When she finished equipping her armor, Jane sat down on her bed and buried her face into her palms. A long, tired sigh left her as she digged into her hair, combing it back along her scalp in frustration.
"What the hell..." she said out loud.
They almost kissed with Saren.
And she loved that feeling. Her body still remembered his touch, and it was hard to let go and focus. It should have been weird, but it was natural. But now they will have to separate. She needed to put her feelings aside for now and nail this mission so she can get the information and come back to him.
She gathered herself, stood up and entered the elevator. It seemed like years until it stopped, but she noticed it didn't reach the shuttle bay yet. The door swooshed open and her heart almost stopped as Saren entered.
He just barged in to stop right in front of her and closed the door. His expression was full of anger and frustration, his mandibles twiched anxiously. The elevator started to descend again.
"Are you completely crazy?" he questioned her, his tone aggressive and commanding. "It's a trap. You're going to kill yourself and I won't even be able to do anything about it!"
"It has to happen, Saren, we're not getting what we want any other way!" she snapped back.
"I don't care! What do you think weighs more? Not having information or a dead Shepard?"
"I'm not going to die!" she shouted, and as the door opened at the shuttle bay, she walked past him, brushing her shoulder to his chest aggressively in the process. She stormed through the bay, Saren hot on her heels. "I'm not some weakling, and I thought you knew that!"
"I never said you're weak! I'm saying you're acting irrationally!" his voice was thick with a low growl escaping his chest as he followed her. Cortez and Tali looked up at them from the shuttle, not being noticed in the heat of the argument. Jane turned back to Saren, stopping suddenly and slamming her palm on his armored chest:
"You're acting irrationally! What would you do if you were me? You would do the same exact thing! So stand down and trust me, because I don't give a single flying fuck about how hard you try to oppose me, this is still my ship and my crew!"
She exhaled, calming herself.
"Please, Saren. I need you to handle Horizon."
He closed his eyes. She was so stubborn, but she was right: they couldn't let either of the missions go. But then again the thought of Jane in the hands of everything he ever resented caused his blood to boil. He was so angry he could destroy half the ship, but he needed to calm down. He knew she was capable, and they had no other choice.
"Just..." he exhaled through his nose, his mandibles squeezed to his jaw tight. He opened his eyes. "... Return home to me."
She smiled softly. Home.
She looked into his blue eyes. She wanted him to come along so badly, it set her nerves on fire, but it was impossible.
"Deal. But you need to promise me something too."
All of his attention was hers. "Spill."
"Destroy Leng for me."
The heat, the vengeance in her eyes ignited him inside. His hands clenched into fists at his side as he made his promise to her on his usual thunderous voice.
"Deal."
Then, without another word or touch, Jane stepped back and entered the shuttle. Saren nodded, then turned around and left.
Saren stepped out of the shuttle and jumped on the ground. Javik and Garrus followed him, looking around the facility. Sanctuary was large, but Saren's desire to finish this mission as soon as possible was a lot greater. That was also the reason behind choosing Garrus and Javik as the ground team. They were by far the fastest and the strongest on the ship, not mentioning being brutal. Even though Garrus was very logical and calculative in combat, he knew when to let his anger go, and Javik was the same. Despite him hating both of them, this was the best possible setup for him to be able to finish this job the fastest way.
He spoke to them without even turning back.
"I don't give a damn about what Cerberus is doing here. Our only object is Kai Leng."
They nodded and started wrecking the place.
The reaper floated around the edge of the system, far from the sun and the other planets. The geth ship silently docked, carrying Jane, Tali and a group of geth soldiers to accompany them. As the shuttles opened and they boarded the machine, they found it completely dormant, empty of any troops of movement.
"Prepare for an ambush. This is likely a trap."
"It looks like it's empty.." Tali voiced her thoughts as they progressed through the reaper. Empty metal corridors followed each other, crashing together, ending where not expected. It looked like the structure of it was completely different to any spaceship they've seen before, like it was not made for anyone to walk its corridors.
A feeling started creeping into Jane's mind that they were not supposed to be here.
"Can you feel it?" Tali asked as they scouted. She was looking behind her back all the time, strangely losing direction once or twice. "It's like the walls are alive..."
"Yes, but it's really vague..." Jane replied, looking around. She did feel the same, but it was muted, distant.
"Vague?" Tali looked at her with confusion "It's like it's almost talking, watching. This is anything but vague..."
It was strange, but she didn't feel it that strongly. She shrugged and they proceeded further, trying to find their way to anything within that could tell them what was going on here. A control panel, an engineering room, anything. But the reaper was not built for organics, and they got lost numerous times. It took them hours to find something, and with every minute, Tali became more stressed.
"Jane, I don't think we should be here.." she panted, constantly looking behind her back, searching for something.
"Are you alright?" she stepped closer, putting her hands on her shoulders.
"No.." she breathed "This place is still alive… How can you not feel it?"
She had no idea. It was clear that the reaper's effect on organics was still in place and Tali was affected by it, but her… It was just too quiet in her mind to bother her.
They proceeded nonetheless and eventually found a control room of some sorts, with a console mounted on the wall. They stepped closer to it.
"Can you use this console?"
Tali sighed, breathing heavily. "I don't know, I never came across any reaper systems before..." she raised her omni-tool and started working. Jane turned around and wondered away from the console. She found a small door, and when she touched it, it opened, letting her proceed to another room.
It must have been some sort of a cockpit, rows of control panels laying in it in front of a wide window. She looked at the cold metal walls, the air carrying dust particles that shined in the light as the reaper turned in float to face the sun. The panels heated up a bit as the sun rays fell on them, but they were not strong enough here to burn anything. She closed her eyes as the sunlight reached her helmet, even though her helmet was protecting her.
She felt the floor move below her, the walls come a bit closer. She heard a whisper, a distant hand touching her back. She turned around.
"Shepard!" Tali's voice pulled her out of the darkness and she returned to the other room.
"What did you find?"
"The reaper… it's..." she touched her helmet, clearly disturbed by the atmosphere "It's deactivated. It's not just not doing anything, or pretending to be broken. There are no protocols running that would be triggered by someone entering the ship. Nothing stopped me from hacking this data, it's completely defenseless. Most systems are offline, the only major thing still running somewhat is the drive core..."
"So does that mean that..."
"This is not a trap, Shepard. This reaper is actually deactivated."
Jane stepped back, not knowing where to turn. If the reaper actually is defenseless and dormant, and it was caused by the sun, this could give them the edge in the war they were looking for.
"All right. I have found another room as well." she said, pointing to the control room she discovered just a minute ago "Take a look there as well, maybe we can gather more data."
Tali did as she asked and connected to the system in the other room as well.
"Hmm… This looks like a cockpit to me. These consoles provide access to various systems, including navigation and event logs. But why would a reaper have a control room like this if it's autonomous?" Tali speculated, going through the logs.
"Remember that Saren was able to drive one too, and the derelict reaper we found in Hawking Eta had the full infrastructure built in it, just like this one."
"The geth collective also has data from Sovereign's infrastructure." added one of the geth soldiers.
"You're right." Tali said "Maybe it's for the servants in the given cycle to be able to tend to the reaper..." It was probably correct. Saren also did travel with Sovereign, it would make sense for the reapers to be built in a way that would help them in these cases.
Tali then suddenly stopped, turning back and motioning at Jane to come "Look at this, I've found the event logs!" Jane stepped to her, but all she saw was tech logs that made little sense to her.
"What's it say?"
"Right after leaving the relay, there was a drive core and nav system failure. The core overheated…"
"What caused the overheat?" asked one of the geth.
"If you ask me it was concentrated dark matter. I find it highly unlikely that reapers just malfunction like this. It's also suspicious that the moment it came close to the sun, it overheated. The dark matter in the sun must have somehow reached the eezo core… Dark matter essentially cannot lose energy, that's why it cannot interact with objects and form connections of matter. It seeping into the eezo core caused it to overload."
"So essentially..." Jane draw the conclusion "... reaper cores can be overloaded using dark matter."
"It seems so."
The happiness she felt was overbearing.
This was a direct weapon against the reapers, the first actual thing pointing out a weakness of theirs. This information needed to be taken advantage of, immediately.
"We need this ship, it needs to be researched, so we can use this as a weapon." she said.
"I don't think that is possible." Tali informed, turning her attention back to the consoles "The dark matter caused a chain reaction. Even though the core is cooled down now, it's slowly heating back up again, and it will overload over time. I'm saving the logs, afterwards we should get out of here as fast as possible. This ship is not stable."
"Great, then-"
She was interrupted as the whole ship suddenly moved. They all tumbled around, falling on the floor as the reaper moved.
"What the fuck?" Jane shouted as she stood up, looking out the window. The sun disappeared from the horizon and the other stars appeared in the distance. "We're turning around!"
Tali gathered herself and went back to the consoles to check what was happening, but all she received were warnings.
"I can't get back in again! It's not letting me!" she cried, trying still, but Shepard touched her shoulder.
"It's awake. We need to get out of here now."
A screeching, sharp sound exploded in their heads suddenly, causing Tali to scream. The control panels lit up with different colours and the light started dancing in chaos before everything going dark. Then suddenly all the lights on the corridors came to life, the control panels stabilizing. The force that sent them to the ground was no more as the mass effect field of the reaper reinstated again.
"We need to go" the geth said, picking Tali and Jane up from the ground and making their way back.
"You will pay for your intrusion."
Jane stopped, looking back. The sound came from her head, disorganizing her thoughts.
"Get out of my head!" she cried as she ran after the others, trying to escape the awakening reaper.
"It's in my mind!" Tali screamed, the intellectual force weighing her down. One of the geth units grabbed her to carry her out, as they were unaffected by the reaper's consciousness. Jane finally reached the shutter to the docking tube. It was closed, but one of the geth managed to hack their way through it, so the door opened.
"Go go go!" she commanded, herding the team through the door right into the tube. Once all of them were through, she started to follow behind them, but at the last moment, her legs gave up and she stopped.
She couldn't move.
"You're not going anywhere." sounded the voice in her head.
"Shepard!" she heard Tali cry out as they reached the geth ship's shutter. She wanted to move, to run to them, but she just couldn't move. Pain surged through her body, twitching her muscles and making her head almost split in two. "Shepard!" Tali started flailing around, eventually climbing down from the geth that carried her and she started running right back to her.
"No, Tali!" she screamed, trying to squeeze the words out "Get back... to the others!"
As the quarian reached the shutter, it shut closed before her.
"No!" she screamed, falling to the door. She grabbed her omni tool in haste, trying to hack it open, bypass its systems, do anything to open it, but every attempt failed. No matter what she did she couldn't open the shutter, the reaper had full control over it now.
"Creator Zorah, we need to leave" argued one of the geth, grabbing her arm.
"No! We can't leave her!"
"We have to, this door cannot be opened anymore. If we stay, you will die too. Our first priority now is to get help."
"But.." a tear left her eyes under her helmet, but she had to let go of the door. "I'll bring Saren to help you, I promise!" she whispered to the door before turning around to escape.
Saren was surprised at how smoothly they proceeded so far.
Javik was great at mid-range, Garrus kept the more dangerous targets away from them with his rifle, and he could immerse himself in close-range combat. They wiped the facility of reaper troops in an hour and have discovered Kai Leng was also going through the field. It did not take long until they were hot on his heels, chasing him from room to room as he tried to leave the facility. Whatever data he gathered here was with him now, but it was not what they were interested in. The data of Vendetta was still with him, and they needed that to finish the Crucible.
"There!" Javik shouted as he noticed Leng entering the airducts, and Garrus immediately starting shooting at it. Saren ran to the next room following the ducts, and when the assassin hopped out from them, he waited for him with a punch to his abdomen.
Leng fell back right into a control panel. Before Saren could follow up, he threw one of his daggers in his direction, which the turian dodged easily.
"Hand over the data!" Garrus shouted as he caught up with them, pointing his rifle at Leng.
"I'd rather die!" he hissed, trapped in the corner of the room.
Saren needed no more. "I'm fine with that!" he shouted, jumping right on him. They started fighting, and even though Leng was fast, Saren's strength came up on top once again. No matter the cybernetics Kai possessed, a half-reaper turian's metal fist hit him hard each time, and right at the spots that hurt the most. Like his left shoulder that Saren broke previously on Thessia.
He stepped on it with full force, like it was a piece of stone, causing him to scream out in pain. Javik decided he wasn't even needed for the fight and just leaned back to enjoy the beating. He looked at Garrus, who nodded at him with approval.
"Give me the data!" Saren's voice shot through the air as he grabbed Leng again, tossing him to the floor. He winced in pain, eventually reaching into a pocket and grabbing the PDA that Saren saw him save Vendetta's data on, on Thessia.
The assassin's face distorted into a lifeless smile, his cybernetics flared up in strain. Saren reached for the PDA as he pinned him down, but just before he could grab it, the assassin closed his hand, breaking the tech in the process.
"You'll never... have the data..." he coughed in a middle of a wicked smile, watching Saren's anger peak as he witnessed the small PDA turn to electric dust in his hands. "You reaper… shit..."
"Really? Your last word is 'shit'?" Garrus buried his face in his palm.
But his comment was quickly forgotten as Saren snarled at Leng, a hellish roar escaping his mouth.
"You hurt Jane, and for that you will die. I promised her your blood, and I never fail!" He was done with Leng, and was ready to pay back the pain he caused him and Jane. He raised his fist in a moment of wrath and he crashed it so hard into the assassin's face, his skull cracked.
Javik hissed in surprise. He started to like Saren.
He rose up from Leng's corpse, red blood dripping from his plates. He wiped it away in a moment of pure disgust, his eyes beaming with anger. He ripped Kai's omni tool off of him and put it away.
"I'm sure you had a backup of that data. You died for nothing, you sick fuck.." he commented, removing his gaze from his body.
Garrus was taken aback.
This level of brutality was never seen in their team, and even though he expected something like this from Saren, it still caught him off guard. All of his moves were of a predator, a killer in motion. His face was lit up with the ecstasy of vengeance, like he completed a mission long due. And judging from his words, he promised nothing less than this to Jane.
But the silence was broken by Saren's omni tool chirping.
[Saren, you need to get back to the ship right now!] came the frantic voice of Joker over the comms in their ears.
"And it was just getting fun..." Javik commented.
"What happened?" Garrus asked in hurry.
[Tali returned! The reaper… the Commander...]
Joker continued, but his words mashed together in Saren's mind. His eyes widened in shock as the pilot continued to break the news. The fury that took him over was overwhelming.