Spectres 5
Garrus hated hospitals. He hated the featureless corridors; the bland and sterile architecture. He hated the unchanging waiting rooms, the faint odour of disinfectant which was never quite enough to mask the smell of fear. The smell of people trying - and failing - to kid themselves that their loved ones would somehow find a way to beat the odds. He hated the feeling of powerlessness that he felt himself as soon as he crossed the threshold. Across the galaxy, all hospitals seemed to be alike: from the grandest medical complex on Palaven to the dingiest trader ship med-bay. Layers of bureaucracy and boredom built over a foundation of blood and misery and pain.
The last time he'd visited a hospital, he'd told himself that that was it. No more. He'd known he was lying to himself, even then - that if his mother got sick, or his sister, he'd be right back in one of those dreadful grey waiting rooms like all the others. But if he could avoid it, he'd thought, if it was anybody other than his family, then he'd do them just as much good somewhere else.
And yet here he was, sitting outside a med-bay on a strange ship, waiting for a human to wake up. This wasn't quite how they advertised the glamorous life of a Spectre, he thought to himself.
He'd always thought of humans as soft, unthreatening. Defenceless, with their disturbingly smooth unplated skin and their lack of carapace. Small - shorter than any turian adult he knew - and fragile, with their strange, too-large eyes and far more digits on their hands than looked natural.
He hadn't made up his mind about this human yet. She seemed different to the others. Not simply because she was a biotic, he thought, but because of something else, something harder to pin down. She didn't act like the other humans he'd spoken to before.
He shouldn't have been surprised. He'd reread her records as soon as he'd known which ship he'd be docking with. His old mentor in the Spectres had had something to add to those records as well. And he hadn't been surprised, he thought, not really. But he had been an impressed.
Garrus had begun pacing up and down outside the med-bay after an hour or so, unable to sit still on the narrow benches. And it was at least another hour after that before the door finally slid open.
The doctor - an old turian who looked as tired as Garrus felt - beckoned him over.
"She's woken up," the doctor said, "And seems to be functioning. Captain wanted to see her when she was up, but I can give you twenty minutes".
Garrus nodded, gratefully. The doctor shook his head. "You can ask her what happened, if you like," he called over his shoulder as he stalked off to find the captain. "I'd be lying if I said I knew."
Inside, Shepard was awake, dressed and sitting upright. Garrus didn't know much about humans, but to his untrained eyes she looked to be in a bad way, 'functioning' or not. Her skin was paler than he'd seen it before, and her eyes were bloodshot and unfocused. The mane of dark protein filaments that extruded from her skull - hair, he reminded himself, they call it hair - looked frayed and tangled. He wondered, not for the first time, why she didn't keep it short like the other humans he knew. He wondered if it would be rude to ask.
All the same she was aware enough to look up as the door slide shut behind him.
"Vakarian … you're okay?" Her voice was faint. Not simply soft, as it had been earlier, but weak, hoarse.
He nodded. "The artefact … " he shrugged, "Whatever it was. It only seemed to affect you, after .." he trailed off.
After Shepard had pushed him aside, she'd seem to become entranced by the beacon in the same way that he had been moments earlier. As he'd watched helplessly, she'd been lifted up by the mass effect fields it was generating, hanging in the air before it for several seconds. Then the artefact had seemed to short-circuit, somehow, and they'd both fallen to the ground. She'd been unconscious ever since.
"We're back on the ship", she said slowly, looking around the medical bay. "Is Vasir on board?"
"No," he said. "Not anymore anyway."
Shepard looked puzzled.
"She says she found new information on Cerberus while she was searching their base on Eden Prime," Garrus explained. "Asked us if we could take her as far as Dobrovolaski on our way back to the Citadel. We made the drop-off about twelve hours ago."
"Twelve hours…" she echoed, "Just how long have I been out?"
"You've been unconscious for about forty-seven hours," he said.
"Two days.." her eyes widened.
"What do you remember?" he asked, as gently as possible.
He couldn't remember much of his experience with the beacon himself. He'd seen it, hovering in the air, and had half-heard, half-felt something calling out to him. The next thing he could remember, he'd been sprawling on the floor, Shepard back in the room with him. Only examining the grainy footage captured by their helmet cameras later had made it clear what must have happened. But none of that told him what he had actually experienced.
"I saw … something." she frowned. "A vision, maybe ... a nightmare. I'm still trying to make sense of it."
The human fell silent, her eyes seeming to focus on something distant that only she could see. Garrus was wondering whether he should say something when she shook her head, and cleared her throat.
"You said we're heading for the Citadel?" she asked. She seemed keen to change the subject. Garrus couldn't blame her.
"Well, I am," he said. "I need to let the Council know what happened to the missing archaeologists. And with any luck, we should be able to find a specialist on the Citadel who can make sure you're okay. There are a lot of human doctors on the Citadel."
The System Alliance didn't have an embassy on the Citadel, of course, but it did have a surprisingly large human population. Mostly exiles, or political outcasts - people not happy with humanity's Protectorate status in the Hierarchy. Some refugees, some people just desperate to get off their home worlds and willing to go wherever they might find a new start. But a group that big needed doctors and medical supplies.
"That's actually why I wanted to see you," he said carefully. "I was hoping you'd be willing to speak to the Council about … whatever it is you saw." If they'll want to listen, he finished to himself. There was no guarantee of that, of course.
"I…" she paused. "If you think it will help…"
"I do", he said, hoping he sounded more confident than he felt. "If Cerberus have found something dangerous, something they could hurt the Hierarchy with, then the Council will want to know. There's more to this than humouring an eccentric rich volus now."
"What do we know about Cerberus?" she asked, curiously.
"Not enough," he said. He brought up a hand to his visor, flicking open the files he'd been reviewing off and on for the past two days.
"Best we can tell, they've been around for about twenty years. They started posting manifestos and threats on the extranet shortly after your worlds voted to become a Protectorate. The usual anti-Hierarchy propaganda, nothing that stood out. They claimed responsibility for a small number of isolated attacks on Hierarchy bases a couple of years later, then they seem to fall of the radar a bit."
"We think they might have been involved with the Terra Nova project. Providing it with funding behind the scenes, or with personnel, maybe. Timing fits, anyway, and it could explain their later interest in Prothean artefacts and ruins."
"Four years ago they tried to assassinate General Williams," he said. "Wait, should that be President Williams? Ex-President Williams? I'm sorry, I'm not sure what the human protocol is."
Turian protocol was simpler, he reflected. The Hierarchy lacked the artificial distinction between civilian and military leadership which other species seemed to insist upon.
"That was on Dobrovolski, funnily enough." He paused, reflecting. If that was why Vasir had been so interested to visit that world, she hadn't said. But what else was there on that planet? Of course, we only have Vasir's word that she was interested in Dobrovolski, he thought. Maybe she'd just jumped onto a different ship heading off-world as soon as the Resolute had left orbit. He kept reading.
"Only one casualty - General Williams' granddaughter. She'd just finished her training to become an auxiliary, was back on leave to visit her family before shipping out." He wondered, idly, if that had been the point - maybe the General's granddaughter had been the real target. As best as he could understand, it had been something of a public relations coup for the General's faction that one of his own family had been so quick to sign up as an auxiliary once the restrictions on non-biotics had been dropped. But it didn't seem to make sense to target her.
Many people believed that the attack, coming so soon before the start of the Second Blitz, had been to help destabilise the Systems Alliance's leadership before the Hegemony's assault. He wasn't sure he was convinced though. Cerberus had never shown any sign of working with batarians before or since. Something didn't add up.
It was the sort of mystery his father would have been fascinated by, he suspected. It was the sort of mystery he was prepared to leave unsolved. Forcing the matter from his mind, Garrus turned his attention to the final entry displayed on his visor.
"Oh, yes, and their leader calls himself 'The Illusive Man'." he snorted. "Seems a bit presumptive to give yourself a title like that. It's not entirely an empty boast though - as far as I can tell, nobody's been able to find out anything more about him than that. Not the Systems Alliance, not the Hierarchy's investigators, not Citadel Security…"
"And not the Spectres?" she finished for him.
"Not yet," he said. "Vasir seems to think she has a lead now, though."
"You don't trust Vasir." she said, frowning. "I was asking you why, earlier, before …"
He thought about evading the question, decided against it.
"Spectres operate almost completely independently from the Council," he said. "Some of them do things that the Council would rather not find out about. Some do things that they'd rather the Council not find out about."
She frowned at that - and he was struck again by how alien human facial responses were, how alien human faces were - but she seemed to decide against responding.
"Back when I was in training, my mentor warned me that a handful of Spectres were rumoured to be leaking classified information to the Shadow Broker. Vasir was one of the Spectres he mentioned by name."
"The Shadow Broker?" she asked.
"He's a …" Garrus paused, considered his words carefully. "We don't know much about the Shadow Broker either. We don't know his real name or his background. He's a black market information broker, at least primarily. Buys or steals secrets, any secrets worth keeping hidden. Scientific breakthroughs by reclusive salarian scholars; the winners and losers of backroom political battles between the rulers of the Asari Republics; the identities of the next batch of victims of the Overseer's show trials … anything. At least, anything that somebody else might pay money to find out. Beyond that, he has links to organised crime, red sand trading, people smuggling. The Broker owns a private army, or so the rumours say, out somewhere beyond the reach of Citadel Security."
He paused. "The Shadow Broker's been around for almost a hundred years though," he added, as dryly as possible. "So we can be pretty sure he's not the Illusive Man."
Shepard rolled her eyes slightly at that. Good enough, he thought, oddly pleased to have got any reaction at all.
His twenty minutes were almost up. Garrus made his excuses, warned Shepard that the Captain would be arriving soon, and slipped out of the med-bay as quickly as he could. He still hated hospitals.
He'd already begun drafting extranet messages to his old mentor; he'd have to finish them before they reached the final relay jump to the Citadel. The older turian had warned him that the Council's idea of a simple mission might turn out to be anything but simple. He'd want to know that he was right; and that the human he'd been impressed by years ago was involved in this as well.
You were right, Nihlus, he thought. This mission was a lot more complicated than the Council thought it would be.
Garrus hadn't realised how hungry he'd become while waiting outside the med-bay until a few minutes after he left. So rather than heading back up to his quarters, as he'd been planning, he changed direction and headed towards the mess hall.
He heard a pair of voices coming from the hall even before he entered: the voice of a human female interrupted now and then by the deeper, more resonant tones of a male turian.
The human he'd heard was sitting at a table with a turian he didn't recognise. He recognised the human, vaguely - she'd been one of the four Shepard had introduced him to in the mess hall before they when planetside. It wasn't that he couldn't tell individual humans apart - despite the jokes, they really didn't all look the same, despite their startling lack of plates or a carapace. It was just hard to put the right name to the right face sometimes.
The pair's attention was dominated by a wooden board set up between them on the middle of the table, strewn with a dozen or so carved figurines, painted alternately black and white. The turian was staring at it closely, while the human pointed and talked.
"...which is the point," she was saying. "Any legal move you can make will worsen your position, but you're obliged to do something. Zugzwang. If you could just pass, you'd be fine. But you can't pass. And so I win."
At this, she sat back, smiling, then startled to attention when she saw Garrus watching.
"Oh, sorry sir," she said. "We didn't see you come in. I'm Sam Traynor, I mean, Specialist Traynor. Sir. We met earlier, but I wasn't sure-"
"I remember you, Traynor" he said, grateful to have a name to put to the face.
"And this is Tarquin Victus. Navigation officer."
Victus. That was a well-known name in the Hierarchy these days. General Adrien Victus had risen to prominence in the Hierarchy following a string of brilliant victories against the batarians during the Second Blitz. Garrus wondered if the young turian was a relative. If so, he didn't envy him. That would be a difficult name to live up to. And Garrus knew something about living up to famous names. Or trying to.
"Sir," the younger turian said guardedly.
Garrus looked at the table again.
"Am I interrupting something?" he asked curiously.
"Old human game, sir," said Traynor.
Garrus could well believe it. The wooden pieces looked ancient, chipped and weathered by years of use. He' was surprised that there was anything that old on the colony worlds, and said as much to Traynor.
"This set's from Earth," she said proudly. "A genuine antique. It was my grandmother's."
"You play a lot of this game, Traynor?" he asked.
"Yes, sir." she said. "Well, it's that or trying eating the food, so…"
Garrus had stayed on asari worlds before, and been forced to survive on emergency dextro-rations. He doubted that the human's levo equivalents were much better. Though surely they can't be any worse, he told himself. He was about to answer when he noticed, at the periphery of his vision, another turian enter the mess hall.
It was the young gunnery officer he'd quarrelled with earlier, before the mission. They'd never met before, but he'd immediately recognised the type. A young hothead with a chip on his shoulder, convinced he knew better than his superior officers and yet to learn the difference between plain-speaking and rudeness. Well, he thought to himself, that doesn't sound familiar at all, does it Garrus? In any event, Lantar Sidonis was just about the last person on the ship he wanted to speak to right now. Well, he thought, Perhaps the second to last person.
"So," said Traynor brightly, breaking the sudden awkward silence. "I hear that the Commander's awake?"
"Yes, she's talking to your Captain now." said Garrus, still looking warily at the gunnery officer.
"Thank you for bringing her back after … well, whatever it was that happened to her," she said. "She means a lot to the humans on this crew."
"She means a lot to all the crew," corrected Sidonis, striding up to their table. "And she wouldn't be in the med-bay at all if it was for him, Traynor. Let's not pretend otherwise."
Sidonis wore a challenging look on his face as he turned to look directly at Garrus The gunnery officer was clearly looking to start a fight..
Garrus could have hit him, he thought. It would probably do the young idiot some good, too. But it wouldn't have been appropriate. Spectres were supposed to exemplify the best of intelligent life in Citadel space. Not to lash out angrily whenever somebody dared to question them. Instead, he made his excuses to Tarquin and Traynor and left the mess hall as quickly as he could.
His quarters were two floors above the mess hall, accessible by a short walk to the lift at either end. So it was sheer bad luck that after leaving the lift he almost walked into a human crew member who must have been waiting to head down herself. He was about to apologise when he recognised her face. Maybe this wasn't just bad luck, he thought uneasily.
He didn't have any trouble putting a name to this human face. It was the dead soldier's mate. Jennifer Nicollier. He hadn't seen or spoken to her since they'd returned to the ship.
"Vakarian," she breathed. "I was wondering when you'd quit hiding in the med-bay."
"Look, Nicollier" he said awkwardly, "I'm ..."
He trailed off. What exactly was there to say?
"You're … what?" she demanded, staring up at him "You're sorry? You turn up on my ship, drag us all out on some pointless treasure hunt, you get my-" - she choked back tears - "-my … friend killed, you get the Commander injured, and you're sorry?"
He felt the impact of the bulkhead slamming into his back even before he realised what was happening. Nicollier's eyes were suddenly filled with blue light, and he was pinned two feet above the corridor floor, legs twitching uselessly.
"'Sorry' is for when you spill somebody's drink at the bar," she snapped, arcs of blue energy sparking from her fingers, "'Sorry' is for when you can't help somebody with directions. I think we're a bit beyond 'sorry'."
She slammed him into the bulkhead again, harder this time.
"Richard was so excited to meet a Spectre," she said. "He was thrilled to be going on a mission with one. He ... he always saw the best in everyone. But what are you, really? Just another turian with a fancy title."
She slammed him into the bulkhead once again for emphasis. She'd started off with her voice raised, almost shouting at him, but her voice had fallen quieter and quieter until now she was almost whispering.
"You know, Vakarian," she said. "Right now, with the Commander in the med-bay? I think I'm the most dangerous thing on the ship."
He wasn't inclined to argue, however soft and fragile he might have thought must humans were.
"You think you could stop me, Spectre?" she asked. "If I actually wanted to hurt you?"
"If you're not trying to hurt me, you could try to stop throwing me into parts of the ship," he suggested. It came out as a more of a wheeze than he'd have liked.
"No!" she shouted. "You don't get to make a joke out of this. You don't get to banter. Not today."
"Just tell me," she said, "Was it worth it?"
"I …" he paused, mandibles twitching slightly, as he tried to consider his options. Lure her in a bit closer and try to take her down without breaking anything? he thought And hope she doesn't break anything of mine, I guess.
"I don't know." he said simply. It wasn't perhaps the wisest thing to say, but it was the truth. The Council would probably think the death of a single human a small price to pay to deny Cerberus access to Prothean technology, whatever it was it actually did. But it was never a choice he had to make before.
"Well, that's just wonderful." she breathed.
It had definitely not been the wisest thing to say.
"Do you know how much force it takes to tear off a turian's face plate?" she asked, her voice now almost eerily calm. "Because honestly, I have no idea. Do you want to find out ... together?"
They stayed there, frozen, for a second or two longer. Nicollier didn't say anything - just stared at him intently. Garrus reviewed his options for taking her down. It didn't take long, and none of them were encouraging. He was about to try something, when suddenly the lights cut out and the force pushing him against the bulkhead vanished. He crashed back down onto the floor, legs buckling under him.
"I could destroy you, Spectre." Nicollier said flatly, looking down at him. "It would be easy. But the Commander, she wouldn't approve. So just .. just get out of here. And don't ever apologise to me again."
He staggered back up, opened his mouth, thought better of it, and walked away in silence. He thought he could feel the eyes on his back, staring at him, until he turned the corner and let himself relax.
Oh, great job, Garrus, he thought to himself. Running away from a grieving female half your size. Very heroic. That's definitely a highlight for the Spectre Archives.
Minutes later, when he ran into the smirking gunnery officer again, it was incredibly cathartic to punch him in the face.
A few hours later, Garrus stood alone in the port observation bay. They were still some distance away from the relay linking them to the Serpent Nebula and the Citadel station, but they were getting close enough that he was starting to get anxious. He had to arrange a meeting with the Council, with Kumun Shol, to discuss what had happened on Eden Prime and what they could do next. He had
He checked his visor again.
Still no word from Nihlus, or from any other Spectre. He had a couple of new messages from his sister Solona though. She'd been quarrelling with their mother again, he saw. He wasn't sure he wanted to get involved in that any more than he had to.
Garrus was still struggling over composing a suitable diplomatic reply when the door buzzed open and Shepard walked into the room.
"Vakarian," she said, nodding a greeting.
"Shepard," he said. "Shouldn't you still be in the med-bay?"
She grimaced slightly, shrugged her shoulders.
"Doc said I should be okay as long as I take it easy for a while," she said. "I just wanted to take a walk before we reach the Citadel. Clear my head. Felt like I'd been waiting in that med-bay for weeks."
He sympathised. Waiting outside had been bad enough.
"I spoke to Komarov," she said. "She seemed…"
The Commander shook her head, looked down.
"She's upset," she said. "Obviously. But she'll deal with it. It's hard, losing somebody like that. Especially the first time."
She walked past Garrus, towards the observation windows. She pressed her face up towards the screen and stared out into space.
"I've been thinking about Cerberus again," she said. "The woman I chased … before she escaped, she said something about a threat, something the Council weren't aware of. Waiting in the darkness. What if ..."
The human trailed off, staring out of the observation windows. Her eyes seemed to be fixed on something that only she could see.
"I thought it was nonsense," she said, "Just the ramblings of a fanatic. And maybe that's all it was. Maybe. But the vision I saw … Could she have used the artefact as well?"
Was it possible? Garrus wondered. The Cerberus agent had been in the same room as the artefact when they first stumbled upon her. She might well have been the one to activate it in the first place. And even assuming that it had knocked her out in the same way it had Shepard … enough time had passed between the volus archaeological team going missing and their arrival on Eden Prime for the Cerberus agent to have recovered on her own. Maybe.
He wondered what had prompted this train of thought.
"Do you remember more of what happened now?" he asked.
Shepard shook her head, her back to Garrus, still staring out into the distance.
"It was a warning, I think," she said. "A warning about something that happened a long time ago. Of war, destruction, death. On a scale we can barely comprehend."
Garrus stared over the Commander's shoulder at the reflection of her face on the observation window. Her face still seemed much paler than it had before Eden Prime.
"You're sure you've never heard of Kumun Shol?" Garrus said, as lightly as he could. The volus trader was sufficiently rich that the Council tended to humour his ramblings, in public at least. But nobody thought his talk of machine-devils or the dire warnings he'd received from ancient energy beings had any basis in reality. "That sounds like the sort of thing he says whenever he communicates with the Council."
The human turned around to look back at him over her shoulder.
"Maybe it's time the Council started taking him more seriously, then", she said.
She turned away from him again, looking back out of the observation window in the direction of the mass relay the Resolute was still speeding towards.
"Something's out there, Vakarian," she said softly, staring out at the darkness between the stars. "Something old, something dangerous. Something nobody in the Hierarchy is prepared for. And it's waking up."