Chapter 20

Monsters

"My my, so few. Where's the rest of your unit, captain?" taunted Lan'Karthal. "Have you gone and led them to their deaths too?" There was something off-putting about the levels of amusement and mock in his voice. It reminded Arla of drunken bravado and the bright backlighting from the airlock only emphasized the effect as it flooded into the lobby.

"What the hell are you doing, Karthal?" Tyr growled. Despite his otherwise-level tone, Arla practically felt his hate seething just below his suit.

"I hope that's a rhetorical question, old man, as I thought it was pretty obvious." He lifted his arms to each side to show off his handiwork. "I'm running this show. That's what the hell I'm doing."

"Traitor," came Tyr's immediate and surprisingly suppressed accusation.

"If you say so," Lan shot back with a half-hearted shrug, not much singed by Tyr's remark.

"Indoctrinated," Ralik asserted with a nod.

"Hardly. I've merely had a moment to see the odds stacked against us while I was out on my little suicide trek at the good captain's behest. Turns out that having a change of heart does wonders for how the dice fall. Odds don't seem so bad from where I'm standing."

"And that's enough to murder your own without a thought?" Arla asked as flatly as she was able.

Lan groaned in exasperation, saying each word slowly for emphasis. "Nothing of value was lost. You know that as well as I do." Arla clenched her fists but Lan plowed onwards. "They were little more than filler best utilized holding an empty ship. But this?" He gestured grandly around the room. "Much more useful. All I had to do was change my mind as to who I thought the winners would be and they started listening. Listening. And obeying."

Arla saw Tyr take an angry step forward but she put a firm hand on his shoulder. It didn't stop him from speaking his mind, however. "Bosh'tet! Have some respect for the—"

"Dead?" Lan finished for him. Then he chuckled. "The dead have no use for respect. Or glory. Or honor. Or whatever other misguided virtues we make claims to. Most of the time they aren't even worthy of our net memory." He paused to shake his head. "That's what we face, you know; being erased, forgotten amongst the tumbling rocks of the galaxy as we're swept aside like dust sprinkled across someone else's floor after they've returned to set the room up for a new tenant."

There was an immense thud somewhere else in the ship. Arla could only assume that it had something to do with Kevin. "Almost poetic, this monologue of yours. And I suppose you think you're going to somehow avoid being swept aside with the rest of us?" She had to stall him a little longer. She needed time to think, to find an efficient way of getting everyone out of this room alive.

"Preservation, captain. Isn't that preferable to extinction? Wouldn't you want our people to remain when all others have been brushed off the shoulder of the galaxy?" He paused, seeming to relish the drama of the moment. "Don't you want to save the Migrant Fleet instead of watching it burn?"

Arla's fists clenched tighter as her gaze fell to the floor. What she would give to spare the flotilla the one-sided slaughter.

"We have that choice, captain. Even the geth fear the reapers in their own way, as they do not get that choice. All we have to do is… stop fighting them." Lan looked off to his right as the muffled sounds of something massive grew louder. Lan sighed. "Unlike that bosh'tet."

The cacophony rose to a crescendo and Arla could feel the very floor tremble with each thud and crash. Everyone braced themselves as if they might get knocked off their feet at any moment. A cold hand gripped Arla's stomach as she quickly remembered just what it was on the ship that was big enough to rattle the entire frame of a quarian homeship. As if given cue by some cruel and unseen director, Kevin's bulky and uneven form flew backwards into the room from the hall they had to detour away from.

Whatever sent him flying must have hit him hard, as he crashed through multiple husks before he even hit the ground. When he did, he skidded to a stop near Lan and the traitorous quarian took a few steps back to get some distance. The reaperized amalgamation quickly followed him through the threshold in a burst of skittering metal tentacles forged from quarian husks linked together. To Arla's horror, the thing had grown by several orders of magnitude since they'd first seen it on the way to engineering. Not just in the way that it had grown metal lengths to move through the ship like an omni-directional spider, but the spherical net of husks around the core was easily triple its original size. It must have been gorging itself on the plentiful, transformed quarians all about the ship.

It made a rather casual-looking thrust at Kevin, who managed to roll out of harm's way at the last second. Now that it had more room to stretch after being confined in that tiny corridor, it seemed to expand as if drawing in an extended breath. Red arcs of some unknowable form of energy skipped across the chain of husks in every direction, bathing the room in a pulsing, uneven, and ominous hue. It still had a series of yellow glowing eyes at the center that peered out from behind its protective shell, though what was at its center was still a mystery.

Arla looked back to Kevin and her heart sank at his heavy, ragged breathing. He seemed relatively unhurt—as far as she could tell given his new form—but it was clear he was not in any condition to be fighting.

Lan held up a hand and the monstrosity, curiously, held back as though at his command. "And here's another example of what won't get the choice that we have, captain." He lifted his chin in disdain at Kevin's mutated physique at the center of the room. "Such a ruined waste resources. I know what peers into his mind, the instructions that he rails against. If he would just do as he's told, he'd be a welcome addition to our cause." Lan shook his head angrily. "But no. He squandered every gift bestowed upon him. A waste." Was that jealousy in Lan's low growl?

Arla took a few steps toward Kevin but Targold put a surprisingly gentle, if meaty and armored, hand on her shoulder. "Let's not start this one," he said, his krogan brow furrowed quite deep. "If Kevin's in there somewhere, he knows what he's doing. Let him make the first move."

Kevin seemed to focus on Lan'Karthal as he stood to his feet. He pulled his Phalanx from its holster and twirled it by the handguard with one finger. When he aimed it at the traitorous quarian, the husk monster slammed a tendril down in front of Lan to protect him from any would-be shots. Kevin looked up towards the core of the technological beast, then back to Arla and the others. Those blue, mechanical flames behind his visor were no less bright than before, and yet she had to wonder if he saw any of them at all. The way his gaze casually glanced over them made it seem as though he was choosing between using her and the others as bait or as a shield. He suddenly pulled his gun away from the creature to shake it at them, but as before, said nothing. Arla could not decipher any meaning, if there was any.

"You see, captain," Lan said from behind his husk shield, "I want to help you. We can all choose preservation and get out of here." He flicked a hand towards Kevin. "He, however, is beyond preservation. He had his chances. Now he's just a wretch and a liability. He has tasted the gift and spurned it. He must die."

At the last word, Kevin turned back towards the airlock where Lan cowered. Arla noticed a shimmer around him, visible even in the dim, reddish light. "Get ready," Arla whispered to her companions. "Whatever he does, we 'll use the ensuing chaos to neutralize the surrounding threat. Closed Circle formation." She knew it was a gamble at best. They were easily outnumbered four to one just in husks alone, and there had to be at least six or seven faux-quarians mixed in there. She had no idea how many of them had weapons, and they were nearly out of thermal clips entirely. It's this or just stand here and become Lan's plaything, she mused morosely.

"Remove him," Lan said lazily, and the beast immediately lashed out with two of its lethal, pointed tendrils right at Kevin. One aimed right where he stood, the other to strike where he would be when he jumped over the first. That's when the expected chaos began.

Everything happened in the blink of an eye. The moment the first strike hit the floor, Arla and the others had their guns out and backed themselves into a circle. At the same time, they fired into the now-rushing crowd of husks and geth-quarians. It didn't seem to Arla that any of them had any ranged weapons at all and counted herself lucky for it. Even still, there were far too many to clear them all out before close combat would take precedence. With the possibility of a false quarian injecting any of them amidst the CQC, it was far too dangerous to engage like that. They all knew it.

To her surprise, several of the oncoming hostiles took fatal shots from somewhere above them. The swiftness and accuracy with which those shots had been placed was nothing short of absurd to her senses. She chanced a glance upward to see what could possibly have made those shots, expecting some accidentally-activated turret emplacement—but she found Kevin instead. He was riding one of the metal appendages as if it were the sinuous neck of a Harvester to be tamed. It was from there that he shot with his pistol until the thermal clip needed to eject a heatsink. The way his body moved to counter the thrashing movement to aim and take each shot was disturbingly mechanical, like the automated defense turret she had originally expected. She was grateful that he seemed on their side, at least for now.

After Kevin's second jettisoned heatsink, he stopped focusing on the husks. He seemed to judge it was enough to turn the tide, and Arla likewise knew she and the others could handle the rest. Targold had already tied two husks together by their arms and had begun swinging them around like a massive sword at anything that drew too close.

After the immediate threat was put down, Arla hazarded another glance up at Kevin. The net-like formation the husks maintained around each tendril made a convenient lattice for Kevin to grip and navigate, and he was using that to his advantage. Arla simply couldn't believe the speed Kevin kept up despite how bulky he'd grown. It was a most unnatural sight; he crawled around the limb like a mechanical spider to avoid a third, fourth, and fifth metal tentacle bent on dislodging him. Those nanites must have done a lot more to his innards than we thought, Arla thought, feeling queasy. The possibility terrified her as much as it relieved her.

As quick as he was, he had still been forced to be on the defensive. He spent more time and energy dodging and maneuvering than he did making any sort of counterattack. He did look like he was inching closer to the core, but any plans he had were cut down when a growing red light inside the core of the creature shot forth from its eyes—right into Kevin's approach. It was barely more than a flash to Arla's eyes, a beam that was there and gone in an instant, but it hit him hard enough to send him flying across the entire room where his back slammed against the wall. Arla shouted for him, but her yell was lost amongst the fighting. Several times, they had to break formation and scatter to avoid being impaled by the sharp tentacles used to hold the creature up.

It threw two more lancing thrusts at him as he fell down the wall, but out of the corner of Arla's eye, she saw him coil up like a spring and jump away before a solid hit could land. The maneuver sent him just inches over one of the incoming lances, and this put him in an advantageous position. This time Kevin pulled his monomolecular knife free, and just as he grabbed ahold of the husk net to mount it, he drove his arm down into its center and severed it on the spot with two quick and clean slices. The creature roared—more out of frustration than pain, if it could feel such a thing—and thrashed its maimed length in another vain attempt to rid itself of Kevin's steely grip. The quarian husks beyond that cut at the center seemed to have lost whatever force was holding them together and quickly fell apart, leaving the tendril effectively cut mid-way.

All of this happened in the time it took for Arla to recover from her lunge away from danger, and she pushed herself back up onto her feet. With a momentary lapse in oncoming husks, the others had taken to shooting at the core. It had kinetic barriers that none of their small arms projectiles could pierce, however, and they quickly saw this was a wasted effort. Even Maela's biotically-augmented shots did little to weaken those reaper-infused shields. Annoyed, the monster broke its focus away from Kevin to charge another powerful blast aimed at them. This one wasn't the little flash that had flicked Kevin earlier. This one drove across the floor and up the wall, leaving warped, red-hot material in its wake. It was nauseatingly similar to the weapons of an actual reaper and Arla didn't really get much chance to contemplate how unfair that was. Once more everyone scattered and Arla sighed in relief upon seeing that no one was vaporized by the haphazard shot as it passed by them and up the wall seeking a different target.

It held the beam long enough to bring it about and aim at Kevin, but this time Kevin was one step ahead. He had grabbed ahold of a tendril that had attempted to smack him off, crawled around it to get underneath it, then leapt off towards the floor. As he jumped away, he released his gathered dark energy in the form of an immense biotic push straight up into the tentacle. Sheer concentrated force kicked the tentacle up and over the core—right across the powerful beam that had intended to cook him. Almost half of the tentacle careened across the room and slammed into the far wall, severed completely by the beam.

Meanwhile, Arla had signaled to the others to try to make their way to the airlock. She had every intention of putting a few shots through Lan's visor at point blank, and they needed to recover their ship. A number of husks flooded out of the airlock, however, stalling Arla and her team long enough for another fresh wave of horrors to spill out from the same corridor Kevin had been thrown out of earlier. Arla growled and gestured for Ralik, Tyr, and Targold to secure that corridor somehow. We'll run out of heat sinks long before we can secure this room. We need to finish this soon.

The amalgamation roared its irritation at Kevin's successes and flailed its limbs in every which direction, slamming walls and floors, allies and enemies alike. Targold was in the middle of stomping a husk when he took a swiping hit across his helmet and was thrown. He hit the distant wall so hard that he left a solid dent. Worse still, he didn't get up or grab for his Claymore. Even his backup nervous system didn't send him into a blood rage. Maela saw this, and she ceased trying to reach the airlock and went back for him, cursing all the while. He would have been easy fodder for husks if she didn't. Tyr and Ralik got caught up in keeping the husks contained in the corridor. Their shot at surprising Lan had slipped away. Arla swore to herself and nearly screeched aloud when a flailing husk tentacle slammed the ground right in front of her, laying a long, slender dent across the solid metal floor. The force could have easily flattened her right then and there.

The monster's tantrum finally came to an end, and it once again drew its focus to Kevin. Three of its… How many damn tentacles did that thing even have? Seven? Three of its seven tentacles had been severed, and it had taken to using the damaged ones to keep itself upright so that its four remaining combat effective ones could still be used. It didn't swing at Kevin this time, though. Perhaps it had finally learned that such a tactic wasn't working. Instead, a cloud of red combat drones began to seep out from the core like thick, angry smoke.

Arla cursed as they all converged on the mutated human. She knew their own combat drones would be useless here—the number it had released this time was far, far more than when they first met this thing on the way to engineering. Kevin didn't bother to run or flee, it would have been a waste of energy. Instead, he encased himself in a thick biotic barrier, which seemed to keep the onslaught of red arcing discharges at bay for now. Arla wasn't about to find out how long he could keep that up, though; she pulled out her Tempest and let loose on the swarm. She realized her mistake as soon as she made it—they abandoned Kevin for her. As they did so, the monster gave Kevin no quarter, slamming its metal arms against his barrier over and over whilst he was immobile. Arla knew that so long as he was under that assault, he could not afford to lift his barrier even for a second. He was pinned.

Meanwhile, she was seconds away from being fried from thirty different directions. Her Tempest was far from useless, but the combat drones were being steadily replenished by the monster's core and she would be smothered in seconds. Behind the swarm, Kevin's shimmering barrier rippled under the crushing blows.

Just when she thought she was about to feel her skin sizzle under her suit, enormous bursts of electricity arced across the swarm of drones, killing them all off in an instant. She glanced over towards Tyr and Ralik, whose omni-tools were up and likely going to need a while to recover. Feeling foolish that she didn't try that herself, she gave them a thankful nod. I need to give Kevin a moment to drop his barrier and move. I need something that will catch the thing's attention better than my damn pellet gun. She spotted Targold under Maela's wing and ran over towards the unconscious krogan, an idea blooming in her mind.

She ignored the asari bitch's puzzled glance searched the krogan's armor for something. After a few gropes, she found what she was looking for—a massive grenade, clearly turian in origin. She had originally thought he'd looted it from dead turians on Taetrus before she learned he'd been in a heavy assault squad of that turian legion. The asari's eyes went a bit wide as Arla immediately armed it.

"Wait, no! That'll—" was all Maela was able to get out before Arla heaved it with all her strength at the monster's core.

To Arla's satisfaction, the immediate explosive threat did take the thing's attention off of Kevin. To her following dismay, however, it dispatched the device with a red blast from its core, similar to the one it used to flick Kevin with earlier. It exploded mid-flight and the blast was not small. The explosion completely took the wind out of Arla and threw her—along with Maela and Targold—backward against the wall near the corridor they had entered from. Her kinetic barriers, having taken the brunt of the explosion, had shattered and she was left to curl up into a fetal position where she fell, dazed, gasping for breath, and hoping Maela and Targold were still alive.

The huge metal beast, meanwhile, rocked unsteadily backwards from the force and bounced off of the far wall just above the airlock they sought to reach. Husks that had just entered the fray were blown to bits or thrown against the wall hard enough to put them out of commission. The core itself didn't seem to take any serious damage, but the new swarm of combat drones it had let fly were gone and yet another of its tentacles were severely damaged, left a scorched and sparking stump. Struggling to see through the field of stars in her vision, she sought Kevin.

Thanks to her brash gambit, Kevin was able to drop his barrier and get back on the offensive. He shimmered as he ran with frightening speed directly for the core. It had dropped low after bouncing off the wall and it looked like Kevin had a plan to exploit this. He juked this way and that as it sought to crush him with wild flails of its surviving appendages, but soon he was too close for them to be of any use. He fell into a low skid as he prepared his biotics to deliver a devastating blow directly to the core from underneath.

That was probably his plan, at least. Kevin instead found himself staring directly down the metaphorical barrel as the core charged up with red light to deliver a point-blank blast. Arla felt her heart leap into her throat, almost causing her to vomit amidst all the other sensations. She knew that there was no way even he could survive a shot like that and her mind wanted to panic.

The blast left the core almost straight down at Kevin and Arla tried to cry out with heaving lungs, but instead of vaporizing him on the spot, a ring of red energy dispersed laterally across the room from where Kevin had skidded to a stop. Again the beam was sustained for a short time, giving her the opportunity to see that Kevin had instead used his gathered dark energy create a dense biotic barrier just large enough to deflect the beam outward. Arla was able to spend an ever so brief moment thanking the ancestors that Kevin was not suicidal, opting for the defensive barrier rather than just going for the killing biotic blow and taking an equally devastating hit in return.

A few eternal seconds later, the reaper horror had to break off the attack. As soon as it did, Kevin brought his Phalanx around to bear just within the limits of its kinetic barrier and let loose as many shots as his heat sink would allow straight up into the core. It roared and skittered up and away, quite possibly just as surprised as Arla was to see Kevin still in one piece. However, Kevin barely had time to get to his feet before a metal tendril came slamming down, its sharp point piercing right through Kevin's right shoulder and throwing him back to the floor. It pinned him there and he screamed wordlessly. A second tendril came down immediately after and Kevin pivoted on the impaled shoulder to avoid a lethal hit. Instead of piercing his chest, it went through his left arm and pinned him more thoroughly.

Arla felt her breath leave her in a most involuntary fashion—again. She watched in horror as the third and final combat-effective appendage struck downwards, aiming for one last fatal strike. Somehow, Kevin managed to lift his legs up and he kicked at the point as it came down. It struck his leg mid-kick, and while it pierced his leg, he managed to redirect the thrust enough to have it pin his right leg at the thigh instead of driving into his head.

Kevin let out a feral and agonized roar. Pinned as he was in three separate spots, he could do little more than wriggle in place and thrash in vain. As he did, it only caused more damage where his body met the sharp edges. He roared again and refused to sit still. It seemed less like he was in pain and more like he was absolutely furious. It hardly sounded like Kevin at all anymore, but it still cut Arla right to the bone. She lifted her Tempest, but it was more out of muscle memory than anything else. She knew she couldn't do anything else to that horrid creation. If Kevin, clearly augmented by the reaper tech as he was, couldn't beat it, what could she do? The only thing she could. She fired at a number of husks that had stumbled into the room to keep them from harassing her malformed lover. They fell over, barely alive to begin with, and a sudden, thick stillness fell over the room.

Husks had run dry for the time being, but Targold was still out cold and Tyr and Ralik couldn't move from their posts. They were doing something with their omni-tools that kept a tide of husks at bay, and were trying not to attract any undue attention. Maela had gotten up at some point and panted heavily, but was now likewise transfixed on the grisly sight at the center of the room.

That was when Lan decided to come back out, shaking his head in disappointment as if he had orchestrated some kind of gladiator battle and lost a bet.

"Keelah, what a waste! Kevin, you could have been the perfect supersoldier, but you had to go and blow it—just like everything else. Now look at you." Lan'Karthal walked casually out into the center of the room to gloat over the fallen pseudohuman. He gave Kevin a half-hearted kick, to which Kevin struggled feebly like a predator caught in an immobilizing net. "How does it feel to be such a waste, hm? No longer one of them, yet not far enough along to be one of us. You don't belong with anyone now, freak. And now you've lost."

Arla lifted her Tempest again and fired at Lan, but at this range her SMG was ineffective against his kinetic barriers. Lan gave her a few warning shots from his rifle. She flinched and thanked the ancestors he wasn't aiming, as her kinetic barriers still hadn't recharged. "You quiet down, I'm talking over here. No, don't bother to get up. The big guy here could blast any one of you in the blink of an eye."

"So why don't you?" Arla yelled, her mounting frustration seeping out. "Stop wasting time and just fucking end it!"

"I already told you, captain. I run the show here. I'll end it soon enough, don't you worry."

Arla lowered her Tempest. She simply didn't have the strength to continue holding it. Keelah, I'm so… tired. As she did so, her gaze fell on to Kevin. He had lifted his right arm at the elbow and was staring at his hand. It was covered in what had to be his blood—a stomach-churning mix of red and grey fluids. Red and grey. His blood. The fury seemed to have gone out of him by then and Arla had to guess that the void it had left behind was being filled with harsh reality. Arla's own anger and frustration followed it away, and it left her feeling numb.

"Yeah, that's right tough guy. You're no good to anyone now. Not to them, not to us." He chuckled. "Who in the galaxy is going to feel anything for a half-reaper, half-human freak that wears an old quarian suit and thinks far too highly of himself? Nobody." He gave Kevin another kick, but Kevin hardly even noticed. He just kept staring at that deformed hand and the inhuman fluids that covered it.

"Well, seems you're done with your tantrum. Good. Suppose I can get back to bringing your girlfriend around." He looked up to Arla, a glint in his eye that could be seen through his dark visor. "One way or another." He started to walk towards Arla then, stepping on Kevin in the process. Again, the disconsolate half-human didn't seem to notice.

It was then that Arla had seen that Kevin was no longer staring at his hand, but rather at her. That once-raging fire in his eyes had instead become cold and distant. The glow that she swore was born of his sheer will had diminished to smoldering coals. His blood continued to pool on the floor around him, but it was the way he looked at her that drove an omni-blade through her heart. In those eyes she saw a plea for some kind of forgiveness he clearly didn't feel he deserved. She saw a confused helplessness, like that a child being torn from his parents, incapable of understanding why, and crying out that he's sorry because he truly believes it's somehow his fault. Was he only now just realizing what had happened to him?

Arla shook her head, on the verge of a sob that she somehow managed to lock deep within herself. She would not give Lan the satisfaction of seeing her break down. She would—Compassionate arms suddenly wrapped around her from behind, and she was surprised to find Maela there, her face a thin façade over a tumult of emotion she refused to give away. Arla found she understood, and for a brief moment, they shared something she couldn't describe.

A glance back to Kevin showed that he'd gone back to staring at his bloodied hand and Arla cursed herself for not being able to give him any sort of affirmation or comfort. He sought her for comfort and despite her logical mind knowing she couldn't do anything for him right now, she still felt wretched at not doing something anyway. She wondered if Kevin truly believed there was no place for him anymore. She had no way of telling him now that she would be his no matter what shape he took. When he glanced back to her once more, her heart went out to him. I have to make him understand. I'm not letting him go. I'm not letting them have him. I don't care what I have to do.

"Now then," Lan'Karthal interrupted. "While I have my friend there clean up the mess, I want to have another chat with all of you. Last one, I promise. You'll either get it or you won't. I suppose at that point I'll just have to clean you up too. No more room in this galaxy for fence-sitters."

Arla barely heard anything he said. She was hardly thinking anything at all. A dull, colorless numbness fell over her in the realization that this was where she would lose everything she hadn't already lost. It warred inside her, fighting with the promise to never let him go. It felt like her vitality was simply… draining away. It took her far longer than it should have to realize that she was staring at something. A light? It blinked at her. Her omni-tool. A message had just arrived on her omni-tool. It confused her. Why would she be getting messages now? Maela had seemed to get one too. She looked at Maela and the asari looked back, nearly as numb and equally confused.

"Are you two even listening? I'm not going to repeat myself," Lan went on, aiming his gun in their direction as a threat.

Arla, ignoring Lan entirely, opened her message at the same time Maela opened hers. Curiously, it was a message from Kevin's omni-tool. It was very short.

\\i love you
\\i'm sorry

Shortly after, another one arrived—again from Kevin's omni-tool.

\\one more try
\\hit me
\\biotics

Arla looked to Maela, unsure of the meaning. Instead of mirrored confusion, she saw a hint of understanding in the asari's eyes as she whispered under her breath, "Kaliar…" Pain turned to horror on Maela's face and her eyes got wider as she looked to Kevin. When Arla followed her gaze, she pressed back against Maela with a gasp.

Centered around Kevin was a barely perceptible shimmer that seethed and rippled. Arla didn't need to be a biotic to know what it was. Dark energy. Keelah, a dangerous amount of dark energy. She could feel it pulsing, a vibration in reality itself. It made Arla's skin tingle under her suit and she could swear there were tiny crackling discharges along the walls. Lan, however, didn't seem to be aware, though he gave the creature a gesture to put an end to the once-human anyway.

As the red glow from the core of the beast grew and was summarily distorted by Kevin's efforts, Lan finally seemed to realize something was very off. As he turned around to see what Arla and Maela were so transfixed by, the asari started drawing dark energy to herself as well. Lan took in the sight for a moment as understanding dawned on him. He quickly looked back towards Maela, cursed loudly, then made a mad dash for the doors to the airlock. He didn't make it far before Maela let loose with her biotics twice in quick succession. The first created a bubble of biotic protection around Arla, Targold, and herself, and the second threw out a detonator, a biotic throw, directly at the source of the unstable biotic field. Kevin laid his head down and closed his eyes.

Then reality itself exploded around them.

The room instantly filled with bright white-blue light. Bulkheads, walls floors, ceilings, everything either buckled outward or gave way to entirely different sections of the ship. The explosion was muffled by Maela's barrier, but even then it was deafening. She could feel the ship itself shudder from the explosion as the violent vibrations thrummed back and forth through the frame. Had Maela not put up a barrier around them, Arla was sure they'd all have been turned to dust. The barrier itself rippled so violently that Arla was sure it would fail amidst the earsplitting blast.

After the brief flash, she saw Lan get thrown against the far wall and the quarian husk-monster's limbs shatter and be torn away as it was thrown hard against the ceiling. Whatever charge it had been gathering fled as it bounced about the room like a kicked ragdoll. Once the deafening blast had subsided, Maela let the barrier drop. Kevin, no longer pinned by the beast, somehow began to rise as if pulled by wires. Slow and uncertain, he brought his feet under him and he stood up. Arla had no idea how it was possible, the husk creature had left him with three gaping wounds that bled profusely. He didn't even seem to be aware of his injuries as he turned to look at the husk core.

"Kevin! Here!" Arla yelled as she picked up and threw Targold's M-300 Claymore to him.

He looked to Arla, caught the shotgun gingerly, then immediately ambled over towards the floundering core. Its limbs had all been blasted away and so it could no longer move about or defend itself. It must have concentrated all its kinetic barriers to protect the core so that it might rebuild, probably intending to gather up more husks. Even now Arla could see it pulling scorched husk corpses to itself to retaliate.

Kevin gave it no such chance. He thrust the barrel of the claymore through the broken net of husks right where those glowing eyes were, and he fired. And fired. And fired.

And fired.

When the Claymore had exhausted its current run of heatsinks, Kevin took to snarling like a feral beast as he used the butt of it to bash what was left of the core into a grey, pulpy mess. He kept at it, over and over and over with a strength that by all rights he shouldn't even have. The blue flames in his helmet had returned and something about their feral intensity gave Arla pause. Eventually Kevin discarded the Claymore in favor of using his own bloodied fists to pulverize the remaining bits until there was nothing left of the entire core but crushed husk and a unidentifiable mass that was once a reaper creature.

Lan'Karthal coughed loudly as he shakily got to his feet. He looked around in a daze. "What…" He coughed again and held a hand to his ribs with a wince of pain. "Keelah, what happened? Captain? What's going on? Keelah, this headache…"

Kevin's searing gaze turned upon Lan.

"Holy shit, what the hell is that?" Lan exclaimed as he reached for a rifle he no longer had. "Captain!"

Arla looked at Lan's confused, terrified stance. "He… he must have had the indoctrination knocked out of him. W-we should—"

Kevin started towards Lan, his gait full of malice and the inevitability of a predator approaching its cornered prey.

Arla struggled to rise. "Kevin! Wait! We need to question him! Kevin!"

Kevin did not wait.

Confused by the way Kevin—her Kevin—ignored her, she started towards the stalking figure. Maela, however, caught her arm and held her back. "I… I don't think Kevin's in there…" she said, her voice shaking. "Look. His eyes. I know you can see what I mean."

Arla looked back to Lan and Kevin. The second lieutenant stumbled back up against the wall, terrified, confused, and still grabbing for weapons he no longer had. Before anyone else could get a word in, Kevin lunged for Lan and seized him by the neck, pressing him back against the wall and lifting him higher and higher. Lan flailed and tried to speak, but only managed croaks and gurgles. Arla could hear his suit straining and twisting under Kevin's grip.

Lan tried feverishly to fight Kevin off, but Kevin was entirely unperturbed. With a savage, inhuman roar, he took a step back to pull Lan away from the wall only to slam the quarian back against it with so much force that Arla felt the shockwave travel through the floor under her feet. Something cracked. Lan screamed in immediate agony, but Kevin heard none of it. He slammed Lan three more times before he let the body drop.

Lan, body broken in an unthinkable number of ways, was barely conscious now. Kevin did not stop, however. Howling in bestial fury, he threw himself at Lan with the same savage strength he gave the husk creature. Kevin's mixed blood continued to seep from his gaping injuries and was spattered in every direction with his assault. Lan screamed, terrified, and in anguish, and begged for reprieve from the repeated, merciless blows.

Arla could no longer watch and had to turn away, resting a hand on the side of her helmet to block as much of her sight from that direction as possible. She realized she had begun clutching Maela for support with the other hand, flinching with each thunderous slam of Kevin's mutated fist and quickly-diminishing cries of pain. One look into the asari's eyes told her that Maela wished she could look away, for the memories made here would haunt her for the rest of her long life. The screams soon fell away to whimpers, then to silence. By the time Kevin had finally let up, Lan'Karthal was reduced to a crumpled mess of meat and exosuit shreds that hardly resembled anything remotely quarian.

It was in that moment that Arla realized what terrified her so much. Nothing the reapers had done thus far, with their dispassionate and indiscriminate slaughter, had come close to what Kevin had just done. The reapers were machines; efficiency, purpose, and implacable progress. Knowing machines as she did, she did not believe they had anything more or less than emotionless drive to complete their objective. Kevin, however, was a mix of the reapers' brutal efficiency and a human's capacity for emotion. Kevin didn't kill Lan because he was still a legitimate threat or because he was impeding progress anymore, though such things might have played some small part. He killed Lan because he hated him, because he wanted Lan to die painfully and violently.

In some ways, the reapers created in Kevin far worse a monster than mere hideous conglomerations of scavenged corpses.

Arla straightened up and made herself turn around to see what had become of her second lieutenant. There was little to see. Where Lan had once cowered was now a bloody mass of suit pieces and sinew and bone. Somehow she felt bad for him. She wanted him dealt with, especially after killing Cer'Amerlos, Tira'Sehl, and Jela'Nuhk, but like this? Lan was indoctrinated, not truly evil. He deserved corporal punishment and exile, not savage eradication by being beaten to paste.

Kevin had turned away from Lan and was stumbling away, aimless and meandering. The limp that Arla had expected earlier was evident now, and it seemed to her that whatever fury and energy that had lent him the strength to lash out after being run through thrice had fled him. It's almost like he's two different people now. If he's not in full fury and fighting, he's barely alive. There's no in between.

Kevin's gaze combed the room until he came across Arla and Maela. He swayed in place for a moment before he stumbled towards them. The more he stumbled, the faster he moved. His breath, already ragged and uneven, turned to panting and grunting.

"Kevin?" Arla ventured, almost afraid to get his attention.

Kevin's pace continued to increase, and his grunts morphed into growls.

Arla started to get up, but there was no way she could get out of the way in time if Kevin did not stop and ended up only rising to her knees. She simply could not read him at all. She couldn't tell if he was rushing her way for a hug or to run her down and slam her into the ground. Worst yet, she felt like she couldn't move. If she moved, she would betray her fear of him. If she didn't, she was risking horrible injury. Just now she felt that risk of death might be worse than showing him, in his vulnerable state, that she no longer felt safe around him. It made no sense in some part of her mind, but for the most part she no longer cared.

Kevin didn't seem to have the same reservations, however. He barreled on right towards her, his body moving as if being pushed. A growl rose loud and high as he made one last step before he lunged at her. Arla closed her eyes, knowing now it was too late to do anything about it.

The blow never came, however, and was replaced with a krogan grunt and the solid impact of flesh and armor on flesh and armor. Arla opened her eyes to see that Targold had gotten up at some point and shoulder-checked Kevin amidst his lunge. Despite Kevin's bulbous form, Targold still weighed considerably more and the weight of his tackle sent Kevin flying backwards a small distance. When Kevin hit the ground, he rolled a few times until he fell still while on his back. He did not try again, nor did he move at all.

"Brave, but stupid," Targold grumbled at Arla. He ran an armored glove across the right side of his mouth to wipe away some blood that had trickled out. "Where the hell is my shotgun?"

Maela merely pointed wordlessly over to where Kevin had discarded it earlier in his assault on the reaper beast.

The krogan looked around, clearly grumpy that he had missed most of the fight. "Targold, how was your day? Oh you know, got smacked by a sharp metal penis sticking out of a quad made of dead quarians and decided to take a nap. Wasn't really looking forward to a fight or anything." He stomped his way on over to his Claymore, looked it over, ejected the spent thermal clip, wiped off some residual reaper paste, looked over at the runny remains of the reaper horror and Lan, then grunted. "Gross." From there his grumblings devolved into incoherent self-conversations that Arla could only perceive as growls.

She took in a long, shuddering breath and stood up, only half-realizing that she held Maela's hand for balance. Her legs felt like they were made of medi-gel. She belatedly realized that she had picked up her Tempest, as it felt far heavier in her hand than it should have. She knew better than to holster it here, but her fingers could barely keep themselves wrapped around its grip.

Arla found herself walking towards Kevin's body, now once again laying in an expanding pool of mixed-color blood. Her body was moving, but it didn't seem like it was of her own will. She was so tired, so numb… Tyr and Ralik seemed to come out of nowhere to stop her in her stupor.

"Best not, captain," Tyr said levelly with a glance back to Kevin. "It's… too dangerous now."

"That's not an 'it', Tyr, that's Kevin!" Arla said with more fervor than she felt.

"It was Kevin," Ralik corrected with a bit more emotion than Arla was accustomed to seeing in a salarian. "Now? Well… we don't truly know anymore, do we?"

"I don't think he knows either," Maela said, stepping over to the group and flicking her chin towards Kevin's bloody body.

The more Arla stared at Kevin's near-lifeless body, the more the galaxy seemed to fall away and the more the others' voices became wordless droning sounds. I just got him back, I can't go through this again… Not with him dying right in front of me… I—I have to do something. I have to help him live. I need him to live.

The others started droning on about what to do now, with the Peravaash still in lockdown and the homeship still a veritable hive of walking death. Arla couldn't think straight anymore. Fatigue, shock, and more made her world a blurry place, and the concept of Kevin dead made it colorless. The fear of losing him was the only thing she could feel in her numbed state, and she clung to it for dear life. I have to find a way. I can't lose him like this. I… I just can't.

While the others debated on what to do about their current situation, Arla turned her attention towards the lobby, now absolutely destroyed by the battle. Nothing left here but blood, husk pieces, discarded weapons, and destruction. Death. This Homeship was beyond saving, she knew that. It was only now that it struck her, with numb efficiency, that this Homeship had to be completely destroyed. Did this mean she failed in her mission? Another failure?

She lost everything on this accursed vessel. She had a handful of surviving squadmates—that was it. That was it. What about Kevin? Was he lost to her like the others said? They seemed so sure. No, he was in there somewhere. He talked to them through their omni-tools. He came up with that biotics plan. He had to be alive in there. But he wouldn't be for long, she knew. Those wounds would kill reaper husks as much as they'd kill a human. She needed to fix that first.

What could she do? They had no real way to address wounds of this magnitude. They had no surgeon, no way to staunch the blood from such massive gashes in his flesh. All they had were dead quarian husks and dead false-quarians, and—

The nanites. Arla could feel her heart beating faster and faster. She needed reaper nanites. They could fix his injuries. All they had to do was stop them before they changed anything else. She had a way to save him. It certainly wouldn't be the dumbest thing she's done today, right? She could save Kevin. If nothing else went right today, she needed to save at least one life.

Some logical part of her brain was screaming at her, telling her that nanites made a mess of him in the first place, and that a second dose would just make things worse. But if Kevin's fight just now told her anything, it was that he didn't want to die. Malformed or not, he'd rather help them fight. It's always easier to ask forgiveness than to ask permission.

While the rest of her squad talked about the mission, she went on a hunt for a broken geth in a quarian suit.

Maela couldn't take her eyes off of Kevin's body. Like watching two cruisers collide head-on, she just couldn't look away from the horror of it. Part of her was fascinated; the ways the reapers' nanites targeted specific bodily functions and physical parts to change them was far more than anything she'd managed to achieve back in her labs on Nos Astra. On the other hand, part of her was offended. She'd donated DNA to bring Kevin into existence with all his natural biotic strength, but now the reapers effectively took up at least thirty percent of Kevin's base DNA and they had run roughshod over anything she worked for in the process. All of those wonderful, beautiful, precise genetics—ruined.

Then there were the feelings. Kevin caused a maelstrom of feelings in her, things she'd thought she managed to divest herself of a couple centuries ago. She'd always had some sort of feelings for any experiment—mostly pride, academic interest, or a sense of ownership—but this was the first time an experiment lasted long enough to have a life of his own. She had matronly feelings, she had not-so-matronly feelings, and she had that blasted feeling of attachment. More than just an asari having a pet, she felt attached to Kevin as a person. Well, she did. He wasn't much of a person anymore. Or was he? That little omni-tool trick made things uncertain, but the uncertainty of it all was what made it exciting.

Maela had already squared with herself on most of these and was willing to develop them to see where things went. Maybe she could experiment on herself for once, to observe the outcome for science, right? It was all fun and games until she saw him being torn asunder by reaper tech—that was when the other feelings began to creep up against her own wishes. No. No, she didn't want to get into that right now. Right now she needed a way to get him repaired and in a state where he wasn't a threat. It would be easier if the others weren't babbling so much. On and on about the mission.

"We need to bring ourselves back to reality here," Tyr said, ever the flat voice of reason. "Our mission. We need to figure out what to do next."

"What can we do?" Maela snapped back disdainfully as she tore her gaze away from Kevin's massacred body. "Losses were far more than expected and we cannot save this ship. I know my opinion's been in the minority here, but we should cut our losses, get out, and steer this nightmare into the nearest star before it figures out how to reach anyone else."

"This time, I'm inclined to agree with you," Ralik said as he made a show of looking around at the complete devastation of the lobby. "Realistically, there's nothing left to save here. Only threats and danger. The Migrant Fleet would do better to cut off this limb."

Targold made his way over to the group to add his crass opinion. "I've already been deprived of one fight too many today. I'm all for camping out and waiting for another one of those husk things to form. I want a do-over."

Everyone stared at Targold in silent disbelief for a while.

"What? Can't a krogan dream?" He huffed out through his nostrils. "What the hell happened to Folner, anyhow? He looks dead, but I'm pretty sure it's impossible for him to die."

Maela sniffed and flicked her chin over towards the disgusting mass of husk paste that was once the reaper abomination. "They had a fight. Kevin won, but as you can see, it was a pyrrhic victory. It seems to have taken a toll on what was left of his humanity as well."

"That quarian traitor too, huh?" the krogan wondered with a glance towards the second pile of fleshy remains.

Ralik nodded. "We're currently trying to decide on our next course of action."

"What, the quarian princess hasn't given orders yet?" He put his Claymore away. It was probably completely out of thermal clips.

"We're waiting on the captain's—" Tyr was cut off when his attention was immediately pulled elsewhere.

Everyone's omni-tools lit up with a 'message received' notification. Maela opened hers with a sinking feeling she knew its origin. As she had suspected, it was from Kevin's omni-tool.

\\is everyone ok

Maela looked over towards the bleeding mess that was Kevin's body and bit her bottom lip to suppress an otherwise involuntary frown. He still wasn't moving, yet somehow he managed to interface with his own omni-tool. Fascinating. Did the reaper tech integrate with the omni-tool to provide such functionality?

Everyone, predictably, looked to Kevin's motionless body with emotions ranging from sadness to horror to amusement. Krogan could find anything amusing, apparently.

Targold grunted. "I'll check him. You softies stand here and try not to die." Nobody objected to this, so the krogan stomped his way over to Kevin and knelt down beside him. "Hey kid. I wouldn't say everyone is okay. You look like you tried to mate with a thresher maw," he paused, "with varying degrees of success." Always crass, Targold.

\\i cant feel

Maela swallowed hard and drew in a long breath. "Goddess…" No. No feelings. Not right now.

"From what I hear, you punched the shit out of a lot of things. I'd say you're feeling pretty upset."

\\i don't know hands

There was a pause as Targold tried to decipher this, but another message popped up.

\\i don't know where my hands are
\\where is arla
\\i think i hurt her

So far as Maela could tell, Kevin was simply staring up at the busted ceiling. He didn't even try looking for his precious quarian captain. Or perhaps it was that he couldn't look? His motor functions are likely shot to hell, Maela thought to herself.

Targold grunted in a less-amused fashion. "Yeah, you tried. I had to put you on the floor. Didn't actually get to her though, so there's that."

That was when Maela saw the first indication of movement on his face. Contorted as it was, it was likely the result of intense physical pain. Or emotional pain. Really, either one might have been a factor here.

\\sorry so
\\rry sorr y so r r y
\\so_r-r

Maela looked away from Kevin to see what the others were doing. Mostly they were staring forlorn at their omni-tools. She was doing the same, between glances at the two in the middle of the broken lobby. No. Feelings. Can't afford it.

"Hey, don't start blubbering on me, kid. She's fine. I think." The krogan started to look around, but the search was a short one.

"I'm right here," Arla said with an unsteady voice. Goddess, was she crying? No. Feelings. Need your head. What was she doing, anyway? Wasn't she just over here with us?

\\s -ry sor_y arla
\\cant move am i stuck

"You're dying, Kevin," Arla stated matter-of-factly as she knelt down to sit on her legs beside Kevin.

"Damnit, why do I even bother?" Targold grumbled as he started to get up to walk back to the others.

\\cant tell
\\cant feel hurts

Arla drew in a quick, quivering breath and then sighed it out immediately. "I… I know. I think I know a way to… fix you. I don't think you're going to like it though." She drew in and exhaled another shuddering breath. "Ancestors know I don't."

Wait a minute, Maela thought as she eyed the quarian captain. She had her hands behind her back, carrying something. "Arla, what—what the fuck are you doing? What do you have behind your back?"

Targold stopped mid-stride and turned to look back at Arla with one eye. Everyone finally seemed to get uneasy just then, as they started cautiously walking towards her. They all pulled to an immediate stop once they saw what Arla held in her hands.

\\whats happening i don't know

Kevin tried to look around, but he couldn't do more than move his cold, glowing eyes a little.

In Arla's hands was an arm severed from a geth mobile platform covered in remnants of quarian clan cloth. Even from here, Maela could see the nanite-loaded needle sticking out of the palm of the three-fingered hand, now poised to pierce into Kevin's gaping right shoulder.

Maela had never before felt this cold inside, and that was an accomplishment.