"It's carving up the colony. You've got to get out of there, ma'am," Williams shouted over the dragon's roar.
Through the radio, Shepard heard the chief running, Liara calling out encouragement, people screaming.
"We will, you just get those people to the second team. Shepard out." She turned to find Garrus.
"Aye, aye, ma'am."
The dragon tore through the ceiling five stories above, its claws and fiery breath transforming into a massive red laser, no less terrifying for shedding the superstitious in favour of reality. The dreadnought's weapon vapourized everything it touched, debris the size of skycars raining down around its periphery. Whatever Saren wanted destroyed, he wanted to make sure there wouldn't be enough left to fill an espresso cup. The laser cut a slow swath through the center of the building, but didn't move into the outer sections, at least not yet.
Our one chance to get the hell out of here with our skins intact.
"C-Sec!" The ends of Shepard's hair began to curl in the weapon's intense heat. She threw up her arm to shield her face and called to Garrus. "Prothean Skyway is east. Williams found maintenance tunnels the colonists are using to get to the Exogeni building."
He pointed, blessedly away from the laser.
Shepard wrapped her arms around her middle and set out in a quick, flat-footed run down a hundred metre long corridor to another set of stairs heading down. "Hopefully we can find the same tunnels Williams did. I'd like to get the hell out of this building before we become permanent additions."
At the end of the corridor, Shepard stopped at the top of a long bank of stairs, her ribs counting them. Gritting her teeth, she half hopped, half fell down the first, a thin shriek bullying its way out between her lips. After three stairs and three screams, Garrus just scooped her up with an arm under her backside and started down.
"Great," she grumbled to disguise a heavy groan of pain, wincing at the chorus his manhandling prompted along her ribs. "Because it's so damned dignified, once again we end up with the captain being carried like a ten-year-old by the freakishly huge, freakishly overprotective squad member. Without so much as a 'Ma'am, do you mind if . . .?'" She cuffed him, hating the fact that with her ribs in the shape they were in, it remained the fastest option.
"You're only hurt because of me," Garrus said, his voice soft and contrite. "If I'd obeyed your orders instead of being an idiot hot-head, we'd have been inside when the geth opened fire."
"Well, it's better to see the light later rather than never, Brother C-Sec. Praise be to the Enkindlers for your enlightenment." She cuffed him again. "But next time ask. I'm a captain, not a helpless waif or a ten-year-old."
"Aye. Aye, ma'am. Understood. You're just freakishly tiny, not a helpless, ten-year-old waif, ma'am."
Despite still being pissed off at him, a half-snort, half-chuckle escaped her. She snapped her teeth closed on it like a claw trap. Sparky had been right about the crew following the captain. Even staring death in the big, fiery laser, having disobeyed a direct order, Vakarian pulled out the smartass. Damn, she supposed that made the brass right too. "It'll be a cold day in hell we set you loose on a decent crew, Shepard," she muttered under her breath. "Yes, sir, Admiral Mikhailovich, sir. Bastard."
"Are you talking to yourself?" Garrus quirked a brow plate at her.
"Shut it, C-Sec."
Garrus ran, taking the stairs two at a time, descending rapidly down through more than a hundred floors. Shepard let him go, impressed by his stamina. If she'd been on her feet, they'd have made it down no more than five or six levels. He'd make a hell of a squad member if she could beat the obstinate streak into line.
Every ten floors, they reached a corridor that led them another hundred metres east then down again. They lost the laser about fifty floors down as it stayed to the center of the structure, concentrating on destroying not just the colony, but whatever lay at its heart. A hundred floors down, however, the staircases ended and the corridors directed them back to the center of the building. A series of ramps wound down around a huge, empty center space like the levels in a parking garage.
"Do you think we've reached ground level?" Garrus asked, setting Shepard down.
She shook her head and looked down over the side of the balcony at the huge, gallery sort of space. "No clue, but I doubt it. I think we missed the Skyway though. It wasn't this far down." She started hobbling downhill while Garrus caught his breath. "I think this is some sort of shopping district. Look at the large window and door gaps, the walls cut into shelves." Her chuckle cut through a mouthful of pain and exhaustion.
"We're in a fifty thousand year old shopping mall, C-Sec. I guess nothing changes. All of us just doing the same stupid shit over and over." She wiped her mouth on the back of her hand. "Dying in a shopping mall is about as close to hell as it gets."
Three ramps later she found a large medical locker. Overriding the lock, she prayed to find a nice big fat syringe of body-numbing, mind-altering, glorious drugs. She found a canvas bag full of Phoenix armour.
"Yeah, Ash is the only one willing to wear that ugly, pink crap." She dumped out the bag, kicking the god-awful armour over the edge. "Well, unless I can convince Wrex, C-Sec, and Sparky to put on sets for this year's christmas card photo."
She peered up over the edge. "Hey, C-Sec, get your assless down here. I can't bend over to get to the good stuff at the bottom of this medical locker."
"Find anything useful?" Garrus asked, jogging down the ramp. "Painkillers? Water?" He dove in, stuffing items into the canvas bag. "Water, ration bars, no dextro ones though, painkillers, medi-gel, antibiotics." He trailed off for a second, then straightened. "Casting tape."
"Glory hallelujah, Brother C-Sec. Glory hallelujah." She kissed the package of tape when he passed it to her along with a bottle of water. "Here, soak the tape." She ripped open two packages and passed them back, then started stripping off her armour above the waist. Finally, she undid her uniform and eased her way out of it.
"Should we be doing this here?" he asked, glancing up.
Shepard waggled her head a little, even that much movement setting up a chain reaction. "I'll be able to move a lot faster with my ribs taped." She laid her uniform over the locker but couldn't reach the clasp on her bra. "You'll need to undo this."
He set the dripping tape down. "We're going to need to use that immediately."
"Then stop yakking, C-Sec, and get my bra off already."
"Always the romantic," he grumbled, fumbling with the catches. "I think I need a degree to get this off. Why do you have to strap them up anyway?" After another second, he got it and slipped the bra off her shoulders.
"Mother nature abhors flopping." Shepard folded her shoulders forward, muscle memory becoming muscle regret within a half screech, and she left it to Garrus to finish removing the bra.
He picked up the first roll of tape, picking at the end until it came loose. "You need a good, solid carapace. No flopping involved."
"I'll let evolution know that's your vote." Shepard lifted her elbows off to the side and held her breasts out of the way. "Wrap me from right beneath my breasts to an inch above my navel." She shivered as the tape went on, freezing cold and wet, but it quickly heated as it began to set. "Use both rolls." She pressed her lips down tight on a smile, not willing to let the thaw show. "Bending isn't as important right now as being able to move without wanting to kill you."
"Is there any point in apologizing?" he asked, getting down on one knee, his long arms easily wrapping around her, rolling out the tape, then smoothing it. "Or will you beat me just as long regardless?" He glanced up, meeting her eyes for a quarter-second.
She let out a shallow breath. Might as well deal with the issue and put it to bed. "I don't intend to beat you at all. You have a choice. Obey orders and stay on the ship, or disobey them and go back to C-Sec." She glanced up and over her shoulder as the roar and crashing started getting louder again. "Damn that thing is just tearing through the building."
"There." He stood and grabbed her uniform, helping her back into it. "You can set while we move." Before helping her into her armour, he dug into the bag, coming out with a bottle and a syringe. "I apologize in advance if this painkiller means you have to detox when we get back to the Normandy." He slapped the bottle into the syringe.
She grunted and tilted her head. "Yeah, whatever, shoot me up already. That damned laser is almost through." The cool, slithering, gut-tingling relief spread through her like a hug as she fastened her armour back into place. "Oh yeah, C-Sec, this is the good shit. Narcotic city." She checked the locker, then started back downhill, the cast already set. "Narcotic-palooza, baby."
"Where to?" Garrus asked.
"Down, Brother C-Sec. Down." Shepard took off, swearing her enduring love to the makers of narcotic painkillers as two, then three levels passed and her ribs calmed to a dull roar.
On the fourth level, she stopped dead, letting out a pained squawk. "What the hell?"
What looked like desiccated corpses lay everywhere, some geth amongst them. "What the hell are these things?" She prodded one with the toe of her boot, then crouched to lift its hand by the wrist. "It's like a zombie or something." She glanced up as Garrus hurried past, heading toward the beam. "Not that way, C-Sec. Big red burning death that way, remember?" She poked at one of the geth with the barrel of her pistol. "And what is this green shit everywhere? Looks like the zombies puked it on the geth."
"Spirits." Garrus gasped, and she heard his feet scuffle in the dust as he jumped back. "What the . . .?" He turned. "Big red burning death or no, you've got to see this."
Shepard groaned as she pushed herself up. Garrus stood as far back from the edge as he could, leaning forward and straining his neck to look over. His entire body looked as hard and brittle as salt stalactite. What could be so important and so scary? Looking for the laser, she saw it carving its way through the opposite end of the building, some two hundred metres away. Still, time was short, and they needed to keep moving. Looking down over the edge, she furrowed her brow. She saw . . . something. A body and roots or legs? Maybe something stuck in roots?
"What the hell is that?" She craned her neck for a moment, then grabbed his wrist and tugged him toward the ramp down. "Come on, we're headed down anyway. We can see what it is a lot closer if we hurry."
"Want to place bets on that being the reason for all this destruction?" He stayed next to her, his assault rifle back in his hands.
Shepard lifted back into her flat-foot jog, following the curved ramps down past a lot of the corpse looking things and dead geth. "Not at all." She let out a soft grunt and shook her head. "This is all very strange, Brother C-Sec."
"I think that may actually qualify as understatement of the decade." Edging sideways, he followed, keeping an eye on the geth weapon's progress.
All light in the space shifted to shine down from above, leading Shepard to the conclusion that they'd reached and even gone below ground level. She couldn't place the smell. Mold, dust and smoke hung heavy, naturally, but something moved under those. They reached the floor with the . . . thing, at the same time the laser started coming back.
"It looks like a giant root or plant or something," Shepard said. She pointed the roots leading off into the ruins, most of them severed and bleeding some sort of sap or fluid.
"Is that a face?" Garrus asked, pointing with his gun. The whirls in the being's hide, along with a long beard of tentacle things did seem to make a face of sorts.
Shepard stepped toward the giant podish looking thing with the almost-face that hung from giant roots. "What the hell?" She opened her omnitool. "Okay, I'm going to take pics, this way, you go that way. Be fast. We have maybe ten minutes before that laser gets back here." She snapped an image, then looked up. "The laser hasn't cut through the ceiling in here yet. From the looks of those windows, we need to go up a couple of floors to hit ground level."
Shepard took one of the side passages, climbing a curved ramp to get around the creature's side, snapping images through large gaps in the center wall. She also paused to take a few shots of the zombie things and dead geth littered along her path.
"I've got pods on the walls, here, Shepard."
Shepard nodded at the tension laced through Garrus's subvocals, cords of steel pulling tighter until the rich harmonics became thin and reedy. "It's an adventure, C-Sec. Remember that. It's all an adventure." She noted the equipment and piping on the walls around the plant-thing. "Looks like we're in a fifty thousand year old environmental systems level. That's sort of cool."
Reaching the end of the level, she turned back, heading for Garrus and his pods.
"Sure, if it weren't for the laser of death and the monster plant thing with the corpse things, I'd vote we camp and do some sight seeing."
The dragon returned, the building trembling as its claws tore through the ceiling over the giant plant. Shepard grabbed Garrus and ran, shoving him through a doorway and down a short corridor, trying to get as much space between them and the weapon as possible. Dust exploded all around them, the laser settling onto its target. Shepard shoved Garrus into a corner as the building shuddered in its death throes.
"The whole thing is going to come down," Garrus yelled. "It's cut straight down through the middle, but the shell has to fall."
"I know." Shepard stuck her face in against his chest and covered her head. "We need to get to ground level. As soon as that laser moves, we've got to climb back up a few floors, try to get out."
A new and terrible roar echoed through the building, a bellow of rage and mortal pain. Something deep inside her gut, the primitive part that once huddled inside caves, felt the plant thing reach out, railing against a death it couldn't quite comprehend. As the echo of that cry died out, a superstitious shudder rolled through her, recognizing the passing of something vast, powerful and ancient from the universe.
The next moment, the laser disappeared, carving into the building in the far north the next time it fired.
Shepard shuddered again, shaking off the moment of regret she didn't have time to fully understand. "Okay, let's move, C-Sec."
The pair ran back the way they'd come, eyes constantly scanning for threats, wary and tense as they headed for the ramps that circled the hollow where the plant monster lived. Partway up the first one, one of the pods on the wall moved.
Garrus slid to a stop and stared at it as though he expected it to attack. "Shepard?"
She shook her head, glanced behind them, and gave him a push. "I've got nothing, keep moving."
The pod split open and in a rush of slime, an asari in commando leathers tumbled out to lie prone on the floor.
Shepard stared, mouth open, her arm coiling around her ribs. Her stinging, tearing, disbelieving eyes looked to Garrus for some sign that he saw what she did. "C-Sec, the wall just gave birth to a fully grown asari. Do you find that as odd as I do?"
He just nodded and bent over to check her pulse. "She's alive."
"They don't reproduce like that, do they? Gross pods stuck to a wall somewhere? I'm pretty sure I've seen little asari." A revolted shudder rocketed up her spine. "Sweet baby Jesus!" she screamed as every broken end of her ribs ground together. She almost went down on her knees, only the idea of how much that jolt would hurt keeping her upright.
"What should we do?" he asked, breaking into a coughing fit.
Behind them the laser ripped into concrete and metal again, chewing a path back toward them.
"Well, we can't leave her. Grab her, and let's keep moving." Shepard glanced toward the laser. "Luckily, it's taking its time, making sure it kills off the whole plant thing, but still, it's going to be on top of us in a few minutes."
Garrus threw the asari over his shoulder and then took off for the upper levels again. Two floors up, a corridor led to the east. Dead end. A huge pile of debris blocked the path forward.
"Damn it." Shepard turned to head back, but the laser pounded down and started carving up their path of retreat. She pushed Garrus into one of the side rooms. Bed frames and medical lockers lined the walls. She ran around the room, overriding the lock on all the lockers.
"What are you doing? This is no time to loot." He glanced in the door. "We've got to go back and find another way."
"No time." Shepard waved him into the room and started shoving the bed frames out of the back corner. "Only thing to do now is bunker down. We need a shelter." She looked up as the laser appeared. Fifteen metres away, it stopped. "Too damned close." When it ripped down from above, it headed back the other way. "Saren is making sure that thing is dead before he buries it. That gives us a couple minutes to make a shelter. Put her down."
She ran to the far wall and the first locker, pulling everything out. "Help me!" Shepard shouted over the roaring klaxon. Grinding her teeth together, she cursed, furious at the constant agony pulsing through her back and chest. Channelling it into pushing the closest medical locker, she shoved it so hard it rammed into the outer wall. She screamed.
"Fuck, that hurt!"
Garrus ran up to help.
"Turn it on its end," Shepard ordered. "They're strongest on their ends." They flipped it so that it stood up. Shepard glanced around the room to see how many of them there were. "Five of them on angles, open side facing in, as far into the corner as we can."
Once they had four in place, Shepard nodded toward the unconscious asari. "Put her inside, out of the way."
While Garrus moved the injured woman into the shelter, Shepard ran back for another locker. The laser tore through the concrete like tissue paper no more than twenty metres away, luckily it moved parallel. Still, the heat felt like being thrown into a blast furnace. She forced herself to concentrate on moving the locker. By the time she got it to the corner, Garrus was ready to help her.
They lifted it on top of the others. "Hold the end up," Shepard barked, shoving flat, fallen chunks of concrete under the one end until it sat on an angle up against the wall. "The last one the same. Hopefully some of the rubble will slide off rather than crushing us." Shepard nodded her head for the last lockers as the laser turned, coming back on a new swath. "We've got to move. I haven't suffered through hours of broken ribs just to die now, god damn it."
"He sure is determined to make sure that thing is dead," Garrus hollered.
Crying out as she lifted, she helped him move the last locker into place, piling rubble under it as well. "Wedge the bed frames around it on angles as tight as you can. Can you handle that alone?" she shouted. When he nodded, she grabbed a canvas bag and dumped out the armour, filling it with water bottles, ration bars and everything she could find that looked useful.
If the place did come down on their heads, and they managed to survive, who knew how long they'd be stuck there. She muttered a non-stop litany of the foulest curses she could think of, trying to distract herself from the grinding pain under her cast. After dragging two bags of supplies into the shelter, Shepard focused on gathering up all the blankets from the lockers and throwing them into the back corner of the shelter, burying the unconscious alien under a pile of grey wool.
Garrus wedged in the frames to support their tiny shelter. "Toss me a couple of blankets for the roof."
Shepard froze mid-action and looked up as the laser vanished. "Hurry!" She tossed him a blanket, then ran up to grab one end, helping him tent it over the roof to keep out the smaller debris. They layered two more over top.
Shepard shoved Garrus through the gap, then pushed the lockers closer before scooting under right behind him. Screaming a long, thin keen of pain, she helped him muscle the locker into place. "Get the asari into a locker and cover her up, then yourself." She scooted backwards into the open locker and shook out a blanket, covering her head.
"We're probably still going to die, aren't we?" he called, squeezing in next to her. The klaxon sounded its buzzing thunder, and heat exploded inside their metal tomb.
Shepard threw her blanket over him as well, and covered her head with her arms as concrete and metal began crashing down. She couldn't help but laugh. It tasted like bile. Somehow, she'd always knew she'd go out like that. At least the turian and asari were a surprise. "More than likely, C-Sec. We built this thing in five minutes out of lockers and old bed frames."
He leaned over her, pulling her tight in against his chest. "If we do, I'm sorry I disobeyed your orders."
"If we don't die, and you ever do it again, trust me you'll be more than sorry," she promised. "I'll make damned sure of that. I give orders, I don't make suggestions, C-Sec."
With a long, planet-shattering crack as terminal and pained as the plant monster's death roar, the building's exterior gave way. Shepard held her breath, moments of silence stretching out so long she almost relaxed before everything erupted into madness. Shepard covered her ears the best she could and prayed that their little structure held. By all rights, it shouldn't. But, what felt like four lifetimes later, the crashing settled to the random clatter of rolling concrete chunks and the whispered hiss of dust slides.
"C-Sec, you still alive?" She pushed the blanket back as she sat up straight.
"Yeah." He coughed. "I think this is a good time for a sweet baby Jesus, Shepard." He shifted around a bit. "It's a little tight in here."
Their shelter stood a metre and a half tall except in the center under the angled roof, where Garrus could probably stand hunched over. It wasn't a Presidium condo, but at least they all had room to lie down as long as they stuck their heads in one locker and their feet in another.
"Yeah, sorry about that." She let out a long breath and listened, straining to hear anything going on outside their box. Nothing. Other than the sounds of rubble settling around them, Feros had returned to being a dead planet. Shepard stood to look out the hole in the center. Concrete rubble had sealed them in, but the roof held.
Shepard gestured at the asari. "Have a look at our guest; make sure she's okay."
When Garrus nodded, Shepard reached up to her radio. "Normandy? Shepard to Normandy, can you read me?"
"Roger that, Captain," Joker's voice came through, thready with static but audible. "Are you all right down there? What happened?"
"Way too much to cover, Joker. Is the second team aboard with the colonists?" She leaned against the metal, all the pain the adrenaline had allowed her to ignore starting to ramp up like a hand-cranked siren.
"Yes, ma'am. We're loading them up now. Had to wait for that dreadnought to leave, but the team is intact, forty-eight colonists and Exogeni employees in tow."
"Shepard!" Nihlus sounded out of breath as he joined the call. "Where are you? Are you and Vakarian all right?"
"Yeah." She shifted a little, trying to find a comfortable way to stand. "We managed to get close to ground level and made a shelter before Saren brought the building down. It's tight, but we're breathing, so I'm not going to complain. Not sure what sort of oxygen supply we've got, but I can feel air moving at least a little."
She saw Garrus nod out of the corner of her eye.
"We know what Saren was after," the Spectre told her.
"Yeah, some giant plant thing. We saw it just before Saren killed it. Do you know why?"
"It's got some sort of mind control properties. Infected all the colonists with spores so it could make them help defend it." He cleared his throat. "Saren's gone, so let's retrieve the two of you and get out of here."
"I stuck a tracker on him. Doesn't have a very large range, so if you want to follow it, you've got to follow now." She sent him the tracking signature. "It's only got forty-eight hours of power. I stick them on the ground teams just in case they wander off or get snatched."
"How are you set for supplies?"
"Not too bad. I'd have to look to let you know for sure. Get tracking that signal, Nihlus. It's our only tangible lead. Get on his ass before he's out of range."
"It's going to take ten, fifteen minutes to get the ship secure. We're still loading colonists. Take inventory of what you've got, I'll contact you just before we pull out." Even before he closed the channel, she heard him barking orders to move the colonists faster.
"The asari appears to be uninjured, Shepard, just unconscious." Garrus sat cross-legged next to Shepard.
"Okay, C-Sec, thanks. Let's go through these bags and see what we've got." She lowered herself to the floor and opened the bag closest to her. "Hey, this one had three whole dextro ration bars in it. I've got four in my hip pack. How long will seven do you?" She glanced up between counting bottles of water.
"Three days, four if they have to. It's not like I'll be moving around much." He looked up from the bag he had. "Twenty three bottles of water, ten levo ration bars, and four small canisters of O2. Good thing we didn't drop those." He cocked a brow plate, let out a thin chuckle, and put everything back.
"Okay, so I've got eighteen water bottles, twelve levo ration bars." She nodded toward the asari. "As long as the air holds out, we're good for four or five days."
"Shepard?" Nihlus called through a few minutes later.
"Go ahead, Kryik."
"We've tracked Saren's fleet, and your pilot has a plan to fleet jump us out with them."
"Fleet jump? What about needing the precise mass for the relay?" Shepard shook her head. "Sounds like he's going to blow up my ship."
"Relax, Captain," Joker said. "Compared to that fleet, we'll be a flea riding the back of a Labradoodle."
"A Labradoodle?" Shepard shook her head. "No . . .."
"Okay, maybe a Cockapoo. The point is, we'll knock their drift off, but not enough to collapse the corridor. It's the only way to track them through the relay with a short range tracker."
"You get my ship blown up within the first two weeks of my being captain, they'll never let me have any good toys again, Joker." Shepard growled. His plan sat as comfortably as a chair made out of acid coated, frozen razor blades.
"Right, toys. I'll remember that, Captain, and let the crew know of your deep concern for . . .."
"How many days worth of supplies do you have, Shepard?" Nihlus interrupted, talking over Joker's last few words.
"Four or five. As long as the air holds out, we'll be fine until you can track him and come back. Just be careful with my people, Kryik. Get them back here in one piece." She pressed her lips into a tight line. "We'll talk to you in a day or so. Shepard, out."
"Good luck, Shepard. Take care of yourself and Vakarian. Nihlus, out."
Shepard lowered her hand and looked across, barely able to see Garrus's eyes in the dark, his visor and the lights on their armour the only sources of illumination other than a faint light from above.
"And we're alone," he whispered, his body statue still.
She nodded. "And we're alone."