46 Days ASR

"All right, let's get this done and get the hell out of here. I need to sleep for a week." Shepard waved her team forward, pausing to meet Kaidan's stare before following along. "You got this, Sparky?"

The Marine managed to find a smile hidden somewhere in his exhaustion to accessorize his nod. Still, it couldn't hide the bruised luggage beneath his eyes or shadowed hollows at his temples and beneath his cheekbones. "Yes, ma'am." Glancing back at the thirty-two Blue Suns and three tank-grown krogan, he shrugged. "Our guests look even more beat down and worn out than we do. I don't think they'll give us any trouble."

She gave him a jaunty little salute when he turned back. "Just make sure our exit stays clear." Ready and more than ready to be off Korlus and standing under a hot shower with her fiance, Shepard took off after her team. Only one small room stood in the way of reaching their goal. Well, one small room and a couple hundred Collectors.

Pausing as she passed an open panel, Shepard reached out, running her fingers over an ancient power coupling. Despite their having climbed up through more than twenty decks, the ancient turian dreadnought still loomed over them. The hierarchy certainly hadn't built them small before the council stepped in with their regulations and treaties.

She traced the pocked, time-worn ceramic surface, brow furrowed. Other than the wear, it looked as though she could slip it from its socket and stick it into a modern ship. How? The turians, salarians, and asari had all possessed prothean archives and beacons for a great deal longer than humanity; how could they have allowed their technology to stall for so long? They should be so far ahead of her people that it wasn't funny. Not that being on a near equal footing hadn't saved humanity's butt during the First Contact War.

Still, with their massive headstart, why hadn't the asari discovered ways to integrate biotic weapons into ships? And why did a power coupling from a thousand year old turian warship look almost exactly like the current gen version?

"Shepard." Garrus laid his hand on her shoulder, a slight flutter of amusement betraying his serious, scolding tone. "There will be lots of time to pick your way through the museum of wreckage once the mission is over. We can vacation here if you like." He slid his talons down her arm to removed her hand from the coupling, leaning in as he did so that his breath warmed her neck in a most delicious and definitely not scolding way. "We're almost there. Let's get it done."

She turned into him, pressing a quick kiss on the end of his nose. "Yeah, I know." She followed him across a long, open area to the door on the other side. "Do you ever wonder why your people aren't more advanced than mine?" She pressed her back against the side of the door as he took position opposite her. "You've had access to the prothean archives for a thousand or so years longer than we have."

Although the glare of his visor obscured his eyes from that distance, Shepard felt certain that Garrus rolled them at her. "No, I haven't. Now open the damned door, I want a shower and to sleep on a real bed."

Shepard stuck her tongue out at him, then motioned for Wrex and Jack to take positions a little further back and to the outside of she and Garrus. She might need their biotics to shoehorn their way into the room. Once they took their positions, Shepard counted down on her fingers. Three … two … one.

She hit the door, the stench of a hundred horrific, tormented deaths slapping her in the face so hard that she almost fell back. A meteor straight to the gut, the reek of vomit, shit, piss, bile, and decay sent a tsunami of sick scorching up the back of her throat. In her peripherals, she saw Garrus stagger back a little before pushing in on the threshold. Holding her breath, she swung into the opening, rifle leading the way.

"Clear," Garrus called, his voice choked, digging its way out of his chest. Lithe movements belying any discomfort, he swept the left hand side of the room before standing guard at the inner door.

"Clear," Shepard echoed, her gag reflex sucker punching her every three seconds as she swept right. Blinking in the gloomy light, she squinted at the ragged lumps strewn around the room, uncertain of what any of it was. Uncertainty lasted two heartbeats before morphing into horror and then rage. "What the hell is this?" she said. Three tables lined the right hand wall, all of them hosting a krogan corpse in some stage of autopsy. Behind them, corpses had been dumped into a pile, moldering. On the left side of the room a desk and another body-laden table stood side by side.

"We're clear," she managed to call back to the rest of the squad, remembering what she was doing. Gliding on a thin sheet of icy disgust, her feet barely lifted from the deck plating as she crossed the threshold into what felt more like an abattoir or the mass grave in an internment camp than a lab or a surgery. She turned to tell Wrex to stay back, knowing that the clan chief's barely controlled temper would boil over as soon as he caught sight of the bodies. She stopped halfway through the first step, her toe catching as she realized, she might as well try to halt the seasons.

After a moment of debate, she opted for the route of fewest friendly casualties and spun, hurrying through the room to the inner door. Trusting her instincts, she waved Garrus into position on the other side. She just needed to get the door open and get everyone out of Wrex's way. When Garrus nodded, she palmed the control.

What awaited her on the other side of the door raked sharp nails of surprise down her spine. Gun leading, she swung into the threshold, sweeping for unfriendlies. Nothing. Other than a krogan in a maturation tank, the room's only occupant was an elderly krogan who paced back and forth in front of a large bank of windows, mumbling to himself and waving his arms.

Shepard opened her mouth to ask if the krogan was Okeer, but she didn't get a chance to speak before a cyclone of bellowing rage threw her aside. Murder entered that room, a specter clinging to Wrex's back, whispering promises of spilled blood and crushed bone into the clan lord's aural canals. Ignoring the protests launched by her healthy sense of self-preservation, Shepard leaped after Wrex, grabbing hold of one massive elbow.

"Okeer!" the clan chief roared. His charge didn't slow, he simply dragged Shepard across the floor, paying her no more notice than he would a fly landing on his armour.

"Little help here," she called. Using the behemoth's arm like a slingshot, Shepard threw herself in front of him. She braced a hand against his chest and leaned into him—she might as well have been fighting a train. "Sweet baby Jesus, Wrex! Stop! You can't just rip Okeer to pieces."

He stopped, glaring at her with enough rage to burn two massive holes straight through her. "You saw those bodies, Shepard!"

Instead of backing down, she gave him a substantial shove, barely rocking him. "I did, but we need to find out what's going on here first, and if he has a genophage cure, we can't kill him. You can't sacrifice all your people just to have the pleasure of killing him."

"Cure? Surviving the genophage doesn't make a krogan special or worthy," a deep, throaty voice said from behind her. Madness curled through the words, grabbing hold and spinning Shepard around to face it.

Tar-slick spiders scrambled out of the folds and crannies of her brain, swarming out to embrace their brethren, the call of the krogan's indoctrination sweet, so very sweet, to them. Feeling the clan leader pushing on her from behind, Shepard reached back, her hands fastening around Wrex's wrists like shackles. Okeer's bronze-gold eyes latched onto her, forming shackles of another kind when she saw the old soul—over a millennia of wisdom and experience and regret—floundering beneath the white water currents of the indoctrination.

"Where is it?" she called, keeping her voice low and focused, a stiletto blade trying to pierce the madness. Whatever indoctrinated him had struck like a wrecking ball, smashing everything around it into pieces. Brute force had been deployed to destroy Okeer, to render him useless to the Collectors. "Where is the orb, Okeer?"

"Let a thousand die in a clutch," the warlord said, an almost frantic, greasy chuckle sliding beneath his words. "Don't lament the dead or coddle the ones that live. Pathetic. They are the last mewling cries of a people who died over fourteen hundred cycles ago." Okeer tore free of their stare and spun toward the massive growth tank and its unconscious occupant. Shepard winced, a sharp, ripping-band-aid pain accompanying the break.

"Only perfection will save us." Okeer pressed both hands to the tank's glass. "Perfection that spits on the genophage, a lance to pierce the galaxy's heart and tear it out."

Snapping the spider-silk tendrils weaving between she and the warlord, Shepard spun away. "He's indoctrinated," she said to Garrus and the others. "See if you can find one of the orbs here, and search the computers for any information. Okeer's useless."

Noting that Wrex had stopped trying to bulldoze over her, Shepard glanced over her shoulder at him. "You okay?" The set to his jaw and the fury that flickered beneath his carmine stare tightened her grip on his wrists, he still burned low but hot, ready to set fire to the planet.

"He's mad." Wrex stepped back and shook his head. "We won't get anything from him, Shepard. We should just put him down."

Releasing him, Shepard nodded, knowing the truth when it growled at her. "Maybe, but let's give it a shot, Brother Wrex." Her shoulders crept toward her ears then dropped. "Can't hurt to try to figure out what's going on here." Spinning toward the door, Shepard searched the stunned and disgusted faces for the oasis of sanity at the heart of the madness. When her eyes found the shaman, she beckoned the female krogan forward. The shaman had been able to reach the tank-grown, her natural empathic abilities slipping along the ley lines of their particular madness.

"No one else has a chance," Shepard said, simply. A pair of large, scalding hot hands slid up the skin of her back, their touch sticky with dripping tar. She spun to face Okeer, drawing herself up as she reached into her belt pouch for the dose of serum she'd prayed she wouldn't need. Still, as the krogan loomed over her, the toxic black stink of desert pavement stabbed the inside of her nose. She stuck the syringe in her medigel port. Better safe than mindless.

"Shepard," Okeer whispered, deep and guttural, her name coming out as if he just registered her presence. "They want to take you apart, to pull you into pieces and dissect you in paper-thin slices." Leaning down to stare into her eyes, the krogan sniffed at her, then chuffed out a sharp, coughing laugh. "You reek of defiance." He grunted, his face scrunching into a frown. "And cybernetics, like burning batteries."

"They can be fought, Okeer," Shepard said, punching the point home despite her belief that whatever had taken crowbars and jackhammers to his brain had smashed it beyond hope. "I've been fighting for years, and my mind is still mostly my own." Her gut twisted with a sick, bile-sour wrench as the spiders rubbed against her grey matter like possessive cats.

The warlord leaned closer, his breath hot and fetid on her face. "They've waited. They're patient, because they know that no one can challenge them. They want you, and they want my prototype. They want Wrex and the general, and so I called." His laugh dripped a sort of relieved madness. "They're coming. Soon they'll let me die."

A muted explosion echoed through the chamber, slapping Shepard's taut nerves hard enough that she jumped despite staying focused on Okeer. As the orb exploded into slag, a blank expression wiped the warlord's face clean, his eyes and mouth drooping. When he dropped to one knee, Shepard took a deep breath and muttered a prayer. "Blessed Enkindlers, clench your giant backsides and cross all four eyes that this doesn't kill him outright." Grabbing two of her two serum injections, she stabbed them into the sides of his throat. Guilt's sly fingers twisted around her spine, but she shrugged them off. The worst the injections would do is give him a merciful death; at best, maybe they'd give her and the krogan a shot at getting something coherent out of him.

"Orb is down, Shepard," Garrus called. His footsteps thumped against the metal floor, solid and reassuring as he approached. "Do you and Wrex have this in hand?" Her nerves all let out a faint, electric jolt as his hand gripped her shoulder. "If so, I'll set the others to work securing the lab and downloading the computers. We should be headed for our extraction in under thirty"

"Take Wrex," she said, inspiration or desperation whispering that she'd get more out of Okeer with the shaman's help and Wrex's absence. "He can help get any unbirthed tank-grown organized and ready to move out. If Okeer is right, we're going to have visitors moving in on us soon, if they aren't already."

Inspiration or its bastard brother jabbed Shepard again, turning her toward Jack. "Set up a comm channel with EDI and Sparky. Have EDI keep you up to date with the Collector's movements while you and Sparky find us another route out of here if the Collectors wall us in." Half-expecting an argument or bad attitude, Shepard found herself pleasantly surprised as Jack nodded and started to work.

Two crooked fingers beckoned the shaman closer, then Shepard bent down, hooking an arm under Okeer's armpit. "Come on, big fella. Up you get." A marching band of grunts and groans welcoming her new hernia, Shepard managed to wrestle Okeer back onto his feet. "Good lord," she said between gasps. Slapping the side of the warlord's face none too gently, she managed to get him aware enough to meet her eyes.

"What were you working on here?" Shepard asked, commanding an answer. Frustration met his continued blank silence, and she cracked her hand across his cheek so hard her fingers felt broken. "Come back to us. Was it a cure for the genophage? What?"

"Perfection," Okeer replied at last. "The krogan are dying. Merely hatching more mewling weaklings won't change that tide." He leaned heavily on her, mouth low to her ear as if confiding some great confidence. "And you should let them die. They're a pale shadow of the ancients. No pride. No real strength."

A massive, armoured elbow hooked around Shepard's neck, dragging her toward the tank and the unborn, but massive krogan inside. The warlord's madness choked her more surely than his muscle and bone. Survival demanded that she fight free, that she speak, and yet it slapped irons on her fight/flight response and stole the words from her mind.

"Okeer!" The deep, commanding yet feminine voice of the shaman broke through the warlord's madness. Holding his attention, the female stepped up to remove his arm. "Tell us what you've done. Why are the Collectors here?"

Abandoning Shepard to clutch at her throat and gasp, Okeer pressed both hands against the tank's glass, vibrating with an uninhibited excitement that assured Shepard how far gone he was: a child pressed against the toy store window. "I needed to find the spark. The rest … no spark."

"We met some of your rejected creations along the way," the shaman replied. "Their spark was intact."

He shook his head, a violent movement that rocked him to his toes. "Not perfect, not the spark of the ancient krogan … the strong, true krogan. Not even the strength of my brothers and sisters as we stomped rachni into puddles of blood and shell," he said, his voice curling back toward crazy, sliding over pebbled ice.

The low, guttural roar that came from the shaman consisted of a fury so palpable that it raised the hair on Shepard's arms and neck. "The ancient krogan destroyed Tuchanka, and those krogan of your days of glory are the reason the genophage exists." Before Shepard's eyes, the embodiment of rage—beautiful and terrible—manifested, provoking both fear and awe. "We want nothing to do with your version of perfection." Then as quickly as it appeared, the spirit of krogan violence disappeared back into the ether, and the shaman stepped away.

"No! This is the only way!" Grasping hands reached out, finding only handfuls of Shepard's armour as she stepped into the path of Okeer's lunge. "Don't you see? The Collectors understand that distilling perfection is all that matters." Either not realizing who he'd grabbed or not caring, he leaned back into Shepard's face, his breath hot and fetid, spittle splashing against her skin. "They're searching for the same thing."

Images of the husk asari on Thessia rolled through Shepard's mind.

Oh definitely … perfection.

His eyes latched onto Shepard, focusing in a way that sent a buzzing thrill of terror sizzling down her spine into her limbs. Rancid madness—a mind already rotting inside its skull—stared back at her as he whispered, deep and guttural, "That's why they want you, Shepard. To add your spark to theirs." He sneered, the curled lip and narrowed eyes broadcasting how imperfect he found her. Still, he nodded. "They're going to slice you into pieces to see what makes you special and then consume it as they've consumed trillions … lives beyond counting."

Shepard clenched her hands and her teeth, forcing herself to meet the stare, trading crazy for crazy.

I see your instant, brain-gooifying indoctrination and raise you three years worth of the slow path.

Shepard slammed both palms into his chest, shoving him backwards. His easy collapse threw her off balance and she stumbled, scrambling for a second before catching herself. "Keep your distance. And keep your—"

"Shepard." Garrus's voice came through the comms so tight and wrong that the single word grabbed her stomach and heaved, filling the back of her mouth with the sour, gritty remains of her earlier ration bar. "Come to the windows," he continued without giving her time to reply, hammering his urgency home.

"Keep him here," she said, tossing a glance over her shoulder at the shaman. Impatience grabbed her by the collar, dragging her around the warlord, while two days worth of dread shoved her face into the window. Something in the air had changed; it ticked away at the base of her skull, insects skittering through the grass, cold and hard against the hot earth.

The Collectors were making their move. She knew that with a painful certainty, but what the hell was it?

Her gaze slipped past Garrus to the spikes just beyond, slick metal gleaming so darkly that her eyes tried to slide right over it. The ticking in her head spelled out a picture of Eden Prime and a dozen small colonies and research bases. Husks. Either Okeer had been turning Blue Suns into husks, or he'd allowed the Collectors use his lab to do so. Either way, it spelled trap, not rescue mission.

Lungs threatening to blow straight out through her ribs, she spun to face the krogan. "What the hell?" she demanded, the words rushing out on a torrent of air. Collectors with dragon's teeth? Fuck, well, of course, they were as much Reaper lackies as Sovereign had been. She grabbed the collar of Okeer's armour, shoving her face into his. "What are the damned spikes for, Okeer?"

Turning her back to the Reapers' bared, bone-chilling teeth, she slammed herself into Okeer again. "How many mercs have you stuck on those spikes, Okeer? What the hell price did you pay for this perfect krogan?" Clenching her fists tight enough that the bones ached, she stomped on the urge to turn him over to Wrex for disposal in some brutal way.

Instead, she lifted her hand to her ear. "Sparky, get your asses in here. We're about to get hit from everywhere." She let him get out a 'yes, ma'am' before closing that channel and opening one to the Ypres. "EDI, we need a back way out of here as close to this room as possible."

"Captain," Steve broke through before she could hang up, the combination of perplexed and afraid in the pilot's tone sucking the air out of Shepard's lungs, "the Collectors have just disappeared off our scanners."

"What do you mean disappeared?" she asked, speaking slowly, over-enunciating every word. Husks in numbers and locations unknown, now the Collectors?

"Transmitting a false signal?" he offered. "All we know is that one second, they hadn't moved, and the next they aren't there. They aren't reading as being anywhere on Korlus's surface."

"Shepard," EDI interrupted, "the relay is active. Incoming vessels."

The vacuum inside Shepard's lungs dropped to absolute zero for three heartbeats, then the lab's door opened. She spun toward it, Mattock up, finger ready on the trigger, that movement shattering the ice encasing her heart and brain, allowing the wheels to start turning. When she saw Kaidan's team, she let the gun sag and pointed to Miranda. "Get that krogan out of his tank, now!" When her XO opened her mouth, Shepard raised the gun again. "That was an order, Operative Lawson."

As soon as Miranda moved to comply, Shepard spun to face Barl. "Get the prisoners armed and down into the lower lab. We're going to need the guns."

The krogan grunted his acknowledgement and started barking orders. His competence and command helped ease the cruel fist buried in Shepard's chest, allowing air to flow. Until—

"Captain! Two Collector cruisers incoming." A curse from Steve backed up EDI's report.

Damn, the Normandy didn't have a chance against them, and she doubted that either of the other two frigates did either. "Did Cerberus steal the plans for the Ypres's IES system from Archangel?" Shepard demanded of no one in particular. Maybe the geth designed shields on the Passch would hold up to a hit or two. She raised her eyebrows when Miranda glanced in her direction. "Well?" Her voice rose to a shout. Time pressed in on her, its breath heavy on the back of her neck; she didn't have any to waste dancing.

The operative waggled her head as she activated her omnitool. "We did get a look at the plans for Archangel's ships, but we improved upon the designs. I—"

Like a well-oiled machine, Janey. You've still got it.

"That's fine," Shepard said, cutting the operative off before she could extol the virtues of Cerberus engineering. "That's all I needed to know." She turned her attention back to her comms. "EDI, you and Steve get the Ypres down here, stealth systems active. Try to be covert, they'll know where you're going to be, but get down here now and get us off this rock. EDI, find us a backdoor and now!"

When both answered to the affirmative, she opened a channel to Anderson, cutting him off when he tried to preface with info on the enemy cruisers. "Get the Normandy out of here, sir. She can't stand up to those things. The Ypres will extract us. We'll meet up with you on Omega."

"Are you in deep?" the captain asked, the wary edge to his voice saying he already knew they were.

"Don't worry, we'll get out—"

"No! You can't have him!"

The roar of fury followed by a sharp cry of pain spun Shepard away from her call. The image of Okeer holding Miranda by the neck registered for a half second before the shaman shoved the muzzle of her shotgun against the warlord's temple and washed the wall with his blood and brains. Shepard shuddered, a traitorous draft curling around her ear to taunt her with the fact that her brains had slid down a wall just like that two years earlier.

A hand, not as calm or wry as she made it look, wiped the spattered viscera from her face. "You okay, Lawson?" An unflappable nod answered her, the operative returning to her work as if she didn't have an angry purple bruise blooming on the pale skin of her neck or bits of brain and skull in her hair.

"Shepard?" Anderson called. "You there?"

"Yes, sir. Just get the Normandy out of here, and we'll see you in a couple of days." Her hand lifted to her ear to open a private channel to Garrus.

"Roger that, Shepard. Normandy, out."

Agreement to send the Passch to the relay to await flight or fight orders had just wrestled its way between Garrus's clenched teeth when the first unearthly howls shuddered through the air.

"Miranda, is the tank open?" Shepard hollered, the effort to keep her voice level costing her a premium as the deck plating vibrated under the onslaught of the desiccated remains of dozens of mercs. Sweet baby Jesus, that sounded like a hell of a lot of husks.

"Done with the computers, Shepard," Jack announced, glancing toward the door and the uneven, staggering thunder of running feet. "EDI says we have Collectors and husks closing on us from every direction. She sent you a new extraction point it's at the end of the lower lab and up three levels. ETA fifteen minutes." The biotic settled her shotgun in her hands and ran for the door to the lower lab. "Unless we want to get cut off, we need to get down to the lower lab, now. They're swarming up between levels."

"Sparky," Shepard called, turning to the Marine who'd been standing guard at the door. "Scramble the lock on that door, then get down to the lower lab."

"Aye, ma'am," he replied, working on it even as the words left his mouth.

Shepard waved to her team. "Go!" Grabbing Miranda, she shoved the operative after Jack. "You too. I'll be right there." She bent over the tank controls. Blessed ass-cream of the Enkindlers, no wonder the krogan wasn't free. Miranda had been trying to preload orders into the tank-grown's head. Clearing that crap with a single command, she hit the override control. The doors opened, water flooding out to wash over the toes of her boots.

The krogan collapsed at her feet, choking the fluid from his lungs. As he took his first breath of real air, the deep cough of shotguns and bright, metallic chatter of submachine guns marked his birth. She couldn't think of a more appropriate welcome for a newborn krogan.

"Birthed in battle, his first actions and thoughts steeped in blood and death," the shaman said, her voice coloured with awe, "this one is meant for great things. Whether they save us or destroy us … ."

"Come on, big fella," Shepard coaxed, reaching down a hand. "Up and at 'em."

Roaring so loud that Shepard's ears begged for mercy, the krogan surged up from the floor, setting straight into a charge that hit Shepard like a skycar, carrying her straight into a bank of lab equipment. She reached up, both hands gripping the massive forearm that threatened to crush her throat.

"Before I kill you, I need a name," he said, his mouth curling into a snarl that bared his remarkably white teeth. Teeth that white belonged in the mouths of movie stars, not krogan.

Shepard dragged her brain back to something slightly more important and relevant. "The name is Shepard," she said, gasping between each breath. "And we've got an actual battle to fight, so set me down and back off."

The sharp shake of his head ground his armour into her throat, cutting enough of her air and blood flow that a swirling vortex of vertigo began to suck all the light out of the room. "Not your name, mine."

"Whelp!" the shaman shouted, her voice demanding obedience. "Captain Shepard is your commanding officer. Set her down, and prepare for battle, grunt. Now! Do you not hear the gunfire?"

The tankborn turned to look at the shaman, the pressure on Shepard's neck reaching crush level rather than easing as his blue eyes narrowed. "Grunt?" He let out a rumbling sort of chuckle. "I like it. My name … Grunt."

Shepard managed to hold onto enough consciousness and brain power to pull her pistol, and when he turned back, she pressed the muzzle just behind his eye. "Let me go, or I'll drop you," she said, feeling good about the amount of menace she managed to squeeze into the raspy whisper.

The tank-grown, Grunt, laughed and backed up. Shepard's feet hit the floor, but she just kept on going, saved only by the shaman's arm catching her around the waist. It took a minute for the room to stop spinning around her, but even when it did, her every breath remained lined with razors.

"Shepard!" Garrus called in her ear, his subvocals strained. "There are hundreds of them. They've got you cut off from the rest of us, coming up through the stairwell."

"One of these fucking days, we're going to stop walking into traps, Vakarian!" Shepard let out a hissing sigh, steam released from a pressure valve. "We're on our way, just hold tight there and keep the team's retreat open. We'll fight our way through to you." She grabbed her sidearm off her hip and passed it to the shaman as she asked, "How are the prisoners doing?"

"They're solid." Garrus's subvocals thrummed as if he were on the verge of charging the line to come after her. "Just get here."

"Yes, sir, General Vakarian, sir." She closed the channel on his protest and turned to Grunt. "You and your shotgun are going to be the sharp end of the wedge to get us down the stairs. The shaman and I will stick right to your flanks, and hopefully we'll just bulldoze our way through." God, she wished they all had shotguns.

Glancing over at the shaman, Shepard posed a silent query: was she ready for a hell of a fight? The female krogan's eyes narrowed as she nodded, her determination and the excitement radiating off the youngster bolstering Shepard's resolve. The captain closed her eyes, taking deep breaths until her blood roared, her mind settled, her muscles keen to start the dance.

"Open the door, Grunt. Let's go." She took a deep breath, couched her Mattock in her shoulder, and pressed into the tank-grown's left flank. The door hissed open and for one, breathless second the enemy clogging the stairs hesitated, surprised. One second, and then chaos.

Grunt barrelled straight into the fray, his deep slow laugh punctuated by the roar of his shotgun. Shepard moved from target to target, doing her best to get them in the head and conserve her shots. Damn the heat sink "upgrade". Using the advantage of their surprise, they pushed through to the landing between the two staircases before the Collectors realized they had enemy shooting their backs full of bullets and turned to press the attack.

Shepard crushed a husk's skull with the butt of her rifle, before swinging the gun like a bat, stoving in another's face as she fought to get enough room to switch out her heat sink.

"What the fuck are those?" Jack yelled through the radio.

"Seeker swarms," Miranda answered. "Jack, Lt. Alenko, we need to hold a biotic barrier around the group. Everyone close up! Close up, quickly or we're all dead."

Seeker swarms? Shepard looked down through the open stairs even as she slapped a new heat sink into her gun. One of the Collector commanders appeared, his horned head and lighter colour standing out in the mass of writhing husks and Collector drones. "Take out the ones with the horns first," she said, her orders punching through the noise.

Desperate, she opened fire through the gap in the stairs, but not soon enough as a swarm massed around it. The low threat of their buzzing carried over the gunfire, settling into Shepard's gut like a promise.

You escaped us before, but not this time. This time you're going to end up frozen and helpless, screaming as we tear you apart.

(A-N: At last. All the love. Thank you for reading and your generous support. *hugs*)