Torin: Male turian of the age of majority.

Fratrin: Brother

Pari: Father

Praela: Ancient turian spirits of war

12 Days ASR

Oblivion drew back, pain driving the shadowy denizens of unconsciousness before it, more relentless than a turian square*. The slow, burning agony roared through his cells, incinerating his synapses as it laid claim to every centimetre of territory relinquished. For long moments, he thought the war might be a short one with a tragic end, but then he took a deep breath, shattering agony's reign.

The scent of blood—blood and something else, something wrong —brought fear marching onto the field of battle. It planted its flag and sent out scouts, forcing Garrus's eyes open. The blinding darkness held its ground even as fear threw itself against it, demanding that it submit. Slowly, grudgingly, it did; a pale, watery grey creeping through narrow gaps around a door. The faint light revealed a room made up of huge slabs of cut stone. Dark stains splashed the walls, black and gleaming. The smell gave him far too clear a picture of what made up those stains.

Pressing his hands to the stone, he started to push himself up, his talons squelching through at least a centimetre of foul-smelling slime before sliding across the stone. Digging the sharp ends of his digits into the floor, he halted the slide and shoved himself up onto one hip. Every body part he owned—and a few he was fairly sure he must have borrowed—formed a complaints committee and voted that the banging in his head lead them. He felt like he had after Virmire. Despite knowing better, he'd still hoped to never feel that beaten, raw, and bruised again.

Once sitting up, settled and steady with his back against the wall, he lifted a hand, watching the ooze drip from it, morbidly fascinated. He leaned forward to sniff at it. Something that smelled far too close to decaying blood made up at least fifty percent of whatever it was. He sniffed again, fighting down his gag reflex. Some sort of organic fuel?

As his eyes adjusted to the dim light, the composition of the slime took a back seat to the sheer amount of it splattered everywhere. Was it some sort of abattoir? The chill in the air certainly lent credence to that idea of a refrigerator. For a moment, as he sat, shivering in the stink, the dark marks on the wall moved, swaying in the slow dance of hanging meat … meat with arms dangling, fingers brushing the floor. A hand wrapped around his throat, ephemeral fingers crushing his windpipe until only a razor-sharp whistle of air managed to squeeze through the fear.

"Stop it!" he called out loud, the sharp, strangled bark of his voice echoing back. Despite not knowing if he meant the order for himself or for the shadows, the sound grounded him, pulling him back from the edge of panic.

The shadows retreated into static stains on the wall. Better. Panic would kill him. He needed to focus, to try to remember what happened, and how he ended up in that room.

The last thing he remembered was the flash of brilliant, yellow light on the shipyard's monitors in the moment before everything went dark. Nihlus had taken off, but Rogers and Teung were right behind him. He must have lost consciousness. Despite the popularity of transporters in fiction, the galaxy still hadn't figured out how to dematerialize people in one place and rematerialize them in another a second later.

He closed his eyes, focusing on listening for any sign of movement outside his walls. Nothing, and he didn't have a hope in hell of smelling the others over the sickly, sweet and acrid stink of the slime.

His missing people pushed aside the pain and fear. If they were alive, he needed to find them and get them to safety, wherever that was. He raised a hand to his radio only to discover that the external portion was gone—broken away judging by the sharp edges. Lowering his hand, he attempted to activate his omnitool. Dead. In fact, his armour had gone completely dark. No lights, recycling, or heater. Complete lack of communications and life support left him one option.

A groan rumbled like thunder in his chest as he shoved himself up onto one knee, dragging his other foot under him. Gritting his teeth, he forced himself to keep moving despite the balls of white-hot lightning tearing through his flesh, guts, and bone. They ricocheted inside his armour and streaked across his vision, threatening to drop him back onto the floor. Still—as his father always said—he was nothing if not too stubborn for his own good.

Talons leaving deep scores in the stone, he clawed his way up onto his feet then slumped against the wall, gasping for breath.

"Come on, Vakarian," he muttered, "keep moving." He shoved himself away from the rock, but kept a hand pressed to the chill surface until the trembling in his muscles eased a little. "You're going to need a gun." Keeping contact with the wall, he turned, searching for any sign of Roger or Ingrid. He spotted Ingrid leaning against the stone a couple of metres away and stumbled over to pick it up. After checking it over, he let out a relieved sigh. Undamaged.

He found Roger halfway to the door. The three pieces of the assault rifle lay scattered in the muck.

"No." The word came out as a soft moan. Bending down, he lifted the broken weapon, cradling it gently, almost reverently, in his hands. It looked as though someone had used it as a club. The tip of one talon picked bits of what appeared to be chitinous material out of the spaces small enough to hang onto it.

Turning an unsteady circle, he scanned the muck for any other signs of combat. Well, signs other than how badly every centimetre of him hurt. Nothing. Nothing but the blood, if that was what it was. If he'd been involved in a pitched battle that ended in slaughter, what happened to the bodies and the scorch marks and the chunks blasted out of the walls? Of course, even a hundred gunshots wouldn't spill the amount of blood present in that room. Not every shot hit arteries, people fell on their wounds, blood pooled inside the body when it went down. No, to cover the floor and walls the way they were, he'd have to slit the throat of fifty or so people and hang them up to bleed out like animal carcases.

It couldn't be blood. Under what circumstances would or could he brutally kill that many beings? No. It wasn't blood. Another explanation awaited him outside that room. He just needed to go find it. He latched onto the not-blood portion of the smell. It just might be some sort of fuel. Fuel made sense. Maybe he'd been stashed in an old fuel storage bunker or something.

He hung the bulk of Roger on his back and shoved the other two pieces into pouches on his belt. He'd stood around speculating long enough. Time to get answers.

Steadying himself with one hand on the wall, he picked his way to the lines of faint light he'd rightly assumed surrounded a door. The dead control next to it threw his hopes on the floor, but before he crushed them underfoot, he saw the door remained open a couple of centimetres. He slid his fingers into the space and pulled. It refused to budge. Too heavy. He'd need something to pry it open.

"Sorry about this, old man," he said as he lifted Roger's remains from his back and shoved the barrel into the space. "Kahri would kill me if she saw this."

The door gave way reluctantly, metal screaming across stone as though it hadn't moved in decades. For a moment, fear whispered that maybe he had been down there for long cycles—cold, alone, forgotten. He shuddered, throwing off the fanciful, debilitating idea.

However, the thought brought back a childhood tale his mother used to tell him about a torin who'd fallen in love with a praela. One day, while he tagged along beside the spirit, trying to get her attention, the torin accidentally followed her into her home realm. The praela noticed him then, and he spent a joyous day in her company before he realized where he was. He fled back to the mortal world only to discover that he'd aged nearly a hundred cycles. Garrus's mother touted it as an object lesson about desiring the unattainable; Garrus wondered if the message didn't come closer to 'some things are worth it'.

Shepard's face ghosted through his mind, the image pale and worn. He'd spent more than his share of time in the spirit realm over the past two years. Strange that he hadn't recalled the story until that moment, but then again, despite his grief, he'd never felt quite so old. Closing his eyes for a moment, he leaned against the door frame and focused on the bright green of her stare, drawing strength from it.

"I'm going to need you," he whispered. "Do me a favour, and stick with me for a bit."

The next second, he chuffed at his continuing foolishness and shoved himself upright. Time—and more than time—to move.

Stepping into the hallway on the other side of the threshold felt eerily like passing through the veil between dimensions. The oppression of the small, filthy space lifted, but at the same time, gravity seemed to fall away. Featureless, grey walls stretched ahead and behind him, the floor beneath his feet and the ceiling above his head identical and equidistant. The optical illusion made his stomach roll and his head pound in time with his pulse.

He braced a hand against the wall, that simple contact orienting him enough that the nausea backed off. "I could use your inside-out streak of luck to point me in the right direction, Shepard," he said to the silence as he looked one way then the other. How could he expect to find any of his people without knowing where he was? Maybe they weren't even there. He could wander until hypothermia and dehydration killed him.

Giving his head a good, hard shake that he immediately regretted, he picked the hall to his right and started walking. As he moved, some of the stiffness and pain worked its way out of his muscles. Still, he knew that under his armour, he'd taken enough damage to earn a lecture from Dr. Chakwas.

Corridors passed by. Doorways opened into rooms engulfed in darkness and silence. Throughout, the stone never changed, the floors coated in a layer of dust so thick that it must have been building undisturbed for centuries. As he made his way through the maze, he scratched markers on the wall corners and drew a crude map of the space on his gauntlet. Only when he'd covered the entire level did he take the stairs up to the next.

Once exercise drove the fog of pain and cold back a little, his mind started putting together bits and pieces, trying to form a picture of where in the galaxy he could be.

Stone buildings with a vast underground presence. Ancient and deserted. The only other place he'd seen construction like that had been the ruins next to the base on Rannoch. So … Haestrom. It had to be.

He paused at the top of the stairs to listen, hearing only silence. He might as well have been the last living soul on the planet. Down below, he'd avoided calling out, not sure who or what he'd find, but other than the trails dragged through the dust where he'd been brought in, nothing. Might as well chance making some noise and up his chances of finding someone, he decided. Searching as thoroughly as he was, if someone was there, they'd end up finding him anyway.

He checked Ingrid again, making sure that she'd fire if anyone attacked him, but stopped at firing a test shot. Best not to completely test his luck. Shouting would carry far enough.

"Nihlus? Kaidan?" He marked the wall and struck out along the hallway to his right. "Is anyone there?"

"How do we always end up in these situations? I swear you do it on purpose."

Garrus spun to face the voice, his mouth dropping open, mandibles spreading. Taking a step toward the apparition, he snapped his mouth closed, his teeth clacking together. "Shepard?" He stopped, his boots raising puffs of dust that swirled along the ripples in the air caused by his movement. When Shepard walked toward him, she just passed through the drifting tendrils, leaving both the ground and air undisturbed.

"You're dead," he said, feeling a little stupid for stating the obvious.

She shrugged, the quick, loose-jointed movement so familiar and missed that a thin moan of longing spooled through his second larynx before he could stop it.

"Things aren't always that easy," she replied. Nodding toward the way ahead, she said. "Maybe we should get moving and find the others. My delicate, magical turian flower looks like he's getting a bad case of frostbite. If your armour is dead, Nihlus's probably is as well." When he didn't move, she passed him by, taking the lead.

Garrus stared after her for several seconds, his eyes riveted by the undisturbed floor. "How did I get here?" he asked, at last, lifting into a rough jog to follow her.

"How am I supposed to know?" She paused at the intersection of a side corridor and pressed herself against the wall to peer out, checking the way ahead. "Clear," she called back before moving on. "I just got here."

He marked the stone at the corner so he'd know they'd passed that way and what direction they took. He followed for several minutes in silence before blurting out. "Why did you leave me, Shepard? You knew … you know that I need you."

The apparition's shoulders slumped as she stopped, turning back to look at him. "Because it was time."

He approached her, stepping into her space in a way that would have made her uncomfortable in life. "Then why are you here now? Why come back?"

"Well, either because you needed me … " She chuckled, her head tilting a little. " … or due to your core body temp being seven degrees too low, combined with starvation, dehydration, and that massive lump on your skull." A ghostly hand drifted up to caress his cheek with a touch he couldn't feel. "You decide, but do it on the move, C-Sec. We aren't playing with a lot of time here. If your body temperature gets much lower, you're going to be doing a lot worse than talking to the hallucinations of dead girlfriends."

"Would that be so bad?" he asked, keeping his voice low and flat.

She turned away and headed down the corridor. Throwing a gesture of disgust and dismissal over her head, she said, "I'm going to pretend I didn't hear that, Callor. Sweet baby Jesus, did they yank out your spine when they smacked you on the head? You have over a thousand people depending on you, even if you forget about the quarians, the geth, the krogan, rachni … oh, yeah, and the entire galaxy."

Her form faded as she drew away, disappearing into the gloom. Setting out after her, he forced his heavy, trembling legs to hurry. Even if she was just a hallucination, her presence held back the darkness as it pressed in, looming over him like a besieging force. Refusing to stop at the wall of his armour, it slipped inside, pawing at his hide like a corpse's hands, greasy and gelid.

She stopped at another intersection, then scouted forward a few metres along each of the corridors. Cocking her head, she listened, her movements sharp and quick, just as he remembered. Damn, he missed following her through battle, watching her move as graceful and skilled as a dancer.

Graceful, skilled, and … on edge. She flicked glances back toward the corridor on his left every few seconds, her teeth latching onto the right side of her bottom lip, her eyelid lower on that side—her planning face. Sensing something in the dark, she was trying to decide what it was and how to deal with it.

When she finished the cycle, she chose the hallway to the right. A silent signal beckoned for him to follow, but when he turned toward the long, black hole, his entire body locked up, refusing to move. The darkness seemed to infest that passage, the fetid shadows choking what small amount of light existed.

Shepard's face appeared in front of his. "C-Sec! Focus. Eyes on me. I think I hear something, and I really don't like the sound of it. We need to move."

Instead of doing as she said, Garrus held his breath and closed his eyes, concentrating all his focus into listening. He heard it. A faint clicking, chittering sound. Geth, his brain spat out even as his gut tied in a hard knot and threw a grappling hook up to sink into his larynges. Taking a deep breath that made his lungs ache, he pulled the air over the pheromone receptors at the back of his mouth. Not geth. Geth didn't come complete with pheromones. Whatever or whoever was making that sound did: a strange combination that smelled like blood and fuel.

He opened his eyes and hurried after Shepard, finding her waiting at the next intersection.

"Get Ingrid ready," the captain whispered, crouching a little as if she expected to leap into battle. "Whatever's coming after us is injured and moving rough, but they're coming fast." She surveyed the corridors, then headed off to the right again. "By the way," she said as she moved, low and keeping the side wall at her back, "I noticed what you did to Roger." Shooting a glance over her shoulder that ricocheted off his armour, she shook her head. "Just be glad I can't slap you silly. Do you know how much that old man and I survived together?"

Intending to argue the point, Garrus opened his mouth, but another glare convinced him to remain silent. He followed, keeping his eyes on their six.

As they made their way through the level, the chittering sound grew louder. Still, Shepard didn't speed up. She took her time, almost as if baiting their pursuer, leading it on. When she stopped at the base of the stairs up to the next level, he knew he'd guessed right.

How does that work if she's a hallucination? My subconscious is leading it into a trap?

"It's following like it believes we're oblivious," Shepard whispered. "Head up to the first landing, and take cover. I have no idea what this thing is, so don't take any chances."

Garrus stared at her for a moment, his thoughts lumbering through the growing fog of pressure in his head. He needed to tell her something, but for the life of him, he couldn't find the words amidst all the confusion and mental detritus. Giving up, he just nodded and strode past her, limping up the stairs to the landing. The stone railing supported him as he lowered himself to one knee and then Ingrid's barrel as he rested it in a notch in the stone and sighted the center of the doorway.

Shepard remained at the bottom of the stairs, feet shoulder-width apart, back straight, hands clasped behind her back. Her apparition didn't appear solid as it did in his dreams. Instead, he could see the stone and dust through her dress uniform. They'd dressed her in that uniform to bury her. It seemed perfectly normal at the time. After all, he'd been too out of his head to put any thought into something so mundane. But there, in the dark, it seemed incredibly sad, as if that uniform declared Shepard a one-dimensional being.

"Here it comes," she whispered, backing away. "I can't really see it, but it seems about a hand shorter than you, definitely bipedal. Blessed Enkindlers, its head is huge, but it has a center mass at about one and three quarters metres from the ground … . There's something familiar about it, but I can't see it well enough to tell." She turned and sprinted up the stairs to crouch at his side. "Ten seconds unless it gets cautious."

He adjusted for her details, taking slow, deep breaths and focusing all his concentration down the sights. Vision softening, he allowed the world outside the doorway to register but not pull his attention away from the task at hand. At the back of his mind, his pari whispered the same instructions he had since Garrus was a boy—the voice as comforting as it had once been annoying.

Footsteps. Uneven. A shuffle, thump, step. Shepard had been right about whatever it was being wounded. How did her role as spotter work if she was a hallucination? If he ever got out of there, he really needed to allow for the possibility of mental illness. The footsteps slowed. The chittering, clicking sound got louder for a moment, then stopped.

Garrus held his breath. What was it doing? He hadn't heard a body hit the ground, so it hadn't fallen or died.

The floor inside the door darkened almost imperceptibly in the gloom, then a shape limped over the threshold. Even though Garrus could barely make it out, he recognized that it wasn't any species he knew, and it had broken its leg. The limb stuck out at an angle so impossibly acute that the being walked on the side of its foot.

Garrus raised the barrel ever so slightly, then spotted four eyes. Four. Like the flash of light on the shipyard monitors, but no brilliant yellow glow emanated from the large, milky-white orbs. Instead, they looked blind—the eyes of a creature used to living in the dark. It looked up, spotted him, and raised its arm, a strange, chitinous looking weapon clutched close to its side. He let out his breath and squeezed the trigger, beating the alien to the punch.

He stood and started down the stairs, but Shepard appeared in front of him, a hand slammed up like a wall.

"No," she whispered, eyes flashing with both challenge and command. "Even that one shot could bring more. We've got to keep moving forward. Come on. Once you're secure and have a team at your back, you can return to investigate until your heart's content." When he didn't immediately turn and do as she'd said, she bristled, her shoulders rising, all angles and points. "Don't test me, C-Sec. You know where that leads."

Browplates lowered over his eyes, mandibles dropped, Garrus scowled at her. Seriously? Being threatened by a figment of his imagination created by concussion and hypothermia had to be a new low. Still, as much as he hated the idea of giving in to his own subconscious, it had a point. Hurt and exhausted, he wouldn't be able to defend himself from even a half dozen. After glaring at Shepard for another moment, he turned and climbed the stairs.

"You've got to do so much better than this, Garrus," Shepard said as she stalked past him to take point again. "You've got to just let me go. Let me be a woman you once cared about." She paused, head cocked as she listened. Seemingly satisfied that the way ahead remained clear, she nodded for him to follow.

"I don't want to let go of you, Shepard. Why is everyone so obsessed with moving on?" He hurried up behind her, suddenly furious. It was bad enough bearing the sympathetic, worried stares of his friends and the constant, gentle advice from his father. To hear it coming from Shepard … . "Haven't you ever been a part of something you didn't want to just walk away from?"

Shepard spun and raced toward him, ephemeral hands grabbing the yolk of his armour. Somehow, that time, she managed to make contact, giving him a hard shake. "Don't you get it, Garrus? You're fucking useless like this. You've got to dig in, get angry, get happy, grab hold of the grace of the Enkindlers … do something … anything … and start fucking living." She shoved him away. "You knew me a few months. Mourning … sure. I can see mourning. You loved me, and I died. But this … ."

Flinging her arms out to the side in a gesture filled with as much helplessness as anger, she turned a circle. "This isn't even about me. You're using me as an excuse, and that just pisses me off. You're scared, and you're using me to hide. Stop it!"

"I don't want to fight this war, Shepard." He stumbled, his talons raking furrows down the wall before he caught himself. "Having your back through the battles, being your right hand … that I could do. But this? It's just too big. I'm not good enough. I'm not the general to lead this fight."

"Well, that's just too fucking bad, C-Sec." She shoved him hard, both hands braced against his chest. "You have no choice. You're the one they're all counting on."

He shoved back, actually staggering her. "Why not, Shepard? You were all too eager to step aside and let someone else lead the fight. Why did you get to give up, and I don't?"

"Because you promised me. And if you don't … ." She spun away, marching down the hall. "It means I failed."

Her words stabbed through his armour, grabbed two handfuls of guts and ripped them out. He chased after her, reaching out to catch hold of her shoulder, but his talons passed straight through. "How do my screw ups mean that you failed?"

"I picked you. I made the misjudgement." A tight, rusted-iron shrug followed the declaration. "Who cares though, right?" She ran up a flight of stairs. "Besides, we've arrived at my exit." Turning, she took a single step toward him, and he saw the tracks down her cheeks, glistening like frost on a window.

"Shepard." He raced up the stairs to meet her. "I'm sorry." Longing to wipe away those horrible tears, each an accusation, taunting him with his cowardice, he reached out, stopping just short of her face.

"I love you, Callor. I really do, but this … this is so beneath you." She stroked a strong, warm palm along his mandible.

How can it be warm?

"You are so much stronger than this." She glanced behind her as if alerting to a sound. "That's my cue. Time for us both to climb back out the rabbit hole."

"Garrus?"

Garrus looked over Shepard's shoulder toward the sound of the call. "Nihlus? Is that you?" Glancing back to where Shepard had stood the moment before, he saw that she'd vanished, not so much as a shimmer to prove she'd been there.

"Kahri," he whispered, unsure about whether he meant to thank or curse her. Then it didn't matter, because the familiar, sweeping lines of his fratrin's familia notas appeared, white against the gloom, moving unevenly back and forth with his gait.

"Nihlus!" He hurried toward the Spectre. "How serious are your injuries? Do you know where we are?" Turning on his talons, he swept an arm around Nihlus's waist, taking some of the Spectre's weight.

Letting out a long, guttural sigh that carried subvocal notes of relief and pain, Nihlus wrapped his arm around Garrus's neck and leaned into him. "Haestrom," he said, the word coming out in two syllables, broken by sharp gasps. "Has to be."

"Have you seen any of the others?" Garrus looked behind them, but nothing moved in the darkness.

Nihlus just shook his head. "Searched. Four levels. Nothing. Then I heard ... gun shot … talking."

"Yeah, talking to myself is getting to be a bad habit." He boosted Nihlus a little higher, then nodded the direction Shepard had been leading him. "Let's go."

Nihlus took a rough step, his left leg collapsing under him a little when he put weight on it. "You know the way out?" The talons on that same foot dragged through the dust when he pulled his leg forward. Garrus cursed under his breath. That meant damage up high.

"No," he replied, "I have no idea where we're going, but I've got a good feeling about this direction."

Nihlus chuckled, the sound exhausted and weak. "Excellent. Broken hip … hypothermia … shock, and rescuer … talks to himself … has a good feeling. Doomed."

Garrus opened his mouth to snap back, but then the absurdity of the entire situation registered, and he let out a weary, bitter laugh. "Things could be worse. You could be hallucinating that Shepard is leading you out of here, so be grateful." He stopped at the next intersection and marked the wall, pausing when he saw another mark. "Yours?" he asked, looking to Nihlus.

"Yes." The Spectre blinked, his eyes staying closed for nearly five seconds before opening again. His weight bore down on Garrus's neck, his bare hand clammy and cold, trembling in Garrus's grip. "As I said … four levels."

Garrus paused at the base of the stairs to look back. If the rest of the squad was there, he'd have to return to get them. Nihlus didn't have time to sit and wait for him to search. They needed to climb, to find the surface and a way to communicate with the Normandy. He'd lost his mate, was losing his mother … no way he'd let Nihlus die on him too.

"You have your jaw set for this?" he asked, resettling his grasp to take more of Nihlus's weight.

"Let's get the hell out of here," the Spectre said, his words barely more than grunts. Leaning on Garrus's cowl, he started up.

They managed two flights before Nihlus needed to stop. Neither one of them carried any medi-gel, nor did they find any dispensers. Still, after catching his breath and letting out a litany of foul curses aimed at his lack of indestructibility, Nihlus nodded for Garrus to continue.

Two more flights and Nihlus just slid down Garrus to slump on the floor. Despite landing on his undamaged hip, a deep, rumbling cry of pain clawed its way out of his chest.

"Just need rest," he said, moaning as his eyes slipping closed.

Garrus shook his head. "No. You've got five minutes before I haul you up and carry you out of here." Garrus didn't know how he'd find the strength, but he could tell by the chill sheen clinging to his fratrin's hide, Nihlus had maybe an hour before hypothermic coma, and two or three after that until death. He crouched by Nihlus's side, the other torin's talons gripped tightly in his—a silent demonstration of support and determination.

As the minutes passed, he listened, sure he could hear some sort of machine noise from above them. Maybe the geth used the compound for something.

The geth. Damn.

The geth being responsible for dragging them off the orbital shipyard and sticking them down there made the worst sort of sense. They could have disabled the organic members of the station's crew, shut down the systems, and waited. But why? Unless it was a trap set for him or Nihlus.

Nihlus moaned softly, drawing Garrus's attention. The Spectre's head had fallen back to rest against the cowl of his armour, his eyes closed, breathing shallow.

"All right," Garrus said, shoving himself up onto his feet, "that's enough of that. Come on, help me get you up. This isn't going to be pretty or comfortable for either of us." Bending, he managed to wrestle the smaller torin into a fairly stable and balanced fireman's carry.

Standing at the bottom of the next flight of stairs, he looked up, his gaze seeming to climb forever.

"You are so much stronger than this. Time for us both to climb back out the rabbit hole."

Garrus nodded. Time to get the hell home. He grasped the railing with one hand and began hauling himself up, one stair at a time. As he climbed, the flights passing in a steady fog of pain and weariness, the light became stronger, until it matched the murk of a cloudy day. The mechanical sound got louder as well, the noise almost like a skipping gear, a metallic click-stutter-click. It settled into his brain and dug in claws all down his spine. Something in that sound set him on edge … something familiar … but he couldn't form coherent enough thoughts to sort it out.

Click-stutter-click. Teeth chattering on the verge of freezing to death. Come to us.

Click-stutter-click. Keep coming, we're waiting for you. We can't wait to meet you. How did you escape the tomb we put you in? Didn't you like it? We made it especially for you.

Click-stutter-click. You know you can't win this fight. Best to just go back down into the dark and rest. It's lovely in the dark. So cool and peaceful. The words followed the rhythm of the noise, taking on a sing-song cadence like some macabre children's verse.

"Light," Nihlus said, his voice snapping the chorus as it repeated for the fiftieth time.

Garrus looked up and stumbled to a halt, his talons catching on the stone. Not only did he see a harsh yellow light streaming into the space from narrow windows along the top of very high walls, but also that he'd followed the sound away from the stairwell. He didn't know how far he'd allowed that siren call to lead him, but far enough that the corridor ended at a massive metal door twenty metres ahead.

Staring at it, he considered his options. First, he'd have to put Nihlus down. He couldn't deal with the unknown with a hundred kilos of turian draped around his neck. Detouring over to the wall where the sun shone in, he let out a sigh of relief as the heat beat against his hide.

"You can cover me from here?" he asked as he lowered Nihlus to the floor, wincing as the Spectre cried out. It impacted Garrus all the harder for having weakened considerably. Despite his brave face, Nihlus's time was running out.

"I can. It's warm." Nihlus turned his face to the light and closed his eyes. "Go ahead." He turned back to look Garrus in the eye and nodded toward the door. Reaching behind him, the movement accompanied by a heavy grunt of pain, he pulled his shotgun from its holster in the small of his back. "Get us the hell out of here."

Garrus straightened and shrugged Ingrid into his hands. He didn't know if he had another fight left in him, but he settled the rifle and limped toward the door. The sing-song cadence of the chattering sound remained constant as he approached. Reaching for the door control—this one powered—he tried to picture the room, how many geth … every moment of it nothing but completely, bloody useless stalling.

Taking a deep breath, he pressed his hand to the control, then took a step back, lifting Ingrid to couch against his shoulder. The door whispered open. He stared, unable to fathom the sight it revealed. Limbs, parts hung up like sides of meat in a refrigerator, but alive. Alive and moving, connected to other parts, other beings. Most of the bodies—the people—strung out like some macabre web were geth, but he recognized human husks as well as what looked like some unknown, biological aliens.

"Dear spirits." The oath drifted softly through the air. As the sound passed over the threshold, the other noise—the click-stutter-click—stopped, every face and flashlight turning to look at him.

"Come in," a sharp, female voice called from somewhere out of sight. "I was just about to add your friend to my creation."

Turian Square: Unlike the Infantry Square, the Turian Square is a naval formation. Two dreadnoughts and a carrier take the center of the formation, cruisers arranged outside them, frigates outside that layer. Fighters circle the outside of the square providing cover, disrupting point defense, and softening targets.

A-N: Okay, so the Thedan madness has backed off a bit and Christmas is over, so my schedule will be getting back to normal, with an accompanying chapter a week. Thanks so much for sticking with me during this rough patch. It is so much appreciated. *hugs*