MASS EFFECT: WINTER EYES
CHAPTER 3: PHAROS
Moon of Pharos, Athens System:
The long strawberry blonde woman paused her wine glass just at the base of her lips, allowing the rim to gently touch her flesh. She could smell the Thessia Red's sweet scent, alluring her senses. Her fingers gently holding the glass as her jade green eyes glanced at the monitor screen in front of her. The information displayed was satisfying enough to her delight to prevent her evening's routine glass of wine. Any non-self-restraining human would take the victorious moment to celebrate. Not her. Not Erinyes. Of course, not her real name, but the alias that she picked up herself following the Reaper War. This was following the death of the Illusive Man. Before that time, she was simply known as Code Omega Alpha. Symbolism at its best. Omega for the last and Alpha for the beginning. She was the renovatio. The rebirth of Cerberus. Special instructions were given to her before and after the Illusive Man's death. He always had a contingency. Their new location was given to her right before he went to the Citadel. Before then, her residence was always some outpost in the outreach of the Alliance. She never stayed in one spot for more than a month. The Illusive Man specifically picked the officers closest to her. He never trusted anyone. Most of her life, she was hidden away, and she never saw the Illusive Man unless it was a holo vid on a secure channel. She missed him dearly. She had to remain strong. Not just for her sake, but the for the sake of Charon, for the sake of humanity. That is what his purpose was for Cerberus. That was his purpose for how he kept her guarded. The Illusive Man knew that the organization known as Cerberus would be targeted if he should fail over his dominance of the Reapers. He planned on it, but he would keep the ideology in the secrete group known as Charon. He would keep the ideology going in his daughter, Sarah Harper. Any normal twenty-nine-year-old would be lost if their only parent was whisked away at such an early age for her. This was drilled into her since her late teenage years. The xenophobe manifest was the only thing she knew. She never had direct contact with aliens. Jack Harper's beliefs were all that she knew. Her isolation is what kept her focus. The only contact she had was with instructors like Kai Leng who trained her in military and combat dominance. Her father taught all that he knew about being a merc and an operative for the Alliance when he was in a special group during the First Contact War. Now was the time that he planned for. She couldn't fail him now. Hence her code name, Erinyes. In Greek mythology, Erinyes was one of the goddesses of vengeance. She would be her father's vengeance against all those that betrayed and led him to his doom.
Ironically, their current location was at an abandoned base on the moon of Pharos. It belonged to the Turians during the First Contact War despite the system now having a human label. A firm reminder of what the humans fought far: Galactic expansion. The First Contact War was the prelude to the birth of the Illusive Man. Jack Harper along with his comrades, Ben and Eva, had interactions with many turians and the conspiracy behind an artifact. The artifact that turned out to be Reaper tech and probably led to the indoctrination of Saren Arterius. The artifact turned Jack's old friend Ben into a new entity and the fight for control of the relic caused the death of his friend, Eva. Jack was blasted with the artifact and gained new insight on the dark times that would befall humanity years later. He vigilantly fought to control human dominance and make them strong. He invested endless amounts of credits to resurrect Macha Shepard following the attack on the Normandy by the Collectors. The Illusive Man knew that Macha was a crucial piece in the fight for survival against the Reapers. Sarah knew that without her father's backing, humanity would have fallen quickly. Macha's betrayal infuriated her. With her constant interference, not only did Cerberus have to fight against the Reaper forces, but they also had to entangle with Shepard and her squad along with the Alliance. The strains depleted a lot of their resources and many were defecting to get away. This made her father become desperate. So desperate that she believed that he had no choice, but to install the Reaper technology to move forward with his theory without fully testing everything out. He was not ready to control the power that the Reapers had. Sarah fully did not grasp what transpired on the Citadel after he went forward with his mission. All she knew was that the catalyst at some point was activated, destroying the Reapers that they knew of and her father was among one of the casualties.
His movement already caused her group to activate. A team was deployed in secret to Earth. They donned their appearance to be Alliance soldiers. They would be Erinyes' eyes and ears on Earth during the final battle once Team Hammer landed. Many of her good agents were killed by Reaper forces, however, her gamble paid off. Shepard's unconscious body was uncovered by her team and they quickly took her off world before the Alliance was able to start using search parties. Macha's viability was concerning to Erinyes. Somehow, she was found in rubble after going up against Harbinger and the Reapers. How could a mortal human stand so much? Is this what her father was after? He saw what potential Macha had. Shepard was taken back to Pharos and kept highly sedated to keep her completely unaware. There, she remained until her medical and research team secured all the data that they could. They hacked into Alliance and Citadel archives, retrieving documents on Shepard's application for the N7 program, her reports on the Normandy and any other documents submitted over to Alliance command for review. Charon even acquired Council transcripts of meetings with the former human Spectre along with video footage from cameras. Even with the loss of the Citadel, the data in the archives were constantly backed up to various points throughout the galaxy. Elkoss was one manufacturer that provided Shepard with most of her weapons and armor.
It took years to get Macha to the state she was currently in now, but it was worth the wait. Charon was never detected by the Alliance and was never linked directly to Cerberus. That kept them safe during the witch hunts. The project continued. Erinyes knew her father was weak in not proceeding with the control chip that their ex-operative Miranda Lawson requested during Project Lazarus. The Illusive Man believed that this may taint the Commander's personality or trust. However, this unshackled the Commander's control. Erinyes would not make the same mistake. The control chip design would be unique, and she had their best developers on the task. Macha's memories following her N7 induction would be swept away. There was always a risk of some residual feedback, but the neuro staff concluded that this would be mostly during REM sleep and perceptive to Macha like dreams. Partial and unexplainable. Macha Shepard's identity would be scrubbed and she would go by the name of Raven. Her hair was dyed to be a midnight black and styled to where it would be cut at the base of her neck with a bang barely drooping over her right eye. Lavender color contacts were placed for her iris color. Unlike the older contacts in the twentieth century, these would not simply fall out and could remain in without irritation. It would appear to be normal eye color and not even she would know unless a medical staff attempted to remove the contact. Information was fed to Raven slowly to help with comprehension. Upon her awakened state, she was advised that the Alliance discharged her after the Reaper War when she got into a battle with some aliens. The story was that a fellow comrade of hers was being bullied by two turians. Raven stood up for her friend and was attacked. She killed both the Turians and the race demanded blood and retribution. With a terrible war just ending, the Alliance didn't want another race coming at them like the batarians. They gave Shepard a dishonorable discharge and swept the matter underneath a rug. She was advised by Erinyes that Raven joined Charon a few months later and the group sympathized with her cause of action. They informed her that she suffered a concussion with slight amnesia after the attack so her short term memory left her. They filled in the missing pieces. Captain David Anderson was killed by the Alliance as a betrayal when he spoke up against Shepard's case. With just coming onto the N7 program, Raven recalled only serving three missions on the SR-1 Normandy with her former Captain. She struggled to know of anything else.
Erinyes stated there was too much corruption in the Alliance and they had to take out key targets that were in on Anderson's death and her setup. Actuality, Erinyes was targeting aliens connected to Commander Shepard. She obtained names from various reports. She already knew the complete crew that accompanied her on missions, but she wanted to savor their deaths till the end. She wanted to use Macha in her own killings as much as possible. She wanted their blood to be on her hands before she slipped her control off. She wanted Macha to suffer horribly mentally when everything was unveiled before Erinyes took her time in killing her. That would be the only way closest to the sorrow that Sarah endured when her father was slain. Raven was not part of any of the assassinations yet. Erinyes was working her way up. However, Shepard was part of the briefs. Major Kirrahe was a high-ranking STG official: Responsible in several human cities following to the Reapers when he pulled his troops back to save his men. Hundreds of children were killed. Rana, was a scientist; responsible for the crude and savage experiments on humans to test indoctrination. Their latest target, Aria T' Loak, was a pirate scumbag of Omega and enslaved thousands of humans for her eezo mines to keep production going while their families died in other colonies. Their reports of what the aliens were doing to her kind, outraged Raven. Charon really opened her eyes to the world. She regretted not being able to recall everything on her own, but the reports were clear to her. How could the Alliance just sit there and let all of this happen? Raven had the support of many on the Citadel and on Earth. She had good relations with the aliens whenever she had some interactions with them. She was a bit leery of them though. To her, they were the type of person that would smile to you to your face while trying to stab you in the back. Was the Alliance in some crooked backroom politics? Were they that afraid of Macha exposing them? She couldn't believe their betrayal despite her years of servitude and sacrifice.
Thomas Wade's report was late. It was due twenty minutes ago and there was no contact yet from him. He was one of her top operatives that was tasked to take out Aria on Omega. Raven caught onto Erinyes' look of displeasure as she entered the briefing room that afternoon. "Anything?" She was donned in her usual non-uniform attire, which consisted of black pants, black tank and black combat boots. The Hades insignia tattooed on her right arm unlike many of the others who chose to wear their allegiance on their neck.
Erinyes eyed the other woman in the room carefully. "He must have had trouble." She swore underneath her breath. She should had been more careful. She figured Surkesh would have been the hardest target.
"I'll go there." Raven looked across the holo map over to her. "You know what kind of rank I had with the Alliance. I'm a soldier. I can handle myself on Omega."
Erinyes bit back her first response to quickly say no. She had to play this safe. "I'll get surveillance first. If Thomas failed, then Aria will be on high alert. Sending another operative would not be wise." She glanced over at another woman sitting behind a desk manning a terminal. "Hack Aria's systems again. Different location this time."
"Understood." The woman already knew what her employer was referring to. Aria was not stupid and constantly had surveillance on her systems. If there was a breach in the security, it would be quickly traced to a source. A false location would be given; much further out than their current location. They already used this trick once, so the same name would cause some concern. It would be a quick scan in the system without download and out. Charon had some of the best hackers that humanity had to offer. Many could outdo salarians who were always prized at being top. Erinyes had to be sure it would be safe to send Raven in. She had to make sure there would be no communication between Omega's leader and the former Commander. The two crossed paths many times. Despite her altered appearance and identification scans, Aria would have no problem seeing her resembling Spectre. Raven's mission had to be clear so there could be no hesitation on her part.
Despite Erinyes holding Raven back like a mother with a young child, her craving to take out a person who harmed her father could not go unquenched any further. It was time to see what Raven could do. Another operative would accompany her of course. She had to choose wisely…Erinyes switched the screen over to a picture of a dark-haired woman with bright blue eyes. "This is former Cerberus operative, Miranda Lawson."
"Cerberus? You mean she was working closely with Charon?" Raven asked as she studied the picture. The woman's image was foreign to her.
"We all know the front that Alliance put on Cerberus. Miranda betrayed humanity and sided with the aliens as well. We think she had some influence by many sympathizers. She…spoke out against you a lot during your hearing on the charges."
"That's…enlightening," Raven sighed as she pulled away from the screen. "I can't believe the motive there."
"Reports advised that she was thinking of hiring assassins to finish you off. Said you were a bad image for humanity. She was fired shortly after her argument."
"Her location?"
"Everything will be transmitted to your ship and omni tool when you depart here."
Erinyes finally allowed herself to breathe. So far, the ruse was working.
"When am I leaving?"
"Now."