Chapter 52: Treatment Day

Jack always had respect for Tali, Kal, and by extension the Quarian people as a whole; unfortunately, their shuttles weren't well designed. They shook like they were entering a particularly windy atmosphere even though they were only traveling across deep space to the Alarei. At any point, Jack was concerned that the shuttle could break apart and send them violently into space. It wasn't the Quarians fault really, this shuttle was probably three hundred years old judging the turbulence. Humanity had barely mastered flight three hundred years ago so, it was a miracle it was flying at all. His take away though was to just use the Normandy's Kodiak shuttle in the future if he ever got to visit again.

He felt his fear of what he would find on the Alarei growing all the way up to the point that they docked with the ship. How many Geth had Tali recovered on her salvage missions? Were any of them damaged beyond repair to the point that they would be useless in a fight? Despite the Admirals belief that the entire crew had been murdered, was there any possibility they could find survivors? Jack dared to be optimistic on the topic until Tali activated the shuttles lights as they entered the hangar. The spotlights revealed many dead Quarian bodies laying on the deck. The way they were positioned suggested they had been trying to run for an escape craft, only for the Geth to kill them.

Tali landed the ship with her hands shaking, "K...Keelah. What happened here..?"

Saren's tone was professional and to the point, "A calculated slaughter. The Geth consensus most likely wanted to insure no Quarian could escape and warn the fleet at large what was happening. We should move quickly to eliminate them, I have no doubt they'll try to forward their location to the remainder of the Geth fleet."

Jack frowned and shook his head, "They would've done that already if they could have. We need to focus on finding survivors, they could tell us exactly what happened."

Tali grabbed her shotgun and opened the shuttle door, "Zaal told us to head towards the medbay. If my father or any other Quarian survived, they'll be there."

Garrus was tense as he followed her, "We're right behind you."

The eerie silence almost convinced Jack that they were all alone, that the Geth had somehow escaped and left the damage for someone else to clean up. It wasn't true of course, the Geth had no way to escape the ship and were most likely just waiting to strike. The thought merely made him less worried about a sudden ambush as they crossed the hangar full of dead bodies. He was careful not to step on any of the dead as he followed Tali deeper into the ship. These were friends and family to many Quarians and deserved to be respected as such. The fact that at any moment a Geth could spring at them filled all of his thoughts, they were exposed out here.

When one of the Quarian's arms actually moved and reached for Tali's legs he jumped, "Tali, someone survived!" He pushed a body off of the live Quarian to see it was a male in a blue and gray suit, "Let me get you some medi gel sir."

Tali spun around and kneeled down, "Vasa?! What happened, where's my father?"

Vasa was coughing and blood sprayed out of his mouthpiece to go all over Jack's armor, "Don't...mrrgghhnn... sorry, so sorry."

Saren sounded impatient tapping his assault rifle with one talon idly, "He isn't going to make it, we should just move on."

Garrus turned to face him and was clearly angry, "Do you have to say every little thing that goes in your head?"

Saren seemed just as irritated when he replied, "I'm thinking about the bigger picture right now brother. Helping one Quarian is far less important than finding all of the Geth."

Jack ignored them and stabbed a pack of medi gel into Vasa anyways even though he knew Saren was right, it would make him hurt less. "You shouldn't talk right now. Just relax."

Vasa gripped Tali's hand and coughed some more, "Mkk, mkk, mkk... Could've..stopped, mkk... so sorry." His hand slowly let go of hers as he faded.

Tali let his hand go with a sniffle, "Saren's right, we need to keep going."

A new silence fell over them as Tali stood up and tried to act as though watching him die hadn't effected her. Having watched Kal blame himself for what happened on Omega, he was sure Tali was letting each and every death weigh her down. Jack wanted to tell her none of this was her fault but, he was sure she'd argue it all was. She was the one to bring Legion to the fleet after all, then she brought Geth salvage for him to use against them. She had done both of those things for the survival of the Quarian people but, intent didn't matter in Quarian culture. No matter how the trial ended, the entire crew was going to have to look after her. Jack didn't know how many deaths she could carry on her shoulders before she snapped.

His concern for her grew as the four of them left the hangar and entered a residential zone. It was a maze of cubicles that went on for a good hundred yards in every direction. What must've usually been a loud and bustling neighborhood was as quiet as a graveyard. Several dead Quarians were tangled in their door blankets having been shot escaping, while other Quarians were dead in their beds since the bullets had traveled through multiple cubicles. The Geth had made sure no one escaped alive. While he was worried about how this would effect Tali's mental state, his immediate concern was Geth popping out of cubicles at random. There were too many individual cubicles along the path Tali was taking them on to possibly check each one. He couldn't have asked for a better ambush scenario if he tried.

Garrus' voice was sad when he asked her, "The guy we saw out there, did you know him well?"

Tali stayed quiet for a few seconds while she pushed a blanket aside to look in a cubicle, "Vasa'Nir vas Tonbay. He'd been a friend of my fathers since before I was born. He was kind of the fleet's version of CSEC..."

Garrus got quieter as he swept around another cubicle, "I'm sorry."

Jack wished she could see his entire worried glance under the helmet, "Are you doing ok?"

Tali's voice had an edge of frustration to it, "Of course not Jack, I'm partly responsible for all of this. I can mourn later, right now we need to-"

Bullets started flying at them from the other end of the Quarian street, cutting Tali off. They scattered for cover in separate cubicles along the pathway and Jack counted five Geth shooting at them from similar positions thirty feet away. He fired several shots around the corner of his cubicle hoping the covering fire would give enough time for the others to find a place to hide. Tali's shotgun was useless from this range but, she fired at a Geth hoping it would do some minor damage. The Geth returned fire with his rifle forcing Tali to throw herself against the cold metal floor of her cubicle to avoid getting shot. Garrus used his sniper rifle to kill the Geth shooting at her and helped her up, only to be shot from behind through a cubicle wall. Luckily, Garrus' armor was thick enough to take a few shots but, they all had to remember the walls they were hiding behind were paper thin.

Saren fired his heavy, M6 Carnifax 'hand cannon,' pistol through the wall killing the surprise sixth Geth, "Why don't you fly up in the air and see what we're dealing with Garrus?"

Jack had to kill a seventh Geth that had burst through the wall behind him while the first five were still shooting at them from afar, "Bad idea, they could all shoot him down and he'd have no cover."

Saren grunted, shooting the rest of his clip calmly towards the group infront of them, "I'm not saying he should stay up there forever! Just a few seconds to see what we're dealing with."

Garrus fired through one of the holes in a cubicle wall to kill another surprise Geth trying to take a flanking shot, "Even if it was a good idea, I can't. Rubbing alcohol and jetpack fuel do not mix."

Saren groaned but, they continued the fight without much more talking. Jack felt terrible that they were ruining these peoples homes even further by having a full blown firefight in them, he didn't have any other options though. The Geth were stubborn and determined to not let the four of them advance even an inch, fortunately, they had Saren on their side this time. He used his biotics to collapse several of the cubicles leaving the Geth hiding inside of them totally exposed to the four of them. Jack was almost out of ammo in his assault rifle by the time the last of the eighteen Geth fell with a robotic cry of pain.

Tali stormed up to the unit and took an extra blast of her shotgun into it's optical sensor, "And stay down you di'kut!" She frowned looking over a couple of the Geth bodies, "Jack, we have a problem..."

After looking at a few of the Geth himself, Jack assumed he figured out the problem pretty quickly. Tali had sworn up and down that all the Geth hardware she provided back to the fleet was half dead salvage. Yet, the Geth looking up at him through a dead sensor was shiny and new. The other dead Geth surrounding them had the same new appearance. She hadn't been away from the fleet long enough for her father to smuggle in this many new Geth so, these had to somehow be the same units Tali brought in as salvage. The only logical explanation he could come up with was that the Geth themselves had somehow repaired each unit to look that good.

Saren was still glowing blue and stepped forward, "We can worry about that later, we have more company."

A biotic shield raised infront of them just in time to absorb a missile shot from a Geth Prime. It was so much taller than the average Geth unit and reminded Jack of the mech that killed Tali's squad on Freedom's Progress. He could see the armor was just as thick as those mechs and it was carrying a similarly sized machine gun. Saren was gathering as many of the bullets to his biotic shield as possible and Jack couldn't help but smirk. Having been on the receiving end of this several times, he knew the Geth had no idea what was about to hit him. However, when Saren let the bullets bounce back against it's armor, the Geth merely stumbled backwards for a moment before shooting at them again.

Garrus shoved himself and Tali into cover, "Crap, I thought that was going to work. Any ideas?!"

Tali fired around the corner trying to get its attention, "The only way we could kill it is getting a lucky shot in it's optical sensor. I think we should just try and outrun it to the medvay."

To his surprise, he and Saren both said, "NO!" Jack nodded to him and added, "If we find someone alive in the medbay and they're injured, we don't want to have to outrun this thing back to the shuttle."

Saren was breathing heavily and fired a random shot at the Prime to get it to turn around, "I think I have one last biotic blast in me. Shepard, get into a ball and get ready."

Jack crouched down expecting Saren to jump off of him or something, "Get ready for what?"

He hadn't quite been prepared for what Saren had planned for him but, it was too late now. A biotic field wrapped around Jack's body and he was thrown at a good twenty miles per hour into the Geth Prime's head. He wasn't going to lie and say it didn't hurt like hell to have his ribs collide with a piece of hard metal that fast but, his palladium armor saved him from any serious injury. By the time he sprawled out on the ground, it was already deploying an internal supply of medi gel to the impact sight. More importantly, the Geth Prime's head was laying next to him and it's body had crashed into a cubicle looking very dead. Saren had essentially used his body as a cannon ball and it had worked.

Tali rushed over to him and sighed relieved, "Keelah, your ok. Kal would kill me if something happened to you while we're here."

Jack let out a sarcastic laugh letting her help him up, "Nothing a little medi gel won't fix in the morning." He looked over at Saren, "How'd you know that was going to work?"

Saren shrugged looking around for more Geth to come at them, "I didn't, I just guessed your armor would be able to handle the impact."

Jack didn't say anything to him and glanced back to Tali, "How are these Geth good as new Tali? You couldn't have gotten them here like this."

She picked up the Geth Prime's head and examined it, "A repair drone must've been activated. Until we can find and destroy it, we'll eventually be fighting the same Geth over and over again."

Garrus was now watching one of the Geth units they had killed earlier more carefully, "Any idea where this repair drone is now? I don't think we have enough ammo to fight all of these again."

Tali shook her head and threw the Geth's head as far as possible, "No, we can probably find security footage of it on the bridge though if we're lucky."

Jack picked up some ammo off the belt of the dead Geth, "We'll head there after we get to the medbay. A survivor might not have twenty minutes left. Are we close?"

Tali rolled her shoulders and nodded, "We aren't too far from both actually, follow me"

Thankfully, they didn't encounter any more Geth units as Tali led them out of the residential zone and deeper into the ship. He still had hope they were going to find someone alive but, that hope was dwindling fast as they kept moving without hearing a sound from anything living. Surely if a Quarian was still alive they'd have to be fighting the Geth, and that would make plenty of noise. Jack hated to admit it for Tali's sake but, the Admirals were seemingly correct when they assumed everyone had been killed. When Tali moved to a door and lingered to one side of it, Jack got the picture and moved to the other side of the door. This had to be the medbay.

They kicked down the door and his heart sank, at first glance the room was totally empty. The dust floating around in midair even suggested that the room hadn't been seriously used in a very long time. Had Tali just accidentally picked the wrong room and this was storage? He wouldn't have blamed her for getting a little turned around in here given all of the emotional stuff she was going through. Then Jack looked around and the first thing he noticed were the countless Quarian suits scattered all along the ground, some with old dried blood on the arms, others with Quarian vomit trailing down the front. His gut twisted in knots realizing they were all children's suits and had the same red gray color scheme with an accompanying blue helmet. Other Quarians surely had to have this exact color scheme but, that combined with the blood and vomit made it clear to Jack that this was where Kal grew up. It took all his strength not to puke himself.

Tali slowed to a stop and looked around the room, "F...father always told me this was the medbay, he never actually let me inside but...what is this place?"

Garrus looked around the room, "They kept kids here..?

Jack gulped seeing the medical table with restraints for a small child, "Kid, singular. This is where Han'Gerrel made his perfect little marine."

Tali was visibly shaking but sounded extremely defensive, "I know what Kal told you but, he was confused! He was just a sick child and didn't know the difference between medical care and experimentation. My father told me they never hurt him, they just tried to help him."

Jack couldn't help but get angry lifting up one of the bloody suits filled with injection marks, "Does this look like regular medical treatment to you Tali? Did you go through this? Were you ever strapped to a table like this?! Cause no hospital I've ever been to let me bleed this much on my clothes and just left them on the ground! Or strap me down with the tightest restraints they could get their hands on!"

Tali shouted back with just as much venom, "Maybe you had better hospitals to go to because the Council preferred you Human bosh'tet newcomers over people that have been suffering for three hundred years! We've had to make due with scraps because of self entitled assholes like you!"

Garrus quickly got between them, speaking loudly and looking from one to the other, "Hey! Both of you need to just calm down and take a breath. I'm a cop remember? Let me look around and see if I can find anything before you two kill each other."

Jack handed him the suit and nodded not saying a word. He had gone too far yelling at her like that, she was dealing with a metric fuckton of problems right now. Her father was probably dead somewhere just like all the other Quarians they had seen so far and, she thought it was because of her. Jack was just frustrated that even after seeing physical evidence of what Kal said he went through was accurate, Tali still refused to believe. Honestly, it was pretty Human to be in denial about something your parent could've done. How would he have reacted if a friend accused his Mom of doing something similar to them? He'd be just as defensive on the surface too, deep down though, Jack would be terrified it could possibly be true.

Garrus scanned the suit with his omni tool and sighed, "A-...Kal's blood type at least..."

Tali tilted her head seemingly snapping at him, "How do you know what his blood type is?"

Garrus kept a patient but professional tone, "Kal lost a lot of blood on Omega when he was captured. I had to find the right blood type for Mordin to complete a transfusion... Anyways, I've counted ten injection marks on the arms and legs just in this suit.. Not exactly standard procedure I'd imagine."

He was somewhat ashamed when Saren had the calmest voice out of all of them, "I've found a recording, maybe we can skip the investigation and just watch what happened here?"

The three of them walked over to where Saren was standing and he hit play on a terminal. Holograms suddenly appeared in the middle of the room like nothing had gone wrong here. Jack saw Kal was sitting on the floor in his little suit, he couldn't have been more than five years old and he was adorably cute. Getting closer, Jack could see Kal was playing with two needle sticks pretending they were spaceships chasing each other. He could tell that's what they were because the younger Kal was making swooshing and shooting noises. Things seemed to be going like normal until an unknown male Quarian entered the room. Kal dropped the needle sticks and shrunk into a back corner of the room as fast as his little arms and legs would carry him.

The male got on one knee to stare at him, "It looks like your doing better Kal."

Tali's voice was shakey and desperate, "Saren, turn this off. Now."

Saren held up a hand, "Not yet, we need to know what was happening here don't we?"

Jack's heart smashed into a billion little pieces when he heard little Kal obviously fake a cough, "Eheh...no seer.. EE'm steell seeck. Eheh..."

The man shook his head scanning him with his omni tool, "My readings show you've fully recovered. You know that means right?"

Kal looked down hugging his knees closer to his body, "Treatment day..." A few other Quarian scientists marched into the room, "If EE'm better though EE don't need treatment. No more gewrms, all better."

The man sighed and looked down, "I wish that were true.. Take him." Kal started to scream and cry as the other scientists lifted him off the ground and threw him against the table hard, "Rael'Zorah with entry 1054, The latest iteration of PerNim went poorly. It only kept the subject ill for a week instead of the desired month to build his immune system. We lowered core temperature of the subject, to a near lethal level, but no beneficial immune system reactions occurred. So we'll not try that again on Kal. Instead we'll give him a small dose of the Human flu." Kal's cries cut him off for a second, "Keelah I hope this works to Han's specifications. The boy can't take much more of this."

The recording ended and Jack was glad he had his helmet on so the tears running down his cheeks weren't visible. Kal's five year old screams were enough to break him right now. He had recovered from the illness Gerrel gave him only to immediately be pumped with another disease. Judging by the number of suits all over the ground, this happened over and over and over again until the Admiral was satisfied with the results. Tali was doing much worse having collapsed to the floor and was shaking in silent sobs. She had seen with her own eyes that her father had lied to her. That the man she clearly loved and respected had been involved with exactly what Kal said he was.

Jack pulled her up and squeezed her gently in a hug, "Hey, this isn't your fault. You didn't know what was going on. You couldn't have done anything even if you did know."

Tali spoke through tiny sobs, "But I didn't believe him...all these years I haven't.. I could've been there for him."

Jack kept her in the hug for awhile longer silently crying himself, "It's ok... we're here for him now." He looked at Saren, "Download that will you?"

Saren quietly nodded before looking down at the terminal, "There's another recording from a few hours ago. It could be about the Geth."

Jack composed himself again trying to focus, "Play it. We need to know what was going on here."

New holograms flooded the room of three Quarians. He recognized an older Rael'Zorah and Vasa from the hangar bay but, the woman was new. Unfortunately, the recording started out garbled and fuzzy. The damage the ship had sustained could've broken the playback somehow, or Rael had manipulated the footage to avoid something embarrassing, like admitting he participated in Kal's experiments. It was frustrating though to watch the three Quarians talking to each other and not know what they were saying. Saren kicked the terminal hoping that would work to fix the problem.

As they watched the female grab Vasa's arm and pull him to face her, they could hear her say, "We were nearing a breakthrough on systemic viral attacks. Imagine our children on the homeworld in the next few months because we acted today."

Vasa tugged his arm free and opened the door, "Then maybe you should share your data with Gerrel and learn to work together on this. I don't know about you, but I actually want to be with my kid when we land on the homeworld."

He left the two of them alone and the woman shouted at the air, "Kriff! Two years of our lives go right down the drain because vas Qwib-Qwib's are all bosh'tets!"

Rael took a deep breath Jack knew all too well as one to gather courage, "No. We're too close. I promised to build my daughter a house on the homeworld. I'm not going to sit and wait while the politicians argue. Are you with me right now?"

The woman looked at him, "I think so, we'd have an easier time of it if we used some of Tali'Zorah's more working material. The Geth could repair themselves and serve as quite the distraction."

Rael practically snapped at her, "Absolutely not! I don't want Tali exposed to any more political blowback than she already is. You either come with me alone or you don't come at all."

The recording ended with the two of them leaving the lab to the right. While the snippet of conversation was vague, Jack sort of understood why Zaal'Koris had brought them here. The Admiral must've somehow been aware of what Rael was going to do and sent them in the right direction. It was also interesting to see Rael tell her no when she purposed activating the Geth when that's ultimately what happened. Did she go behind his back? Had he changed his mind when something went wrong? What exactly were they going go do anyways? The clear lack of solid answers annoyed him.

Tali sounded numb as she started leaving the medbay, "Come on, they were headed in the direction of Legion's containment lab."

Jack made sure they had downloaded both recordings before following her. They would be good evidence when Tali's trial started again.