyr and Ralik had been getting Kevin's suit back on and they'd been having some difficulty. The bulkiness of the human's new malformations wasn't playing well with the suit's intended size and they had to call Targold over to help muscle some of the clasps in place. Worse, they had to abandon the idea of getting the armor plating back on entirely as the specific shape it required in order to attach to the suit could no longer be achieved. Soon they had all but his visor on, and beyond his face, he looked like an extremely buff quarian to a rather amusing and cartoonish degree. Just as they were about to lock his visor in place, the human's eyes flitted open.

"He's awake!" Tyr called, and within seconds the entire room of bodies encircled the bed.

"Kevin!" Arla called out. "Oh keelah, thank the ancestors you're alive."

"Out of my way!" Maela shouted as she forcibly elbowed through the circle to get a closer look at him.

Kevin slowly looked around with eyes whose irises now glowed from within, their color the same blue-white of husk implants. He didn't seem to be looking at anything in particular.

Thump.

He winced and crushed his eyes shut as if that somewhat subtle sound had the same force as an explosion. After a few seconds he opened them again and looked about. It seemed like he was trying to figure out where he was.

Ralik must have gleaned the same idea. "A clean birthing room at the fore of the Ulansal," the salarian informed rather stately. "We carried you here and pressurized the room."

Kevin continued to stare at nothing, eyes glossy. His mouth didn't fully shut as he stared off and was left lightly agape. His breathing was unsteady at best.

"That's the where," Tyr continued. "The 'why you are here' is that you'd been incapacitated by a false quarian. Geth in one of our suits." Tyr paused. "They've been dealt with."

Kevin's mouth opened and closed silently. It was not clear whether he was trying to form words or was just not able to stop. When he did finally speak, it came out as "Ah-ahr-ahrrr-ar…" He stopped for a moment to swallow particularly hard.

Everyone looked around, each one wondering if the others managed to decode what it was he said. When no one responded, he tried again. "Ahhhr-ahrrr-ahhhrraaa?" He sounded as though he had a mouth full of bulkhead bolts, raspy and wheezing.

"Oh no," Maela muttered under her breath and her face contorted sharply to one of pity and sorrow.

"I'm here," Arla said. His eyes continued to wander aimlessly so she waved a hand in front of them so that his gaze could follow it to her. "Here." She could feel the tears she shoved down so deeply welling back up, especially when it took him so long to focus enough to see the hand.

A weak, hideous smile crossed his face. "Ahhrr?"

"Yes Kevin, I'm here. How are you feeling?"

Thump.

Kevin crushed his ghastly eyes shut again for a few seconds. He seemed in great pain.

"The pain will subside," Maela said. "I think. It did last time…"

"What's wrong with him?" Arla quietly asked to the asari.

Maela looked quizzically towards the swollen human form, her eyes darting key points of his altered body. She was searching for something, some clue that she could latch on to. "I… I don't know. It—it could be a result of the cascade or… perhaps a result of the mutations. His nervous system was exposed to so much backshock… He—"

"Aaaaayyy… Aaayyyaa?"

"Goddessdamnit." The asari honestly looked like she was about to tear up. She turned away, likely hoping to hide it. She steadied her breath, then continued. "It's possible the NCI has destroyed so much of his nervous system and electrocuted his brain so badly before I could nullify its progress that he has effectively been reduced to…" She trailed off and let out a distressed sigh.

"To what?" Arla demanded more fervently. She knew, however, what the asari was going to say.

"Fuck," she muttered under her breath. "… An invalid."

Arla's gaze snapped back to Kevin's face, disbelieving. His eyes had begun wandering again as if something of great interest was in the gray, flat panels of the ceiling. Her vision blurred with tears she could no longer keep down. No. This can't be how it ends. This can't be how I lose him! I would have rather he just died than suffer like this…

Kevin tried to sit up, but all it resulted in was a pitiful set of grunts, twitches, and wiggles. He groaned incoherently in dismay.

Tyr and Targold helped Kevin sit up, but they had to hold him upright. His bulky new form was hardly light, and he could not seem to support his own weight. Kevin visibly struggled to hold his own, but it didn't seem to be doing any good. Arla could not help but notice the way his jaw was clenched for the entire maneuver.

"Whenever genetic experiments went awry," Maela said quietly while intently staring away at the far wall, "we had to put them down. It was a mercy. Th-They couldn't function…" There was an immediate uproar of voices all stumbling over one another, but the asari cut through them. "None of you listened me about this cursed ship, either! See where that got us?"

Nobody replied. There was a truth there that could not be denied.

Maela's indignant, wet eyes moved across everyone in the room. Everyone save for Kevin. "Would you all rather we left him to choke on his own tongue or get helplessly slaughtered by husks when we can't afford to tug him around anymore? Or to starve because he can't eat food properly?"

"Aaaahhhhyyy!" Kevin groaned, stopping the asari dead in her tracks. She shivered visibly as he failed to form words for another few attempts.

Thump.

Kevin looked down at his useless body and struggled to focus on something to look at. When he frowned, it was a ghastly sight. "Hhhhyyyyyy?" was his only shot at a word.

Nobody replied at first. It seemed to Arla that nobody knew exactly how to explain it to him in a way he'd understand, especially since it had already been partly explained to him. Were they all already writing him off as useless? It was hard not to, but… "You had a neural cascade just as Herj—just as the false quarian injected you with those nanites."

Kevin's glossy eyes drifted towards Arla as she spoke as if he was trying to find her based on where her voice was. He seemed to spend a long time thinking about this. "Ahhmmmnnn."

For some reason, that made Arla smile. It did not last. "Maela bonded with you as soon as we brought you into this room. We think your condition is a result of the two events combined." Arla took a deep breath and exhaled it slowly. "Can he recover?" she asked the xenogeneticist, clinging to hope.

Still Maela looked away from where Kevin lay. "All I can say for certain is that it's possible," It seemed she simply could not bear to look at him for some reason. "His last NCI was just as close a call when I bonded with him, but the result was that he was in a coma for three weeks. It took him a month to fully recover, and I considered that a miracle."

"Yeah, that's not going to fly right now," Gaal said quite flatly as he crossed his arms. "We'll have a hard enough time keeping the husks off our asses without protectively carting this kind of dead weight."

Arla's brow furrowed heavily at hearing her love called dead weight. "Things are different now, aren't they?" Arla said with a shake of her head. "He's not in a coma now. The reaper nanites… Maybe they helped him?"

Thump.

Kevin began to slowly rock back and forth in place, his mouth trying to form words again. He only managed to moan as if in pain.

"We can't stay here any longer," Ralik noted, eyes on his omni-tool. "That huge thing is getting way too close."

"Kevin, can you walk?" Arla quickly asked.

Maela whirled sharply to glare at the captain. In doing so, she exposed the thin, shining lines flowing from her eyes to her jawline. "You can't honestly expect him to just walk out of here after that! He's in so much pain!"

"You said you did all you could," Arla shot back. "Now let me do what I can! Well Kevin? Can you?"

Kevin tried for focus his eyes on his lower body again, frowning more deeply. His only response was another wordless groan and some more twitchy wiggles.

Thump.

The asari shook her head, biting her bottom lip. "Imagine every single nerve in your body suddenly turning into a searing, white-hot wire. That's what he's experiencing right now. Every sensation is a fresh wave of it."

"How can you be so sure of that?" Ralik asked as he took another look out of the door window. He drew his weapon, but just watched.

Maela hugged herself. "I bonded with him. I knew his thoughts, felt his body, linked with that very same nervous system. There are no existing words I can use to accurately describe the chaos and catastrophe his body has suffered and is still suffering, but a million white-hot wires burning and destroying you from the inside is the least abstract analogy I can think of right now."

Arla's heart wrenched for him, but she knew there was little to be done about it right now.

Targold looked at Kevin as he made some feeble, yet successful attempts move his legs. "Well, shit."

"Time's up," Ralik announced. "We either fight our way out now, or we get penned in by that monstrosity."

Arla wanted nothing more than to stay right here, to wait for Kevin to get better. She'd been pinned down by enemies more than once, sometimes right next Kevin. She could fight her way out as soon as Kevin's strength returned, she had no doubts of that. If Kevin could survive the planet-side impact of a cut-up frigate and a reaper's best attempts to throw him to the dirt, then he could survive this invasion. What she did have doubts about, however, was whether Kevin's strength would return before the others began to lose hope or made rash decisions. They already had more than enough reason to leave—could she make them stay and as a result sacrifice more of them for her hopes?

No. She was more than done with this ship and its fallen purpose. She wasn't about to let any more die for her insistence to remain.

With a heaving sigh, Arla grabbed Kevin's visor and put it in its proper place. She walked around to look Kevin in the glowing eyes. He returned her gaze, somewhat more alert than he had been previously. She was relieved that he could at least see her now. As she locked the clasps of his visor, she told him, "We're getting out of here, then we'll find you some help, okay? Hang on just a while longer."

She paused a moment to consider this quarian before her, asymmetrical in his new suit-straining bulk and all. With how odd this 'quarian' looked now, she wondered how she had ever thought having human boots instead of quarian legs and feet was what made him look strange. That was quite normal compared to the malformed shape he had now. "Ready up, everyone. We need to clear through that cluster of husks so we can at least try to get back to the Peravaash. That's our objective. We're getting the hell out."

Tyr pulled out and unfolded a hoverbed typically meant for moving new mothers out of the birthing room. "If we're leaving, someone will have to push him."

Arla expected some comment or at least a sigh of relief from the bitchy asari, but all she did was stare despondently at Kevin as if she meant to say, Why bother? The damage has already been done. Arla couldn't truly disagree, but the time for regretting decisions made had already passed. They needed to leave. Now.

Out loud, Maela said, "I'll do it. I can keep a close eye on his condition this way. Just make sure they stay off my ass. You guys are all better with guns than I am anyway."

"We may need your biotics," Ralik noted levelly.

"If so then we can stop for a second while I do whatever the fuck it is I need to do," she replied testily.

Arla was against it from the start, but the asari had a point. She was far better used keeping an eye on Kevin than trying to be a gunner. She still wanted to gut the conniving bitch, but she had resolved to let logic come before emotion until they were safely off the Ulansal. "Fine. Gaal'Meshiir, you're on point. Take the rest of the marines and act as our vanguard. Keep the way clear."

"As you say, captain!" Meshiir replied with a vigorous salute, clearly relieved to be moving again. He nodded to the remaining marines and they quickly fell in to form around the door.

Targold, Tyr, and Ralik immediately set to work rolling Kevin off his current bed and onto the mobile one. He groaned as he was pushed and drew in a deep breath at the slight fall from the higher stationary bed to the lower one. He didn't let go of that breath until he was on his back once again.

"Targold, Ralik, and Tyr—we'll make up the back side of this misbegotten convoy. Ancestors know we'll be hounded the whole way. Keep our ass clear, but under no circumstances does anyone lose sight of Kevin and Maela. Understood?"

A round of silent, resolute nods were her only reply. It was enough. Maela raised the back half of the bed up so that Kevin could at least be in a sitting position and see what was going on, then she pulled out his Phalanx and set it on his lap.

When did she manage to pick that up? Arla wondered to herself. She dismissed it immediately as unimportant as Gaal and the marines took up armed sentry positions in a half-circle around the door. With her very next breath, she gave him the order to move out.

Gaal wasted no time. With a nod to one of the marines at the door, it opened. A slight gust of air blew outward as the room lost half its pressure to normalize with the hall, and as they expected, a horde of husks was waiting for them just outside. Naturally, everyone with a gun unloaded out through the threshold until the stream of hostiles finally died off. The very second it was clear, the marines darted out in a line to push down the hallway towards the aft. Targold, Ralik, Tyr, and Arla slipped out next to keep the other direction secure, then Maela pushed the bed out into the hall to take up the center.

They maintained this formation for several minutes without significant resistance. A group here or there charged them from one direction or the other, but it seemed to Arla that these were chance encounters, not planned ambushes. Something niggled at the back of her mind, but she forced it away. No more second guessing.

A different thought came to her, one she had been putting off. I have to destroy this ship somehow. The Ulansal was no longer the place of life and hope it had once represented for the entire fleet. No longer a Homeship. No longer a home. It had become a nest of the fallen and a foothold of the very enemy they had hoped to cripple at the very edges of the galaxy. A perversion in the worst form where the horrors had found their own birth. Arla gritted her teeth as she ran with the others. It felt like she was running away from their objective.

After they put down another straggling group of husks, they turned down a hallway that would soon lead them to the stairs that spanned several decks in both directions. After travelling down two deck levels, the would arrive on the same deck as the airlock where the Peravaash was waiting, infested and dark. Arla continued to wonder about the lack of harrying. They all fully expected to fight for every step towards the airlock. Where had the innumerable hordes gone? She knew with certainty they had not killed off enough to put even a respectable dent in the numbers that had been on the ship previous to its fall. The niggling returned, and again she forced it aside.

She needed to figure out how to handle destroying the vessel. She had no ordinance worth thinking of and their usual plan of using reactor meltdowns as the crux for ship-wide chain reactions wouldn't work when that ship was drained and dead. She would have to think of something else. Maybe with the use of the two ships drifting just outside—the Rivii and the Talaheel? They went dark after Ulansal did, are they also festering with reaper abominations? She'll have to deal with them too.

"Slow down, assholes!" Maela shouted ahead, cutting off Arla's thoughts. The asari was forced to slow down when heading down the stairs or she would risk dumping Kevin down the flight. They might not have the time to put him back on if he fell.

Gunfire and some yelling were the marines' preferred method of explanation, apparently. More straggling husk groups, Arla thought as she worked her way around the hover bed on the way down the stairs. She glanced to Kevin and was surprised to see he had moved his hand to rest atop his pistol. When she placed a hand on his arm, he turned his head to look at her with a clarity that made her heart surge. He said nothing, however, and continued to lie very still. Don't worry Kevin, we'll get you out of this hell yet.

At the bottom of the stairs, Arla noticed that the marines hadn't stopped fighting since Maela had yelled at them. They weren't very far ahead either, meaning they'd had to come to a stop. Sure enough, Arla's back-end team came running around the corner to find Gaal'Meshiir and the marines locked in the center of a four-way intersection, doing everything they could to keep the husks from surrounding them. They were managing fairly well; they stood their ground with an almost instinctual level of teamwork to keep their hold on the crossroads.

"Lots more down here, ma'am!" Gaal called out as the rear guard came close alongside Kevin and the asari. "We'll have to keep a swift pace if we don't want to chew through all our thermal clips trying to keep them at bay!"

As soon as Kevin and Maela were amidst the holdout, the entire team shifted in unison to allow the vanguard to keep up front while the rear guard morphed back into place behind the slow cargo that was a half-dead human. They quickly resumed their march through the corridor, picking off any husks that dared get close enough to taste their ammunition. We're nearly there. It's a straight shot to the airlock from here.

Thump.

That one caused Arla to stumble. Not from the intensity or from any physical trembling, but from its sudden existence. Had they been hearing it all this time and managed to tune it out or had it stopped? The niggling at the back of her mind rose up like a flare rearing up off the surface of a star. "Everyone be careful! Something isn't right!" She was sure something was up. The stragglers, the token defense, the fact that the huge thing hadn't shown up…

Arla was pulled from her thoughts as she saw a husk drop out from a vent and right onto Kevin. It immediately raised a blade-sharp arm to impale the human and everything slowed. Arla could practically see Kevin die several times as the point descended towards his throat. Maela's pistol was in her hand, but there was no way for her to bring it to bear in time. They had no time to react—this was a very direct and purposeful ambush, expertly executed… by a husk? What the hell was going on?

And then the thing was flying backwards off the bed, its head a soupy mess and a nauseating mix of grey and red spraying the ceiling. It took a second for Arla to register that the shot had come from below the husk. Her speculations were confirmed as she ran up beside Kevin to see him gripping his Phalanx in his lap.

"Tepka keelah, don't scare me like that!" Arla said with a nod to the rear guard to let them know he was okay. "Gaal'Meshiir, keep an eye on the—"

She glanced towards her vanguard just in time to watch it happen. Gaal and the marines entered the openness of what used to be the fore community market while they fired on a few husks across the room. In unison, they all abandoned their focus on the husks for some new terror, but they had no time to engage. In the blink of an eye they were violently swept aside in a devastating flurry of husk limbs, broken equipment, and blood. Every single one of them vanished from sight, replaced by a thick husk-formed tendril that slowly withdrew from left to right. The drops of blood that if left behind as it pulled from sight were unmistakable.

Thump.

"Holy fucking shit!" Maela blurted as she used all her strength to stop Kevin's bed and reverse direction.

Arla felt the sharp sting of loss as a whole squad of what marines remained to her on this mission were killed off in an instant. No. This can't be happening. First Kevin and now this? She hadn't even realized she was just standing there until Tyr'Garloh grabbed her arm from behind and yanked her back down the corridor. Another husk tendril was quickly pursuing them and Maela hadn't even managed to get the bed turned around yet.

The asari screamed in a mix of terror and rage as she hit the sharp-pointed tendril with a blast of biotics. A deep and mechanical roar echoed up towards them as the tendril recoiled from the concussive blast, but both Maela and Kevin had been thrown to the floor as a result. Arla looked to Tyr, Ralik, and Targold, but they were putting everything they had into keeping off a heavy wave of husks that had come in behind them. She ran to help Kevin, but she had no idea what she could do. She wasn't strong enough to drag him very far and the hover bed, now upside down and off to the side, was damaged beyond repair. I just need to get him out of reach of that bosh'tet!

Maela had scrabbled to her feet and was shooting her pistol down where the tendril had come from, her eyes wide with fear. Arla soon saw why. Another tendril—no, the same one as before—was shooting up the corridor at them, metal gleaming from what little light there was. No, not gleaming, merely shiny with its fresh coat of red. Arla was already in a full tilt run, so she dropped into a slide to let her momentum carry her under the thrust and right to Kevin. Maybe I can just…

No good. She heard Targold curse loudly as he took a hit in the back from the tendril's attack and fell forward towards the onslaught of husks as a result. She didn't have time to see how he fared as it seemed that the krogan was not the target. The tendril withdrew just enough for the point to hover above Kevin. It seemed to ignore everything and everyone else.

Once more her perception played its tricks on her and time seemed to stop right there. She could see Kevin staring right up at it as it held there. It was if it was considering him or trying to figure out what he was. She stared up at it with Kevin, and though she was right next to him, it had no interest in her. She brought her gun up to fire, but it clearly had no worry about what such a weapon could do. She fired several shots, having no other idea of what to do, and it finally seemed to regard her while her surviving comrades fought for their lives a few steps away.

A few of the husks in the tendril stirred, but only enough to reorient their limbs away from the cohesive shape of the mechanical column. They became a terrible set of spines pointed right at her. An immense wave in the tendril started down at the far end and traveled up it like a flicked whip, and Arla knew at that moment that when the wave reached her, those quarian-based spines would be pinning her to the floor or wall. What could she do? A whole squad of well-trained marines had already been dispatched in less than a second. A whole squad.

This is it then? She thought to herself. Seems this ship is both my beginning and my end. She didn't bother to try and flee, she knew there was no point to it. Instead, as tears welled in her eyes, yet again, she looked down at Kevin. I love you, she thought, unable to speak the words. I'm so, so sorry. She closed her eyes for but a fraction of a second, hoping beyond hope that when Kevin and she died together, their souls would be able to remain together in the life beyond. She saw, in that moment, her mind flip through the most memorable events from her life's past like a researcher flipping through the chapters of a thick textbook while searching for a particular phrase.

Her slow recollection was cut short by the tell-tale concussive blast of biotics. The very force of it slid her along the floor until she was up against the wall she feared she would be speared to. She opened her eyes, ready to both thank the asari and bite her head off, but instead felt herself gripped by what she saw in front of her. Her eyes went wide at the sight of Kevin on his feet. He wasn't merely standing up, however; he was wrestling the deadly end of the monster's appendage. He had one swollen arm thrust through the net-like shell of quarian husks and appeared to be grabbing whatever was at its center. Using his newfound size to his advantage, he had pinned it hard enough against the wall just above her that the sharp limbs that had been meant for her were now lodged solidly in place.

Kevin's large body strained to keep the abomination's limb under his control. It seemed he was just about to lose control against its tugging when he brusquely yanked backwards so hard and so fast that he actually tore the metal limb where he gripped it. The part that had been driven in the wall remained where it was, severed from the roots that recoiled back down the hall with an ear-shattering shriek. Kevin watched it flee, his hands and arms flexing repeatedly. His breathing was so heavy it was audible even above the fading echoes of that mechanical scream.

Arla was dumbstruck. She could hardly believe that she was alive, but what somehow seemed more incredulous was that Kevin was already on his feet and fighting. She slowly staggered to her feet, taking in a breath she felt she should have inhaled years ago. She kept staring at him, massive and misshapen as he was. There was such a surge of relief that welled up that she felt those damnable tears again. Could she not get her damn emotions under control today? When he turned to look at her, she could see how his eyes blazed, bright and full of a mounting fury that he had been struggling to unleash for ages.

Suddenly she found herself terrified by what she saw in those burning lights. What if Kevin was no longer in there? What if the reapers were taking control of him the way they did any other reaper-infested being? There was so much hatred and anger, so much unstoppable wrath twisted by agony that she feared he wouldn't know what allies were. "Kevin?" she ventured warily.

The hulking form of her lover stared at her for a while, those eyes of his shooting straight into her soul. He said nothing, but merely breathed hard and heavy. She couldn't tell if his breathing was a result of previous exhaustion, ongoing strain, or if this simply was how he was forced to breathe now. Arla also couldn't help but feel like she resided entirely in his shadow. They all knew he'd been physically changed from the quick work of the reaper nanites, but now that he was standing to full height, she thought that he might even have outgrown Targold. She honestly wondered if his suit was still intact. The suits were designed to be able to stretch to the wearer, but this was far beyond its intended capacity. After a couple tense minutes, Kevin flicked a hand in the direction they had come from.

"There's too many husks, we keep getting—"

Kevin suddenly lurched into motion, a full and awkward gait of a sprint towards where husks were about to overrun Ralik, Tyr, and Targold. He crashed through the short wall of broken and dead ones to get right up in the middle of the swarm. The husks immediately seemed disoriented and were poor at getting out of the way of his feet and hands. Even as bulky and contorted as he was, he still made CQC look like a cakewalk, especially against such creatures as the husks. They tried to retaliate with their pointed arms and legs, but they couldn't land anything more than glancing blows. Once those immediately threatening his friends were dispatched, he let loose a near-feral roar and hurled a biotic shockwave down the hall to create an escape route. The biotic blast that went forth was so powerful that instead of simply knocking husks around, it flattened them into wet pancakes on the walls, floor, and ceiling. Those same surfaces bent outwards with groans of complaint as the energy passed by.

And just like that, an entire swarm of husks was decimated.

"What in the actual hell?" Maela wondered aloud as she stood to her feet. She looked as aghast at the sight of the biotic display as Arla had felt.

Arla saw their chance and she grabbed the stunned Maela by the arm mid-flight down the corridor to pull her out of her stupor. She passed by Tyr, Targold, and Ralik who had been getting their feet back under them, knowing they would be at her heels. She risked a look back over her shoulder to find Kevin and she saw that he wasn't following. He was just standing there like he had been when he was staring at her not more than a few minutes earlier, only now he was staring blankly at a wall. She immediately skidded to a stop to go back for him, but it was Maela's turn to pull her by the arm.

"I don't know what he's doing either," Maela said amidst the early pants of a sprint, "but we can't let the opening he made for us go to waste! Need to find another way to the ship!"

Their brief stall allowed the other three to catch up and Ralik already had his omni-tool out. "There's another corridor that runs parallel to this one! If we take a left at that four-way ahead, we can travel it to get around the open room!"

"Let's do it!" Arla agreed just before nearly stumbling on the uneven, bent floor.

"How did he even do that?" Maela wondered aloud, clearly referring to the way the walls, floor, and ceiling bent away from them as if recoiling in permanent disgust.

"It was probably a result of the nanites' work on his eezo nodules," Ralik breathily chimed in. "It looked like—"

"Not now, Dolannus!" Arla rebuked. She was not in any mood for speculations and explanations. She looked over her shoulder again, hoping to see the ghastly glow of Kevin's eyes in the depths of the hallway. There was no sign of him. In his place was a mechanical roar from the husk monster. Arla feared for him. She didn't know how much more of this emotional tug of war she could handle. Worse, she felt like she wasn't helping anything.

The corridor's shape returned to normal just short of the four-way intersection that Gaal'Meshiir had held so expertly just a short time ago. Arla was having a hard go of it finding any time to properly mourn any of those she had lost in the past few weeks. She didn't even know if she should be mourning Kevin or not anymore.

The number of husks down this hallway had blessedly dwindled significantly and allowed for a great deal of the run somewhat uneventful. Arla thanked the ancestors, as she didn't know if she had the focus to be able to fight off another continuous wave of the things while rushing to the Peravaash. Everyone was incredibly exhausted, she could see it in the way they carried themselves.

"Should be just around the corner," Ralik announced, his omni-light taking up the job that the ship's lights had been failing at. "Just the lobby we came in on and the airlock should be beyond that."

The dark lobby was indeed around the corner, just as Ralik had surmised. Arla felt a wave of relief wash over her. They could sort out other things once they were aboard and away. She wrestled with the thought of having to leave Kevin behind, but she shoved that dilemma away for now. She needed a moment to be able to sort that out and it would be easier when she wasn't being tailed by husks and an absurd amalgamation made of them. She was so focused on getting aboard the Peravaash and dealing with whatever was there that she almost didn't see the quarian figure step into the doorway leading to the airlock to block their path.

It was Lan'Karthal, and he had his rifle lazily—almost carelessly—trained on them. Arla thought about just letting her kinetic barriers take the couple shots he could loose and just tackle him, but the sight of more quarian figures in her peripheral vision made her and the others skid to a stop one-third of the way across the lobby. Even Targold stopped in his tracks when he saw the multitude of husks and what had to be quarian-suited geth around the edges of the room. Waiting. Ambush. Tepka keelah, I should have known.

"Well, well, well," Lan said, rather amused. "You sure took your sweet-ass time getting back here, captain."