1 ASR
Garrus knew darkness. The intoxicating, adrenaline-soaked shadows of lying in wait for a suspect, and the deep, black fury of watching the criminal escape justice. The warm velvet ebony of lying with Shepard pressed close, her breath soft on his neck, and the obsidian blades that flayed his soul from his flesh every night he went to sleep without her.
Yes, he knew darkness, but the black aboard the station couldn't be considered anything as innocuous as the absence of light. It loomed over him and tried to climb inside him, the conclusion of entropy—the frozen, still end of everything. Or the end of all life, anyway, for shadows moved just beyond the beam of his light, vanishing beneath chairs or along the edges of counters when he glanced their way. Before he reached the door leading into the interior corridors, he knew all too well why Shepard feared the dark.
How have I never seen this before?
For the third time that night, he wished she was there. In the face of the nothingness on Noveria, he'd pressed closer to her, drawing from the life and light that burst from her like solar flares. For someone who harboured so many fears, she'd been a source of indefatigable courage for them all. Spirits, he missed that glow, always just an arm's length away.
"See you on the other side," Kaidan said, pulling Garrus's attention back where it belonged. The lieutenant's low whisper eased Garrus's shame at his superstitious fear. At least he wasn't the only one who felt as if breaking the silence would draw the attention of things best left oblivious.
Garrus replied, a single nod, then watched after the second team until the last one disappeared around the curve of the station's outer corridor. Once they moved past the beam, his light glared through the emptiness, reflecting off the indecently polished floor panels. Warzones should be scarred and littered, dust and smoke filling the air, not looking as though the cleaning crew had just gone through.
"We go straight on?" Nihlus asked, even though the orange glare of the facility map glowed above the Spectre's forearm.
Garrus knew Nihlus's intention, answering the question only with a sharp glance as he struck out toward the bridge. He needed to police himself, get his imagination and emotions under control. Distraction could get them all killed. Focusing on the hallway before him, he edged down the left hand wall while Nihlus moved to cover the right, leaving Teung and Rogers to watch their six. Further along, the corridor opened into several offices and a large electronics lab. Maybe the workers had all been taken totally by surprise and died at their desks or in their living quarters.
"I'll be just fine once we find someone alive. Someone we can question." Shepard chuckled, but it came out hard and dry, edged with hysteria. "Hell, right now I'd settle for someone to shoot."
A door broke the flow of the bulkhead, the smooth metal lined with cables and narrow pipes that all curved suddenly upward to sweep around the portal. Garrus held up a fist to bring them all to a halt, then beckoned Nihlus over to cover the other side. The Spectre pressed his back to the wall, his shotgun pointed into the dark ahead of them, guarding their twelve.
When the power had gone out, all the door mechanisms had released, leaving the doors open a couple of centimetres. Holding Roger with one hand, he slid his talons through the crack and pulled, stepping back to stay behind the cover of the door as it opened.
No Reaper horrors or rampaging geth raced out to attack them, and he let out the breath he'd been holding, feeling more than a ridiculous. He straightened, rolling his shoulders, then cracked his neck. Roger leading, he swung around the door, stepping just over the threshold.
"Clear." Spotting scarring on the far wall, he called back. "Rogers, Teung, keep an eye out. Kryik, with me." He strode across the room, his light darting from the dark corners to the hidden spots behind furniture. "Between everything being bolted to the floor and the chairs floating, who can tell if there was a struggle?"
He headed straight for the scarring on the wall. No blood accompanied it, just the blast mark from a shotgun. Rubbing it with the pad of his talon, he scraped a little off. A couple of days old, as expected. Incendiary rounds. That he hadn't expected. He crouched to examine the floor. No sign of charring, which would happen if someone fell after being hit.
"This is insane." He turned a slow circle, shining his light over the walls, searching for more hits. Nothing. "How did they subdue all these—"
Nihlus spun to face him when he clacked his mouth shut on the end of the sentence. "What?"
Garrus took a couple of steps toward the door then stopped. "We asked the same thing on Noveria. All the people who worked on Peak 15 vanished without a trace. We never found out what happened to them. Now here, again." He took another step.
"The colonies." Nihlus froze for a second, his entire body practically vibrating with tension. Then, as quickly as it had appeared, it vanished, and he nodded toward the door. "Let's keep moving. Staring at empty rooms and jumping at shadows isn't going to tell us anything."
"Yeah." Garrus paused, head cocking a little as his voice echoed oddly through the space. Invisible talons raked down the back of his neck, sinking into the soft flesh where his cowl and neck met. As geth construction, the base's angles and slopes bounced sound around in strange ways, he knew that and thought he'd gotten used to it. Still, as he moved down the corridor, the space warped every noise, stretching and twisting them enough to set his teeth on edge.
All the way through Noveria, he'd listened to Shepard mutter to herself about how something was off. He hadn't given it much thought, more focused on the next step in front of him. The place had been creepy as hell, but until they found the dead rachni, having Shepard in charge allowed him to let all of that go. She'd acted as his lightning rod. Now the creepy came straight at him, and he had to admit, he didn't care for it.
The last door on the left led into the electronics lab. Unlike the office doors, its locking mechanism hadn't released when the power went out. Due to both security and static-free cleanroom protocols, the lab had a series of manual locks he needed to unlock in the right sequence in order to trigger the latch. Once Nihlus took position to cover the way ahead, Garrus opened the panel and unlocked the door.
The lab didn't look as though anyone had broken into it, and it should have remained locked at all times. As he forced the door open, he hoped someone managed to hide. An empty station with the odd scorch mark here and there wouldn't help solve the problems on Rannoch. They needed evidence; someone they could point to and say, they were behind everything. Taking point, he moved through the door, sweeping Shepard's old rifle from corner to corner. Nothing.
Nihlus entered a few seconds after Garrus, moving to cover the right, the pair of them moving without needing to coordinate. The Spectre moved more smoothly than Garrus, not starting every time their light cast an odd shadow. Maybe going into a mission at least partially drunk had its advantages.
"Do you have the code for the cold room?" Nihlus asked as he approached the thick, insulated glass. Despite his body language remaining completely calm, the torin's subvocals gave away his tension. Perhaps Nihlus's appearance of calm owed more to cycles of dealing with the unknown than the alcohol. Maybe both. Nihlus pressed his light to the glass and peered through. "There's something in there. Between the glare and the glass, I can't tell what, though."
"Yeah, just a second." Garrus made his way toward the cold room the long way, checking behind the work stations along the far wall before turning his back to them. No one hid under the desks, living or dead. As far as he could tell, whomever attacked the facility hadn't made it that far in. Or, he reminded himself, the staff all just obediently walked out, mindless and indoctrinated.
But that didn't account for the geth. What had happened to all the geth? How could there be nothing left behind? Well, nothing except for the talons drilling through the base of his skull to work their way into his—
"General!" Teung shouted from the corridor, enough edge in his voice to send Garrus bolting for the door, Nihlus's boots pounding the tile right behind him.
Eight strides carried him to the door. He burst through to see Rogers watching the corridor ahead, her eyes so large that he could see that her pupils had shrunk to pinpricks even past the reflection of the lights off her visor. The woman backed away from them, her gun barrel jerking back and forth across the empty hallway as if she saw enemies everywhere.
"Rogers? Teung, what's going on?" Acting on a hunch, Garrus hung Shepard's rifle on his back and held out his hands. Who knew what Rogers was seeing. "Rogers? Are you okay?"
"I saw them, sir. I saw … ." She continued to back away. On the edge of hysteria, she breathed so shallow and quick that her visor fogged in short, rapid puffs.
He nodded and stepped toward her. "Okay. You need to slow your breathing, or you're going to pass out."
"They're out there, sir, moving in the darkness. They're trying to crawl into my thoughts. They want my memories." She let her rifle drop a little as she raised one hand to the side of her head. Her gaze dropped to the floor, becoming unfocused, and she swayed on her feet. "They're dead, but no … ."
Garrus took another step, moving to catch her if she fell. He needed to get a shot of the indoctrination serum into her.
"No. No, they were never alive." Surreal, almost dance-like, she jolted rigid, rising onto her toes and stumbling backwards as she wrenched her gun back into both hands. Then she just stared at it as if she had no idea how it had arrived in her hands, let alone how to use it. "They're out there, in the darkness, sir," she whispered, her voice dropping two decades, a little girl lost and alone with no idea how to find her way home.
Garrus nodded. "I know." He looked toward Teung, and whispered, "First name?"
The Marine took a moment to answer, his eyes shifting about as if beginning to see monsters as well. He shook himself. "Amanda, um … Mandy, sir."
Garrus popped open the pouch with the syringes of serum and tossed one to Teung. "Take that, now, before it gets any worse."
The soldier nodded and stuck it into the medigel injection port, allowing Garrus to focus back on Rogers. Sharp legs skittered up his spine, on the inside, burrowing in where the invisible talons weakened his defenses, and cementing his guess at what Nihlus had seen through the cold-room glass.
"Nihlus, take yours," he called back without turning, keeping his eyes fixed on Mandy Rogers.
"Everyone who worked here … they're all dead, sir," she whispered, "but they're still here, trapped in the shadows, screaming. Can't you feel them? Hear them?"
A sharp nod answered the question, his muscles holding his vertebrae so tight that they let out a serrated snap. Rogers jumped, her rifle slipping from her fingers to clatter across the floor. Letting out a braying yelp that drove a spike of black, rotted ice straight through his armour, piercing both lungs, she dropped to her hands and knees. A child whose security blanket had been torn from trembling fingers, she scrambled across the tile, knocking it out of reach in her panic. Once she caught hold of it, she lurched to her feet, clutching the weapon tight against her chest.
"I feel them," Garrus replied, layering his voice with calm confidence, 'but they're shadows, Mandy. They can't hurt us unless we let them in, unless we let them strip away our courage." He held up a syringe. "This will help."
Tears streamed from her eyes, glistening slick and wet in the light, as she stared at his hand. "Will it take their claws out of my head?" Her whisper echoed, a chorus of ghosts murmuring the question down the corridor.
"Yes. I need to inject it into the medigel port. All right?" He closed on her, keeping everything slow and steady.
Her eyes cleared, and she shook off terror's blinders to close the distance at a strong march. Of course. She was a soldier. All she needed was to be given an effective weapon. "Yes, sir, although sooner would be better than later."
A weary chuckle accompanied the injection. "If the pressure doesn't back off completely, let me know," he ordered. "I'll give you another." Garrus glanced over to the other Marine. "Teung, you okay over there?"
"Yes, sir, but I'm ready to get the hell out of here," he replied, moving up beside Rogers.
"Me too." Garrus gave himself an injection, then turned to Nihlus. "Let's head back in there and get into the cold room." Even as he headed back into the lab, he called back. "Watch one another as well as the corridor."
Garrus ran across the large room, ducking between desks, almost positive of what he'd find inside the back room. Sure enough, when he entered the manual code and the door opened, one of the black orbs sat dead center on a counter. Without even a heartbeat of hesitation, he pulled Roger, pelting the nightmarish globe with rounds until it exploded.
Instant relief pulled a ragged sigh from his throat, the claws loosening.
"Is that what attacked Shepard on the Citadel?" Nihlus asked, pushing up behind Garrus's right shoulder. The Spectre shuddered. "It's not the only one. I still feel them crawling around inside my head."
Garrus nodded and turned on his heel. "Take another injection before it gets any worse." He opened a channel to Kaidan's team. "Team two, report in."
"Team two, here, General," Kaidan's voice came through, sounding strained. "We've run into some trouble. All of us are experiencing visual and auditory hallucinations. We've taken a shot of the serum Dr. Chakwas gave us, but it's not helping as much—"
A cry came through the radio, but not from Kaidan. A savage, male howl of hopelessness was followed by the ceramic ring and crunch of armour crashing into armour. Garrus could hear Kaidan grunting with effort as he grappled with someone, then the LT returned, gasping and breathless. "Peterson just attacked me, then took off screaming about monsters inside his head."
"All of you take a second shot, and don't bother going after Peterson, yet. Somewhere close by there is a black, iridescent orb. You've got to find it and destroy it." Garrus strode for the door as he barked the orders, as if he intended to march straight to their position. Instead, he stopped just outside the lab door. "There will be more of them, Alenko. If the symptoms start getting bad, it means you're close to one. Understood?"
"Yes, sir." After a pause, the lieutenant let out a sigh. "Tali found it. Orb destroyed, General."
"Good, but there will be more. Stay sharp and head for engineering. Get the power on so we can get the hell out of here." Garrus waved the others forward, continuing toward the bridge. "How close are you?"
"Ten minutes, if we don't have any more of that. We'll get there and get it done. Alenko, out."
"They're having problems as well?" Nihlus asked, taking the right flank again as they moved out into the large, open heart of the station.
"Yeah." He looked up into the dark, wishing for his visor. The corridor opened into the central hub of the station, a great space of metal walkways and stairs. In the light, one could see up through the station's dome to the docks where they assembled the dreadnoughts, and beyond them, the planet. Garrus could barely make out the slightly lighter area of the dome, what little sun made it around the planet certainly doing nothing to ease the pitch black in the belly of the station.
Seventy metres across, ten floors down, ten floors up. Spirits, help us.
The void felt alive, breathing and shifting around Garrus as if he stood within the chest of a great, sleeping beast. Their footsteps on the metal grating rang out, echoing from everywhere, an army of pursuers, racing to get to them before they could restore life to the station. The oppressive emptiness pressed down on Garrus until his head throbbed and his knees trembled beneath the weight.
"You will reveal what you are." A few spiders wriggled into his skull, whispering as they squirmed and scraped against the bone. "Your mind is ours."
"Push through," he ordered, practically grunting the words.
A few steps into the open space, their flashlights became all but useless, the darkness gobbling down the beams. Panic belched sulfur into his blood, yellow and stinking, as he felt the shadows crawling in through his eyes, nose, and ears. He reached up to swipe them away, smacking his talons into his helmet.
"You're strong," the whispers rasped, skittering along the pathways of his mind. An image flashed through his mind of Shepard on her hands and knees in the Presidium markets, the shadows stealing her senses, raping her memories. "She was strong, but no more. She's wasted away, weak and vulnerable. So very easily overridden."
"I'm turned around already," Teung said, snapping Garrus back. A harsh gasp marked each of the Marine's inhalations. "How do we find the bridge if we can't see more than a couple of metres ahead?"
How long had Garrus been standing there? Ten seconds? A minute? Five minutes? He looked down, shoving the whispers back, forcing himself to focus. The metal edge of the floor panel ran straight. He didn't think he'd turned at all after entering. If they followed the floor, they should find something better able to help them orient themselves. At least if they got close enough to the center, their flashlights would work.
Was it their flashlights that failed? Or, as they'd done to Shepard, were the shadows—the terrible, tar-slick spiders—stealing their vision?
"You can tell the geth didn't build this place with organics in mind," Nihlus spoke up from Garrus's right. The Spectre edged closer, closing ranks. "They probably never need any sort of emergency lighting."
"I'll take point," Garrus said, injecting as much confidence into his voice as he could muster. "Rogers, Teung, then Nihlus. Keep your light on the person in front. If you need to stop for any reason, call out, wait for us to halt before stopping. If you get separated, watch the edge of the deck plating. We just need to head in a straight line."
He waited for them to sort out their order, then turned his light to the floor up ahead. The space only measured two hundred paces across, and the bridge sat at the center, surrounded by labs and the geth server rooms. That left maybe a hundred steps in the wasteland.
More spiders broke through his defenses. True to his fears, as more of them invaded, his flashlight beam weakened. "Everyone take a second dose of the serum," he ordered, fishing into his pouch to grab syringes for Teung and Rogers. He passed them over, then took his own. The pouch was empty. He hadn't anticipated walking under an overwhelming indoctrination attack. Not a mistake he'd ever make again.
"Not again," Nihlus whispered.
Garrus spun to face the Spectre. The darkness drew back, and he let out a relieved sigh. Spirits, he'd never take the light for granted again.
"I can't. I can't live with them crawling around inside my head any longer." The Spectre shook his head, backing down the corridor away from them.
"Nihlus?" Garrus glanced at the other two as he strode toward Nihlus. "Did you two take your shots?"
"Yes, sir," they replied in tandem.
"Nihlus, what's going on?" Garrus held out his hand and continued to close. "Don't take off on me. Talk to me." He cursed under his breath as the Spectre's retreat sped up. "Don't run. Tell me what they're saying."
Nihlus stopped. "It's not me. They're attacking Tashac." His gun clattered against the floor, dropping from his fingers as if they'd lost feeling. He reached up, clamping both hands against his helmet. "They're torturing her." He stumbled, almost going down. "I'm trying to block her out, but she's screaming."
"General!" Kaidan shouted in Garrus's ear. "We're in the engineering room. There are three orbs. Tali took one out, then disappeared. I took out the other two. Englestein is lying in a ball on the floor. I'm trying to get the power on, sir."
"Understood, Kaidan. We're deep in the shit here, too. Once the power is on, head for the bridge. We'll figure out how to get our people back once we've got lights."
"Yes, sir. Alenko, out."
Garrus looked toward Rogers. "You holding together, Mandy?"
She nodded, her eyes huge as she watched Nihlus flail. "Yes, sir. Shaky, but holding."
"Keep talking to him, and get that second shot into him. Don't let him run off. See if you can get him moving toward the bridge." Garrus waited for her acknowledgement then started to back away. "I'm going to go to the bridge and destroy any orbs, then we can rally there." He reached out a hand toward Nihlus. "Keep Tashac calm, Nihlus. Don't let her panic, whatever you have to do. Can Merol talk to her?"
The Spectre didn't reply, his hands still clutching his head.
"Have Merol keep her calm. You know he can. I'll get you out of here as quickly as I can." After another second, Garrus turned, able to see the flashlight gleaming faintly off the walkway to the bridge. Thank the spirits for Dr. Chakwas, the crazy salarian, and their potion. His brain felt like the spiders had started tearing up neurons like someone ripping wiring out of a electronics panel, and he'd been dealing with it for a couple of hours.
Spirits, how much of the time since that day on the Citadel had Shepard fought off the poison left inside her head by the orbs? The woman never ceased to—
The spiders … no, the whispers, he needed to stop thinking of them as physical beings ... said she was strong, but that she was weak and vulnerable to them now. They couldn't torment her even in death, could they? Surely they'd meant that to help break him down. Dear spirits, sweet baby Jesus, the blessed enkindlers, and every other entity or belief known to sapient life, let them have just been tormenting him.
Pushing himself faster, running a little blind, Garrus raced toward the bridge. He needed to destroy the orbs before they pushed back into his head and stole his senses. Before they stole his sense, and he ended up running or curling up in a ball, the vision of his Kahri, alone in the dark, tormented and afraid, robbing him of his hope and reason.
"Sir! Nihlus just took off," Rogers called out. "Dammit, I just about had him, and then he just turned and ran."
"Understood. Get to the bridge." He dug in harder, straining with every last scrap of resolve and strength to get there. Then his hands slapped against the panel next to the door. The code … he couldn't remember the … but his fingers moved on their own and then it cracked open. Pulling the door back, he stayed in cover, not sure what awaited him other than more orbs.
The lights flickered on, died, and then slowly began to glow, growing brighter and brighter. All around him, equipment hummed as it woke up, some of it letting out alarming sputters in the freezing temperatures. The generators deep in the bowels of the station sent reassuringly normal vibrations through the deck into his talons, and computers bleeped and winked on. He let out a relieved laugh. Thank the spirits. Power. Power would ease back the fear and banish the slippery, wet-tar shadows.
Glancing around the door, he saw the bridge coming back to life, but as with everywhere else, no geth, no workers. He stepped over the threshold, glancing around at the different computers. What did he need to figure out where everyone had gone?
As he walked into the space, Roger finding its way back into his hand, he spotted six orbs around the room, sitting on desks, innocuous as you could hope for. Did the geth or the people there even know what the things were? Had they brought them in for study? He'd have to send out an advisory to all Archangel facilities to destroy the orbs on sight. He raised the rifle.
"Holy shit," Teung whispered from just behind Garrus's shoulder. "Five … no, six of them."
Garrus jumped a little as the man spoke, then froze solid and still. Four, bright, gold lights appeared on every monitor and screen in the room. Four lights that looked like … eyes. They flashed, as bright as the sun for a second, blinding him, then the power died, the spiders swarming into the darkness left behind.