Ilos. Shepard stepped down out of the shuttle and looked up. The towering ruins, stacked like blocks set by giants, felt like old friends come to welcome her home. Her gaze tried to travel along the straight lines of the ancient architecture, but vines snaked everywhere, their sinuous lines dragging her along their length instead. Voluptuous leaves erupted from the stalks, shining a waxy green against the grey, begging her to trail her fingers over their veins, reading from them the history of the planet. She walked over and pressed a hand against the soft, velvet bark of a tree that looked for all the world like a vine stalk that had grown rampant. It vibrated under her palm with the low hum of an electrical cable, so alive it felt poised to leap up and run off if not for the roots holding it anchored.
Ilos. Standing on that soil felt like arriving home after a long, exhausting trip.
Behind her, the rachni queen sang a note that sounded decidedly delighted and hurried off. When Amalair expressed an interest in seeing Ilos as a possibility for her home, Shepard had allowed it providing that she head the opposite direction and stay well clear of any fighting. Not that Shepard planned on there being much fighting. Not on Ilos. With two fleets in the air, Saren would want to come in as quietly as possible, exploit the security weakness and get out with the Conduit as quietly as possible. A big fight left too much to chance.
"The queen's going to want to live here," she said, glancing back at Nihlus. "Trust me, she feels whatever it is that calls to me . . . I mean, that called to Tashac."
"Merol never understood her obsession with this place. He found Ilos creepy, not peaceful." Nihlus shrugged, his gaze skeptical. "I thought rachni liked a more toxic atmosphere." He set out toward the largest part of the ruins.
"Or maybe they just chose planets that discouraged visitors," Garrus said, stepping down out of the shuttle. He crossed to where Shepard still communed with the massive tree. "The shuttle VI is set to track us every fifteen minutes, but if we need to, we can still send a signal for immediate pick up."
"Excellent. We're going to need to get out of here in a hurry." She turned to face him, sliding her hand down his gauntlet before stepping away. Following Nihlus toward the main door into the compound, Shepard kept every sense on alert for anything that felt out of place. Strange to feel so familiar with a place that she'd never been before. She understood why, but still it felt a little too close to possession for her comfort, particularly with Nihlus an arm's length away.
She headed off, putting some space between them, rooting through a tangle of vines and plants growing up the side of the building to find the door control. It had to be there somewhere.
"Captain Shepard?" Shiala's voice came through over the radio.
Shepard grinned and turned to Nihlus. "I told you so." Ignoring his confused stare, she opened the channel with one hand while pulling away a handful of vines with the other. "Let me guess, the rachni queen wants to live here?"
"Yes, ma'am, she says the whole planet sings with history. How did you know?" the asari replied.
Shepard shrugged even though Shiala couldn't see her. "A good guess, or maybe she's been in my head enough that we have a shared brain thing going." She drew in a long breath. "Besides, I want to live here. Sweet baby Jesus, it's so quiet. A body could actually hear themselves think here." She looked up from her search, glancing over at Garrus. "You wouldn't mind living here, would you?"
His mandibles spread wide at the question, then fluttered once, hard. He shook his head, but nodded toward the statues of the Inusannon. "Not if we can ship all of those off somewhere and put in a nice rifle range."
Shepard grinned. "Deal. Those statues creep the hell out of me." Letting out a soft cry of victory, Shepard tore the vines away from the door panel and touched the control, giving the VI time to scan her. When it didn't respond, she scowled and pressed a couple of controls before trying again.
"Something wrong?" Garrus asked, walking up beside her, his eyes and gun still facing out into the ruins.
"The scan should be almost instantaneous. The door controls aren't responding." She crouched and popped the front panel off the console, searching through the electronics for signs of a hardware issue. "It's like Vigil isn't there." She tweaked a couple of connections.
"Com . . .m . . . man . . . n . . . der T . . . T . . . Tashac Jacar re . . . re . . . cognized . . . d . . . d." Vigil's voice came out of the console broken, drawn out, and stuttering.
"He's damaged," Nihlus said then sighed. "It could be sabotage, but he's also been sitting here for fifty thousand years." His brow plates lowered to shutter his eyes as he ducked his head. "Did you repair it?"
"No, it just took him a while to process the request." Shepard set the panel back into place, thumping it with the side of her fist to latch it, as the door ground open.
"Captain?" Shiala called.
"Sorry, in the middle of a mission here. Tell her she can stay for a couple weeks to decide for sure. I'm not just going to dump her on a dead world and walk away." Even before Shiala responded, she heard the queen singing happily as she rustled away in the underbrush.
"Understood. Thank you, Captain. Sorry for the interruption. Shiala, out."
"Well," Nihlus said, shooting a grin across at her, "mission success on one front, anyway."
Shepard nodded, but her internal alarm started burning at the base of her skull. Something was wrong. And it wasn't just the fact that Saren could be anywhere, or that he might already have the Conduit in his possession. Whatever the problem was, it felt like a great, dark hole at the center of the complex. She shrugged Roger into her hand and swung him around into low ready, but hesitated at the threshold, focusing herself on the coming game. The pieces were set, the board laid out . . . time to move forward two spaces.
Nihlus laid a heavy hand on her shoulder until she nodded and headed in. They walked along the main corridor, the whole place long cracked open like an egg by tree roots, life invading what had still been sterile stone walls when Tashac walked the same route. Shepard squinted against the wide shafts of sunlight, deciding that she liked the interior decorating of the years as she waded through a shallow stream. It wandered a serpentine path down the long gentle slope descending into the heart of the facility.
Shepard guessed by the way that both Garrus and Nihlus kept close, their eyes and guns in constant motion, that they sensed the same vague wrongness that she did.
"I'd feel a lot better about things if we'd brought Wrex," Garrus grumbled. He stopped and ran his hand over his fringe. "Something here is yanking on my spur."
Shepard glanced back, a teasing grin curling one corner of her mouth. "That's a new one."
"It hurts," Nihlus said, his tone brusque. He walked past her, heading toward what had once been an environmental interface with the main computer for the facility.
"What?" Shepard's grin folded into a scowl. Now what had shoved a bug up Nihlus's ass?
He brushed away the plant life, touching a few controls, and when he replied, his tone came across distracted, almost dismissive, "Someone yanking on your spur. It hurts. Lots of nerve endings." Grumbling he fiddled with the interface for another couple of seconds, his shotgun hanging from his other hand. "Something's definitely up with the computers. This interface is dead as well." He raised his gun and started back down the corridor toward the main elevator.
Shepard followed, hanging back a little to wait for Garrus. When he walked up behind her, he turned a slow circle, his hands uneasy on his rifle.
"This place is starting to feel like Noveria, Shepard." He nodded for her to go ahead. "I know it's supposed to be deserted, but it has that same feeling of a lot of bad things moving around just beneath the surface."
"Yeah." Her gaze followed the lines of the building and invading plants, trying to find some reason for Tashac's memories screaming warnings in the back of her mind. "Tashac is going nuts in the back of my head." She scowled and trotted to catch up with Nihlus a little as the Spectre hurried ahead. "It's like she knows something, but won't let me see it. It's got to be something protected by the indoctrination."
"No use speculating about it," Nihlus called back, his tone brittle and angry.
Shepard gestured for Garrus to give them a little space and jogged up to walk at Nihlus's side. "What's going on, Nihlus? Are you okay?"
His answering nod could have sliced through stone. "I'm fine, or I will be if we can start treating this like a mission rather than a date." He cut a glance across at her as sharp as his nod.
Shepard growled low in her throat as she sighed. "Excuse me?" She turned to face him, walking sideways. "Please tell me we're not headed for Shepard is a whore territory again. We're just getting somewhere okay, Nihlus."
He scowled, and shook his head, speeding up a little. "No, that's not it." His mandibles flailed. "I apologize. Merol has memories of the last time they came here. They're laced with betrayal and fear and sadness." He reached up to brush the back of a wrist over his brow. "So much sadness. Tashac did something, but it's like he won't let me see it, or he forced himself to ignore the memories . . .." Sorrowful eyes turned to her. "It's just all tangling up with reality. I have no idea how you keep it so straight, how you fend her off so easily."
Shepard shrugged. "It's not always easy, but I have a lot of years worth of practice living with walls in my head. I just stick her behind another one." She stepped ahead of him then looked back and gestured for Garrus to close up. "As far as what is going on here . . .. It scares the hell out of Tashac, but more than that . . . it's killing her." She let out a long, frustrated huff of air. "The damned indoctrination tells you that you're doing the very best thing you can do to save people, and the whole time it's using you to do the opposite."
A rough, quick hand scratched at his cheek, leaving marks on his hide even through his glove. "Let's just get in there and deal with it. No point talking it to death."
A grim smile answered that. "True enough." She snagged his hand on its way back to his shotgun, and gave it a brief squeeze. "We'll get it done."
They reached the elevator without encountering any resistance other than the continuing feeling of oppression. Shepard felt as though a black hole had invaded, occupying the complex like an enemy army. Every step she took, the pull of that dead blackness strengthened, tugging not at her body, but her soul, trying to tear it out of her, consuming it whole.
Unlike the computer interfaces, the elevator both had power and responded immediately, but that only deepened her disquiet rather than easing it. They were being led, herded toward the Conduit chamber, everything shoving them toward a trap set a very long time ago. As Shepard hit the control to take them down to Vigil's control room, she began to wonder if they could still manage to pull off their trap while escaping whatever awaited them.
Deciding to hedge her bets, she raised a hand to her ear. "Joker." The radio crackled in her ear. She looked up at Nihlus. "Comms are jammed."
"Merol Niral imprint recognized," Vigil's voice said in Shepard's ear. "Unindoctrinated. Overriding communications lockout."
"Normandy here, Shepard," Joker's voice came through a second later. "What's up?"
"I have a couple of messages that I need you to pass on. They're both text." She keyed her omnitool and uploaded the messages to him. "The one for Anderson . . . he should be back on the Citadel by now."
"Yes, ma'am. Anything else I can do for you?"
She grinned and shook her head. "Sure, I could use a sandwich. Got one you could shoot down to me?"
"I'll get right on that. Look for the flaming meteorite of bread." He chuckled. "See you when you get back. Normandy, out."
They descended down through the levels, able to see the base staff's sleeper pods through the slats in the elevator car. Some remained lit, but a great many of them had gone dark, their power severed. She opened her mouth to ask Nihlus if she thought the power failure due to time or attack, but closed it without speaking. The answer whispered through her mind. Tashac felt a remorse and sorrow too great to be accounted for by anything less than a massive act of betrayal. The shape of it remained elusive, however, and Shepard began to wonder if Tashac even knew what she'd done. Perhaps a part of her that remained untouched by the Reapers just knew that she'd been used.
A blast of darkness like a barrage of daggers swept inside the elevator as soon as the door opened. Shepard staggered backwards under the assault, then dropped to a knee as Tashac sent a shrill wail of pure, agonized terror stabbing through her head. Pressing her eyes closed, she braced her forearm on her knee and fought back, shoving the fear and pain back behind a wall. Still, the darkness slammed into her over and over, a battering ram of terrible, roaring nothingness that tore apart her every thought, splintering every ounce of control she maintained.
Little pig, little pig, let me come in.
Not by the hair on my chinny chin chin.
Then I'll huff, and I'll puff, and I'll blow your brain into tapioca.
A strong arm wrapped around her shoulders, sending the battering ram into retreat even before something bit into her neck.
"Hold tight, Kahri. It'll just be a few seconds before it kicks in." Garrus's soft words sounded as if they came from behind a thick door at the end of a long hall. "I've got you."
She wanted to reassure him, to thank him . . . anything, but her jaw locked tight, her teeth aching with the pressure. Still, she managed to keep the terrible, tar-slick spiders at bay until the injection eased them back, standing shoulder to shoulder with her resolve to shove them out of her head.
When she opened her eyes, a hand came down to help her to her feet. She took it and hauled herself up, feeling as though she gained three hundred pounds while down. "I'm okay," she managed to say, the words sounding more like a gasp. "There's something huge down here. I think it's the Conduit. Tashac sabotaged the containment fields while they worked on it." Hefting Roger back into both hands, she staggered to the door and looked out.
"Spirits. All these people," Nihlus said, his voice hushed and sad. "All indoctrinated in their sleep." He stepped past her, his eyes following the lines of sleeper pods up the massive walls. "All lost. All the people we . . . they knew. Dead or asleep and never able to wake."
"No . . . no, it's worse than that. I just . . .." Shepard brushed by, packing Tashac's sorrow behind the wall. "I just don't know how." Despite her efforts, whispered tendrils snaked out to curl around Shepard's heart, a ghostly ache that wondered if she could have betrayed even her son had he survived.
Shepard strode down the walkway to Vigil's console, stopping a good six metres back, her heart seizing. "Sweet baby Jesus, what the hell . . .?" A device encased a portion of the console, its black, oil-slick form sending out wisps, not of darkness but of nothingness—pure void—that diffused like ink in water. The pure, horrible essence of the indoctrination field. "How did Sovereign not find out about this place?" she whispered. Her eyes travelled up the rest of the room, seeing the signs of Reaper tech everywhere.
"Spirits."
Shepard spun to face Garrus, the horror and fear in that single word enough to chill her to the core. She followed his eyes down over the edge of the walkway, but couldn't see what he looked at. Creeping closer, not at all sure she wanted to look, she peered over the edge. For a moment, her brain froze, unable process what she saw. Then, as she began to pick out recognizable shapes amidst the horror, her guts turned to water, threatening to spill out one way or the other.
Beneath them, Prothean bodies, almost completely turned into machines like the husks, hung between bits of cannibalized computers and other technology. Heads . . . far too many heads . . . stared out of the monstrosity, their glowing eyes sputtering, mouths hanging open in endless screams. Arms reached up, fingers splayed as if dragged into that pit clawing at anything to get a handhold and pull free before the machines consumed them. Tendrils of tech threaded through everything, punching through bodies like the tentacles of a ghoulish kraken, wiring them together and then up into Vigil's base.
Again the question formed, leaving her lips almost like a prayer, "How in the name of the poor, destroyed Enkindlers did Sovereign not find out about this place ages ago? This has to be able to transmit." The answer came to her as Tashac whispered a single name.
Merol.
"The computers and Vigil are down. I couldn't call out to the Normandy without it recognizing Merol's unindoctrinated imprint," she said, turning away from the inhumane travesty. She looked up, meeting Nihlus's eyes. "She knew. Even though she couldn't stop herself, she said it herself, Nihlus. She told Merol that she trusted nothing but him, and he came through for us all." Shepard brushed errant tears off her cheeks. "He sabotaged everything to contain her betrayal. He couldn't stop it from happening, but at least he could keep it from getting loose."
Casting one last glance over at the grisly remains of the people entrusted to protect the primitive races, Shepard approached Vigil's console again. "Do you have more shots of that cocktail in your pocket there, barkeep?" she called over her shoulder. "I reckon I'm going to need a top-up or two before this business is through."
"I've got four shots of the good stuff left," Garrus answered. "And a couple experimental turian ones that Dr. Solus mixed up, but Dr. Chakwas said no guarantees with those."
She crouched down a couple metres back from the console, able to feel the seductive, velvet slither of the Reaper field caressing her inside and out. "Take them. This thing is throwing the whammy out big time. And then stay back. I'm already brain-fucked, you two try to give it as much space as possible." She activated her omnitool. "We need Legion and his industrial cutter down here."
Amalair. Shepard stopped and looked back at Garrus. "Contact Shiala, get Amalair back on the shuttle. There's no way we can leave her here. Who knows what Reaper crap is crawling around. That's the last thing we need: Reaper rachni everywhere." Turning back to her work, she fabricated a fine laser and started cutting away the Reaper tech surrounding Vigil's heart. The VI had opened the outer door, recognizing Tashac, and it had let her communication go through, so some part of it must still be intact.
Power cells pillaged from appliances and tools surrounded an invasive web of cables and conduits. Shepard cut it all away, letting out a sigh of relief when the power cells fell onto the ground and the worst of the field bashing at the inside of her skull died.
Somewhere not too far away, machinery whirred to life. It took a moment for her to recognize the sound, but as it registered, ice water flooded her bloodstream. The sleeper pods. "Oh crap." She tore at the tech faster. "Um, I seem to have tripped a failsafe here, gentlemen. We're going to have visitors."
"I hear it. The sleeper pods are activating," Nihlus called back. "I'll head down to the Conduit chamber, make sure it's secure. We need to grab the Conduit and get the hell out of here."
Shepard nodded without looking up. "Garrus, go with him."
"Shepard!" they hollered in protest at the same time.
"We need the Conduit a lot more than I need someone staring at my ass while I do this. Go!" She reached the cover to the local hardware. Vigil was housed in a massive core at the bottom of the base, but if Merol needed to leave a message, instructions . . . even tried to save any of the VI, it would have had to be there. Otherwise Tashac would have known. "At least I hope so," she whispered, cutting and tearing until she finally managed to remove the cover. She heard the elevator begin grinding its way down toward the Conduit chamber.
Two birds, one hand in the bush, and all that BS.
Judging by the shifting and banging coming from the other side of the wall, they were going to need to run their asses off and soon. She set the cover down and stared into a mess of combined Reaper and Prothean tech.
"Oh crap," she sighed, looking in at the complexities of the Prothean tech. "Tashac, I'm going to need some help here." Three devices stuck out as not quite belonging, but the Prothean had no knowledge to share. "Oh yeah, serious crap." She reached up and opened a channel. "Legion, I need you. Can you take a fighter down to me or something?"
"Affirmative, Shepard-Captain. It will take this unit fourteen minutes and thirty nine seconds to reach your current location," came the reply.
"Excellent, get your chassis in gear. Can you analyze some tech for me while you're at it?" She keyed her omnitool and scanned the interior of the console. "I'm hoping to salvage something of use out of this mess." She sent it to the geth.
"Affirmative."
A low, guttural moan drifted from below and behind her. Shepard closed her eyes for a half breath, then glanced back. A three fingered hand, desiccated and riddled with metal, reached over the edge of the walkway, the clawed tips of the fingers scratching half inch grooves through the stone as it fought to catch hold and pull itself loose of the mess below.
"This is when you need to know how to use a shotgun properly, Shepard." She shrugged Ingrid into her hand, changed the rounds, and sent an explosive round tearing through the things head, blowing its misshapen kepala right across the walkway. Without waiting to see the creature fall, she turned back to the console.
"No time to wait, Shepard. This ain't going to be pretty." Rubbing her hands together, she took a deep breath and reached out. "Here goes nothing."
"Shepard." A channel opened, Nihlus's voice coming through sounding weary and sick. "We've got a pile of dead quarian kids down here. It looks like Saren exposed them to the beacon and then tried to use them to get past the security. They haven't been dead long. The door is locked, but—"
"Shepard. Imagine meeting you here," an altogether too familiar, flanged voice said from behind her.
Shepard's spine stiffened as if someone had stabbed a javelin down through the top of her head. Damn, how did such complete madness manage to sound so controlled, so rational and sane? She stood slowly, reaching for Roger as she did.
"You won't be needing that," Saren said, walking a few steps from the elevator. "I'm not staying. I just thought I'd take a moment to talk to you. I tried talking to Nihlus, but he's always been over-emotional. I'm hoping I can rely on you for a little common sense."
Shepard laughed, hard and guttural. "Seriously? Nihlus is over-emotional. Oh, buddy, you've got no idea how much worse I am." She fired off a couple of rounds, his shields deflecting them, then used bullets to punctuate her words. "Those kids down there . . . did they get you through the door? Or did you just throw them away . . . just a few more acceptable losses in your march of 'Great holy shit, I'm as stupid as fuck, let's help the bloody Reapers because that's the absolute best plan my tiny bird brain could come up with'?" For the last bit she held the trigger, stopping just short of overheating.
"The Conduit is on its way to the Citadel," he replied, completely unruffled by her bullets or words. "This is the only way, Shepard." He held out his arms to encompass the chamber. "How can you not understand that when you can see the result of fighting back? No one escapes. If you fight, they twist you into their weapon."
Shepard fired off a few more shots. "And if you help them, they twist you into their weapon. Given that choice, I'll fight every time." She closed on him, fury narrowing her view down to the spot between his glowing eyes. "Do you honestly think they're going to spare your people?" She shook her head, barely suppressing the urge to retch. "You poor, delusional bastard. You've got a hell of a wake up call coming."
Garbled moans and bellows echoed up from below and came through the side walls, backing Shepard toward the console again. Too many pods in that place still had power when she came in. The three of them needed to get out before they ended up overwhelmed. She had a Reaper to kill.
"Time to go, Shepard. When that relay opens and the Reapers pour through . . . maybe then you'll see reason. They're machines. They're ruled by logic, and they need organics to help them in their harvest. Those who help, who make themselves useful, will live." He turned and strode into the elevator.
That time she did retch, dry heaving into the back of her throat as Tashac sent the memory of cradling her dead son's body searing through Shepard's arms. "Yeah, until their indoctrination signal fills your brain full of tumors, and you start drooling down your armour, Saren! When your brain turns to mush and your beloved Sovereign throws you into the grey-paste pile to build himself a girlfriend . . . then we'll see whether fighting back was the better option."
"Shepard." Nihlus again.
"Go ahead." When the elevator closed, she spun back to the console.
"The Conduit is gone. We're on our way back up to you."
"Understood. Shepard out." She closed that channel and opened one to Legion. "Okay, I have to move. Have you had a chance to look over the scans?" She forced back the fury, letting it cool into a sharp, steady focus. Rage and electronics never mixed well.
"Affirmative. There is a black rectangular box at the center of the open panel. It is the direct, tactile interface module."
"Okay." Shepard activated her omnitool again. "I can get these leads off the main branch and still leave them attached to the interface module." She reached in.
"No. Shepard-Captain do not make contact—"
"Circumstances conspired to wake me from my long slumber this morning, despite my pod remaining locked. At first, I believed it to be a malfunction. Employing the ingenuity for which I was brought here to help them build the first prothean constructed relay, I rewired the pod from the inside and escaped. Others were already up and working, but they did not respond when I spoke to them. They do not even appear to see me. They move about like the risen dead.
"Several of my peers also awoke early, fully in command of their faculties like myself. I can only extrapolate from what I see of the workers that we form the exception rather than the rule. Perhaps our waking up was a malfunction. If so, it appears the antecessors decided a different fate for us.
"I do not know what has happened, nor how many cycles have passed. I finished work on the relay yesterday and went to sleep. Today I awoke into a nightmare. Antecessors watch over and guide me. I am afraid."
The feed skipped. "We have extracted eight of my fellows from their pods now. The small team of we fugitives have dedicated the last several days to accessing Vigil. The VI appears to have been sabotaged and sent into a record loop in order to prevent the monstrosities from accessing it. My spirit quakes at the horrors I have witnessed since waking. A full half of the sleeper pods still occupied are being reconfigured to transform our brothers and sisters into monsters while they dream. When they emerge, their souls are stolen, plucked out by the cold hand of the machines. They do not eat, they do not sleep, they simply work until their body fails and the new generation scavenges it for parts to build the great machine in the central chamber."
Another skip. "I have been awake for one hundred nightmarish days. What began as a group of eight fellows has been reduced by half in that time. Every day, the slaves, the monstrosities of metal and flesh, pull more of our peers from their pods to work or undergo transformation. We entered Vigil's control room two days ago, disguised as workers. The lead scientist of the Senarium left a message attached to one of the surface subroutines. Before we were discovered and forced to flee for the sewers, we were able to listen to the message recorded almost a millennia ago, and discovered the reason for our terrible fate. Betrayal at the hands of indoctrination. Tashac was the best of us. Is there nothing these machines cannot corrupt and destroy?"
"This will be my last chance to leave a message for any who may come after me. It's alive, this Conduit. It is not merely a device, it is a Reaper in its own right, a being of terrible will. It demands to be returned to the Citadel, a demand that grows ever more strident day by day. Most have given into it. I have almost given in to it. The others build a device on top of the compound. I do not know its purpose, only that it is intended to let this beast escape. I cannot allow that to happen. I have only one recourse open to me, for I am the last who retains some small measure of herself, although I feel my grasp grow more tenuous by the day. What . . .? Oh yes, containment. I will release the suppression gas. All still living will die, the facility will go hermetic. Nothing will get out. The relay we built a millennia ago to infiltrate the Citadel will sit unused . . . although I do not possess sufficient naivety as to believe it will do so forever. If you're hearing this. Stop it. Please, find a way to stop the Conduit from returning to its nest."
"—with the module, it will download the information directly into your primary somatosensory cortex."
Shepard raised a hand to her temple, pressing down hard in a futile effort to keep the small bombs going off inside her skull from blowing her brain all over Vigil's console. "Thanks, Legion," she said, the words coming out sounding more like muffled grunts than anything else. Heavy waves of nausea followed the pain. "Excellent advice." She blinked hard a couple of times, trying to clear her vision. "So what should I touch?"
He relayed instructions as to her best chance to extract useful components.
"Shepard?" She heard Nihlus and Garrus jogging down the walkway behind her. "Any luck?"
She glanced over her shoulder as she worked the primary memory buffer loose, glad to have them at her back again. "Yeah, I touched something I wasn't supposed to and found out there is some sort of back door onto the Citadel from here . . . out behind the base. A relay." She winced as she pinched a finger. "Ow, dammit. Oh, and in other news, Saren stopped by to tell me how awesome he is. I shot him a lot. I tell you, we need to figure out his barriers, because . . . damn. Anyway, he's on his way to the relay with the Conduit now. As soon as I grab these last couple of pieces, we'll head after him."
"Shepard?" Joker called, his voice laced with urgency.
"Sovereign has arrived at the Citadel?" she called, reaching up with one hand without stopping her work.
"Yes, ma'am. Commander Vakarian just contacted me. He said that the 2nd and 3rd battalions, 1st Marines had arrived at their assigned stations, but the 1st and 3rd battalions, 2nd Marines are still on their way." He laughed, but it was a vicious laugh. "I'd love to see that, ma'am. Nearly six thousand pairs of Alliance boots on the ground. I bet the council is having kittens. Maybe I can adopt one and name it Suck on this you Indoctrinated Asshats." He paused for breath. "What do you think? Too long?"
Shepard pulled the buffer free and stuck it in a pocket. "Little bit, sort of like this conversation. Put me through to Admiral Hackett, please, Joker."
"Yes, ma'am. Normandy, out."
"Shepard. Sovereign has arrived at the Citadel," the admiral said.
"Yes, sir. It appears that Saren and my team have a back door onto the Citadel, so we're going to be headed that way. He has the Conduit." She popped another component out. "We'll set out after him in about a minute." Sighing, she said. "Before the Fifth Fleet heads for the Citadel, it needs to completely obliterate this base, sir. There's Reaper tech everywhere."
"Speaking of," Nihlus called, as they opened fire.
"Understood, Shepard," Hackett replied. "Let us know when you're clear."
"Yes, sir. Shepard, out." She glanced up at Garrus. "Your suit getting all this? I want hard copy."
"It is." His sniper rifle sent echoes booming around the chamber every three seconds. "You just about done? It's starting to get crowded in here."
Shepard opened the link to Legion. "Okay, those two are out, anything else? And how close are you, we need to bug out of here in about ten seconds." She shook her hands to stop their trembling as adrenaline sluiced through her bloodstream. Despite the shaking hands, the fear had bled away, leaving just a fierce determination. Sovereign and the Conduit had tormented and destroyed the last of the Protheans, and if allowed to activate the Citadel, the Reapers would destroy everything all over again. One option remained. One choice. Her two best men stood at her back. They'd get it done.
"One component remains, Shepard-Captain. It is a silver, metallic cylinder directly behind the seat of the primary memory buffer. We are landing at the shuttle now."
"Excellent, stay there, and keep the evac clear," Shepard shouted over the gunfire and growing screams and moans of the Prothean husks. She popped out the component and stuffed it into her belt, then grabbed Roger off her back and spun around to help. "Legion, is the rachni queen aboard the shuttle?" She winced against the roar of a great many terrible things coming echoed through the vaulted ceiling of the chamber. So much for Ilos's peace.
"Affirmative."
"Excellent. Prep it to go. We're on our way to you now." Prothean husk creatures climbed up from below and down the walls, horrific cockroach abominations of the people they'd once been. Opening fire, she moved steadily from one head to the next, blowing them open like dried up, dusty coconuts.
"Let's get to the elevator before they all make it down here," Nihlus shouted over the growing din of howls and roaring moans. Even in death, the creatures shrieked their torment, their bodies locked in a lingering nightmare. She prayed at least their souls escaped to find peace.
Shepard took point as they moved up, a wedge of bullets clearing a path through the dead. Nihlus and Garrus followed tight behind, their guns roaring until Shepard's ears rang. Once they made it to the elevator, she'd have to turn her implants down before she went deaf. Slowly, they moved up the walkway, bodies scrambling over the dead even as they fell, clambering to obey the machine and destroy the invaders. After fifty thousand years of struggling to get free of the Senarium's prison, the Conduit sat poised to return to its seat and fulfill its purpose. Through the voices of its victims, it defied their attempt to stop it.
Shepard hit the elevator control and the doors opened, a small horde of the husks pouring out. Beating them aside, she backed down the walkway, returning the way they'd come. "Back away from the doors. I'm going to use a little force."
Once they had enough distance, she tossed two grenades into the mob, activating them on impact. Bits of bodies rained down on them, accompanied by an ichor she didn't want to know the source of. The way open, they ran for the elevator.
"I really hope the grenades didn't damage the mechanisms," Shepard whispered as she punched the controls and the door closed. She looked over to find Garrus staring at her. "What?"
He just shook his head, then reached over and picked a strand of desiccated intestine from her hair. "Nothing." Facing front, he shrugged. "Just sometimes I'm not sure if I'm glad you're on our side or wish you were on theirs."
Shepard let out a surprised chuckle and elbowed him. "Nice, and right after I saved our asses too."
"Unless the elevator breaks and sends us crashing to our deaths," Nihlus said, glancing down at her for a fraction of a second before looking back to the door.
"Great, two comedians teaming up. I see how it's going to be." She stretched her neck and rolled her shoulders, keeping herself loose in case a fight waited for them at the surface.
When the doors opened, however, the route out to the shuttle remained clear, the creatures no doubt still crawling up from below. She raced down the short hall and straight into the shuttle hatch, taking the copilot's seat.
"Legion, you're driving." She keyed in the Conduit's EM signature into the computer and set the nav system to follow it. "Just follow that marker the best you can."
"Captain?" Joker called.
"Go ahead, Joker." She opened the channel and shrugged herself into her harness.
"Anderson called to report that the krogan are landing in force, but all Alliance troops have arrived to support C-Sec and the combined forces are holding well. But he says the Citadel is closing, with Sovereign on the inside. Unless we can get the arms open, the fleets will be useless."
"Understood. Tell him we'll get the arms open. He needs to signal the Second Fleet and the quarians, maybe they can delay Sovereign. Even a few minutes could help. You need to get the Normandy there, Joker. We're coming a different way." She brought up the weapons systems, prepping just in case Saren had surprises waiting.
"Roger that, ma'am. We'll see you when you get there."
"Kick some ass, Joker, but don't get my ship blown to hell. She's brand new." Even though she kept her tone light, a knot tied in her gut at the thought of the Normandy going up against Sovereign.
"God, Shepard, have a little faith. Like I'd kill my baby. Normandy, out."
The shuttle lifted a metre off the ground and then zipped forward, navigating the treacherous corridors at a speed that kept Shepard's eyes on the weapon screens.
"Thank the spirits for geth reaction times," Nihlus grumbled from behind her.
They emerged from the far end of the base into the ancient aqueducts. Taking the shuttle up, Legion cut across the top of the base.
"Crap," Nihlus whispered. "They were so damned close to letting that thing out of there."
Shepard looked up, her gut clenching. A tower, five storeys tall, rose out of the center of the base, as much of an abomination as the technology they'd discovered inside. "They were trying to build out of the range of the jamming signal."
"What stopped them?" he asked, crouching between the seats, steadying himself on the backs.
"Some of the Prothean researchers awoke early . . . a malfunction. When they saw what was going on and realized that the Conduit was an intelligence of its own and was trying to get out, she unleashed some sort of failsafe and killed everyone, locked the base down." Shepard shrugged when he arched a brow plate at her. "Like I said, I touched something I wasn't supposed to. I'm talented."
"There it is." Nihlus pointed to a brilliant blue-white glow up ahead. "They built a relay. It's still active. Saren just used it."
Shepard nodded, her guts twisting into a rock-hard pretzel. "Yeah, the Protheans built it to run infiltration missions. It's been dormant for fifty thousand years. Legion, put the pedal to the metal. Let's see if we can get through on Saren's dime." She looked over her shoulder, meeting his eyes. Nodding her head toward the crew compartment, she said, "Better buckle in. It could be a hell of a bumpy ride."
As they cleared the building, Shepard opened a channel to Hackett. "We're out of the target area, sir. Blow that place to hell."
"Roger that, Shepard. Good luck. See you on the other side."
"Yes, sir. Shepard, out." Just before they reached the glowing, spinning rings, Shepard glanced back. As the first rounds impacted, explosions pluming into the air, she closed her eyes against tears of mixed sorrow and relief.
"And so passes the Prothean Empire."