LVIII

Taming Cerberus: Obedience Training

"I don't like it." Lawson stalked around the table, staring down at the holographic map of Aite in the center. "Now that we've placed Dr. T'Soni in the office of Cerberus's largest information competitor, we should move forward with disbanding the crew and making sure our people and Normandy's resources are beyond the Illusive Man's reach. Scuttling the ship in an Omega scrapyard would be best, but your idea to turn her over to the Alliance could work. But only if we move fast."

Shepard's arms were folded across her chest, but she let Lawson finish. "You're forgetting that our aim isn't just to survive Mr. Illusive's retribution for what happened on the Collector station," she said. "We need to end this tour in a position to act on the intelligence we've gathered about the Reapers. That means we need a bargaining chip to trade in to people with resources."

"You'd think a warship like Normandy would be enough," Lawson muttered. "There was nothing like her in the fleet before our upgrades. Now, she could almost tip the balance of a war herself."

"Toss aside what it means that she's basically run by an unshackled AI," Taylor said. "Alliance might not be too hot on copying that tech to other warships."

"The Alliance'll take Normandy when Shepard turns her in. They'll probably keep quiet about EDI. We need them to take Shepard too," Garrus said, "and as many of Normandy's crew as want to keep fighting or need help taking shelter from Cerberus. We need a little extra leverage for that."

"So the plan is attack a bunch of people on Aite just doing their jobs," Taylor said. "I'm with Miranda: this plan stinks. It's not what we do."

It was three days after T'Soni's takeover of the Broker's operations on Hagalaz. Doctor Chakwas had cleared Garrus for active duty the day before and Tali that morning, which was good, because Moreau had hit Shepard's next objective midmorning, and all they knew about the Cerberus cell she wanted to hit was that they had been researching something to do with the geth. But Lawson and Taylor had been hesitant about the next stage in Shepard's transitional plan from the minute Shepard had shared it with them. Lawson was of the opinion that every second the crew stayed together was a second given to the Illusive Man to find and take them out. She wanted the crew disbanded yesterday and to be well on her way to changing Oriana's location again and getting the pair of them into deep cover. Taylor wasn't too keen on attacking his former colleagues, which Shepard hadn't outright committed to but also hadn't said she was against.

Mutiny or desertion aside, though, neither Miranda nor Jacob had much choice in what Shepard decided to do now, and Garrus thought they might as well hear her out.

"Actually, we attack people just doing their jobs on a pretty regular basis," he pointed out. "Pirates or mercenaries, for example. There's an awful lot of people around the galaxy just doing bad jobs. We used to take out Cerberus operations fairly often."

Taylor's face darkened. "We've got no proof this operation on Aite is anything like that."

"We don't have proof it isn't, either."

"Alright!" Shepard broke in. "We can argue about what they're doing down there until we're all blue in the face, or we can go find out. Look, I'm not going to shoot anyone until I know exactly what the situation is. If they're clean, all I'll do is some light recon, get some intelligence for the Alliance, and even if we bring this whole cell crashing down around their ears, we're not gonna stay here for more than two ship days. Then it's on to the favor for Hackett. Is everyone good with that?"

She glared around the table, looking them each in the face for several seconds before moving on.

"You're in charge, Commander," Lawson said. "Just be quick about it, whatever you end up doing."

"I'll head down with Garrus and Legion. We'll see what's what, and we'll radio the two of you before deciding on anything else."

Taylor grunted, but Lawson nodded.

"Dismissed," Shepard said. The two ex-Cerberus operatives walked out.

"They aren't going to commandeer Normandy while we're gone, are they?" Garrus asked.

"This was always going to be hard," Shepard said. "Jacob's loyalties to Cerberus were always mixed, but he's not comfortable with outright enmity. Ironically, because Miranda was so high up, her break's been cleaner. She's also a couple centimeters out from outright panic, and she's always had more to lose from Cerberus going after her than just about anyone on the crew. She had access and responsibilities. She's dangerous, and that means she's in danger, and she knows it. I'm asking a lot of them, Garrus."

"Every member of the SR-1 followed you into an outright mutiny against the Council and the Alliance," Garrus said. "They knew what it meant, and they did it anyway. This crew should be ready to do the same."

"Is it the same?" Shepard asked. "The SR-1 crew knew the Citadel and all of civilization was in immediate danger if we kept to the Council's program. A mutiny against our superiors was literally the only way to save the galaxy. This crew could save themselves a lot easier following Lawson's program, and it'd be pretty easy to rationalize that we could find a way to get the intel we've recovered to people who can use it without further action against Cerberus or taking steps to get further involved in the war against the Reapers."

Garrus thought about this. "Yeah," he conceded, "and a lot of them are civilians, aren't they? They've been through enough. On the other hand, we're going to need everyone who can fight to fight the Reapers. Still—Legion? To a cell where we know they were experimenting with the geth?"

"I'd rather work with it to stop whatever's going on down there than have it find us trying to cover things up," Shepard said. "If we're going to build an alliance with the geth, we need to treat Legion like an ally. And all those programs together have built up some pretty impressive anti-hacking software. You going to be alright for whatever's down there?"

Garrus knocked on his head. "Please. I've had worse knocks than that half a dozen times. Well. Once. Maybe. Anyway, things always go to crap when I'm not with you."

"Gonna have to do without you eventually. Since you're going back to Palaven and all."

Garrus reached out and snagged her hand. "Let's not think about it."


"Looks like Earth," Shepard said, looking out the virtual windows at the Aite landscape.

"Wait, really?" Garrus asked. There was green as far as the eye could see down below. An attractive blue sky. Rivers. He'd seen pictures of Earth in brochures around the human embassy on the Citadel, heard about different cities from Luc and Kaidan and Donnelly, and Grunt had developed an obsession with Earthen paleontology and marine life over the course of the tour, but Garrus had only recently started wanting to see the human homeworld for himself. He'd only ever seen it from Luna, but it was supposed to be impressive.

He took in the meadows, the rocky mountainscape, the waterfalls. "I got to catch a tour bus and visit on leave sometime."

Shepard glanced at him. "Not everywhere looks like this," she admitted. "Mostly nature preserves. Places that haven't been ruined by bad city planning. The city I grew up in looks a lot more like Omega, or the colony on Bekenstein, in the nicer neighborhoods. But the sky? The vegetation? Yeah. It's like this."

"Earth is one of the more varied and lush garden worlds," Legion observed. "It possesses a wide range of biomes, and humans have adapted to inhabit much of its land surface. They also dwell in environmental units floating upon or built just under the planet's oceans. Aite is not as populated."

"By a lot," Niels chimed in. "Aite's largest moon is on a collision course with the planet. Due to hit in a couple hundred years. Anyone settling here knows their great-great grandchildren are doomed, so it's mostly occupied by transients and researchers studying the lunar orbit decay."

"Which makes it on trend for super-secret Cerberus bases," Garrus said. "They aren't fond of the worlds everybody likes."

"You seeing anything on scan yet, Caleb?" Shepard asked.

"A complex of buildings down in the valley where the Illusive Man's cut off reports originated. Geothermal plant, a downed starship, and some kind of bunker. I'm putting us down next to the aboveground building hosting the intersystemic transmissions dish. Likely where any communications came from."

"Good work, Caleb," Shepard said. "Be ready for anything."

"Always am, ma'am."

The Kodiak landed, and the doors opened. Garrus followed Shepard out onto a concrete and glass landing pad in the middle of a sterile, white, glass-and-metal installation. It was quiet. Too quiet.

"These programs are monitoring several synthetic signals in the vicinity, Shepard-Commander," Legion reported. "As well as an additional dark wave radio frequency, attempting to connect to team radios."

"Patch them through," Shepard ordered.

A human voice spoke over the radio in a panicked, breathy whisper. "Thank God you came! My name is Dr. Gavin Archer. The situation is urgent—we're facing a catastrophic VI breakout. I'll explain the details later, but you must retract that transmission dish! The controls aren't far from your position. You have to hurry!" The radio cut out. Dr. Gavin Archer had said his piece, for the moment.

"Damn, this is going to be exactly like all those other Cerberus operations, isn't it?" Garrus drawled. "Crazy rachni mailing themselves all through a cluster all over again."

"Let's not make any assumptions until we know what happened," Shepard said. "Legion, those synthetic signals you're tracking—they're hostile?"

"Unknown," Legion replied. "They are not operating according to any logic system we are aware of."

"Weapons out," Shepard said.

There was a door a few meters away, up a short flight of stairs and to the right. Legion was able to bypass security in a couple seconds. When the door opened, they saw the damage.

Two humans lay gunned down behind the reception desk. By the smell, they'd been dead a while.

A camera to the right moved to follow their progress into the entryway, and the cool, female voice Cerberus gave its automatic messaging systems spoke. "Be advised: this is a secure facility. All weapons must be declared upon entry and checked with security personnel on duty."

"Check for hostiles," Shepard ordered, but Garrus's visor and Legion's scans were coming up with the same thing.

"We're clear. At least for now."

"Corrupted geth signals are onsite, Shepard-Commander, but outside of our immediate range."

"Think they killed these guys?"

"Over here—" a voice called to them. They turned and saw the security monitor flashing. As they neared, vid of a human male came up. Light skinned, dark haired. Mid- to late forties. A camera above repositioned to put them into focus. "Ah, there you are. I've locked myself in a computer room on the far side of the base." The voice was Archer's—the man who had hailed them on the radio. "There are geth on the loose. A rogue VI program has seized control, and I've lost a lot of friends since I first signaled distress. I'd hate to see you join them. Please, watch yourself."

Shepard glanced at the vid, then back to Legion. "Alright. We need to secure the building and seize control of that satellite dish. Then we find Dr. Archer and he tells us just what the hell happened here."

"Mad science?" Garrus suggested. "Cerberus tried something stupid, and it all went horribly wrong. Just guessing."

Shepard grimaced but didn't acknowledge him further. "Legion, any idea what kind of geth they were dealing with here?"

"Negative," Legion answered. "The corruption we spoke of is inhibiting communication efforts. There is an entity attempting to access this platform. We are defending."

They both looked at Legion then. "That VI program's trying to take you over?" Shepard demanded.

"Can you hold it off?" Garrus asked at the same time.

"Yes," Legion promised. "This platform's defenses are superior to geth within this base, and the Enhanced Defense Intelligence is assisting with our firewalls. But we do not believe dropping defenses to attempt communication with this VI is advisable."

"Alright. Legion, I want you examining any tech we interact with. Let us know if it's compromised before we touch it," Shepard said.

"Affirmative." Legion strode across the room. "There is an isolated data record within this terminal," it said, indicating the reception console behind the desk. "Should we activate?"

Shepard nodded her agreement, Legion pressed the button, and a log played. "Status report: Please inform the Illusive Man that we've made great strides in our research. His doubts about our lack of progress were unwarranted. The demonstration is forthcoming."

"I'm thinking they did something desperate and stupid," Shepard muttered, referring to Garrus's earlier comment. "Come on."

She led the way, Locust in hand to check their corners. The base was too quiet. Garrus didn't like quiet military and research bases. Always meant something ugly around the corner, something nasty waiting to shoot you. "Where's Dr. Archer hiding?" he wondered aloud. "And why haven't these compromised geth found him? How long's this been going on? Days?"

"The Illusive Man sent the information on the project before the relay," Shepard answered. "They could've been fighting the takeover for a while."

Shepard opened a door, checked the room, and motioned for them to move ahead. They moved through an infirmary with two bodies at the far end—under a panel of broken glass edged with blood from the shots that had taken them down. "We're gonna have to bring in Jacob and Miranda to ID these guys. If we can," Shepard said.

"There is another log fragment here, Shepard-Commander," Legion told them. Shepard gestured, and Legion played it. "Memo to all project personnel: I understand there's some concern about handling live geth. I agree it's a risk, but the potential rewards are far greater. Someday your sons and daughters will thank you."

"Archer again. Think this was an installation like Rael'Zorah's on Alarei?" Garrus asked.

"Possible. Too soon to tell," Shepard responded. They moved ahead and entered the control room, probably the control room Archer had wanted them to get to, but as Shepard moved for the console, a tearing, digital shriek ripped through the base speakers.

"Alert: VI presence within base technology," Legion warned.

The shriek was crazy, painful. Garrus winced, and his translator couldn't immediately provide any kind of sense to the noise, but it sounded as though there might just be words buried in there somewhere beneath the static and a whole lot of emotion—pain or anger. A blue indicator came up on his visor. SEARCHING FOR TRANSLATION.

"Dammit," Archer cursed over the radio. "The VI's overridden the controls. We have to stop him: he's trying to upload his program off-planet. Destroy the antennae inside the dish. There's a tram on the lower level. Get to it as fast as you can."

"Nothing's ever easy," Shepard muttered.

"VI presence in base entryway technology," Legion reported, as the inhuman shriek sounded again. The camera over the door refocused and moved automatically to track them. "Corrupted geth signals nearing present location. We will not be able to reach the tram Dr. Archer speaks of without an encounter."

Shepard shot out the door panel. She knelt beside it for a moment and fused some wires with her omni-tool, and the door opened. "Great. Come on."

"That thing the VI's saying—are you getting any of it?"

Shepard shook her head. Her jaw was tight. "Only enough to know it's probably English under there. It's too badly garbled. I don't like this, Garrus. Don't like any of it."

They moved through a hallway and into what had obviously been the base's dining and barracks area—by the looks of it, for everyone stationed here and not just this installation. Garrus had just enough time to register the door to an upstairs barracks beside a lofted rec area, a sweeping staircase down to a canteen below, when a rocket flew over his head, and he dropped to one knee behind the loft's railing.

There were five visible now—three down by the canteen's kitchen, two up by the barracks entrance. Several other signals closing in. Garrus could immediately tell the geth were compromised; the lights around their core systems glowed green, not the usual cool blue.

"This is an automated security update," the automated systems reported. "Geth activity has been detected. Please remain at your workstations until the all-clear is given."

Hacked geth. Let's see if geth combat tactics still work, Garrus thought, aiming an overload program at the central unit down by the canteen. Its systems sparked; its shields went down; and a small electrical fire started within its chassis. Alright. We're still in business. A sniper shot from Legion took down the geth, and Garrus repaid the favor by taking one that their geth platform had apparently just hacked away from who or whatever had hacked it originally. To their right, Shepard was covering their flank against the geth up on their level, in between the barracks and the rec area.

This won't be how she best likes to fight. Garrus hadn't fought with Legion a whole lot. At all, really. Just the practice right before the Collector base. But what he'd seen there and heard from the others suggested that Legion always preferred to fight long range, or with engineering and environmental tactics. Shepard had done a bit more with Legion: on Heretic Station and in the Collector base, but she hadn't worked with it enough to feel comfortable asking it to do anything other than what it did best—which is effectively a repetition of both of our strengths. She'd brought it because she had some idea they would be dealing with geth. Technically, their squad was probably one of the better ones for handling rogue synthetics, but Garrus or Shepard were going to have to compensate for their disadvantages at close quarters or in the mid-range. The aggressive, front-line fighting that let snipers and saboteurs do their best work. Shepard wouldn't order Garrus to do it so soon after Hagalaz—even if the doc cleared me—so there she was, getting in close, using the Locust and the Phalanx instead of her Widow, not even touching her tactical cloak, keeping the attention of the geth or whatever was in their heads so Garrus and Legion could work.

She really is a superb soldier.

She signaled she'd cleared the upper level around the same time he and Legion cleared the kitchen. Garrus signaled back. His visor'd clocked three more geth approaching out of their immediate line of sight, past the kitchen's left wall. Shepard gestured for Garrus and Legion to proceed across the lofted rec room, down a second stairway to what was presumably the second exit, where the geth were coming from. She started down the stairway nearest their position. Garrus caught Legion observing the signals, probably processing the way he'd adapted Alliance sign for a turian hand structure. Then the geth followed him down the rec room.

The Cerberus automated messaging system echoed in the large, still space. "Today's lunch special is—"

Garrus caught sight of the hacked geth trooper down the stairs, dropped below the loft railing once again, lined a shot up, and fired. Below, Shepard's Locust began chirping once again, and he also heard the roar of a destroyer's flamethrower.

"Overloading kinetic barrier," Legion reported. There was an enormous explosion of machine parts, hardened plastic, and ceramic. A brief, intense wave of heat from below the stairs. Then silence.

"Clear," Shepard called up.

"Ready for next target," said Legion.

Shepard climbed up the stair to join them. "Let's scan the area. Just in case."

But there wasn't a whole lot to find—two bodies in the canteen and a record of a project memo on a closed-circuit datapad in the barracks. Standard congratulatory message from Archer on what had apparently been a breakthrough occasion in the project—approximately five days before Normandy had hit the Relay.

"Tomorrow, we make the next leap forward," Archer had told his men. "It will be a great day for Cerberus, and an even greater day for humanity." Archer hadn't said what kind of leap they'd made, but going by appearances, Garrus guessed it hadn't gone the way he'd planned.

Archer contacted them himself on their way down the back stairs, toward the tram he'd told them led to the dish access. "Damn it all, he's aligning the dish to a new upload target," he reported. "He'll have a clear line of sight to our satellite! This is gonna be tight."

"Why is it always an emergency when we get here?" Garrus complained.

"Forget that; I want to know why Archer's calling his rogue VI program 'he,'" Shepard answered.

"Shepard-Commander, the VI coopting the geth within these platforms has focused its efforts on manipulating the technology within this installation's communications array," Legion told them. "If it sends a communication to this planet's satellite, the corruption could spread off-world."

"Right. Move now; analyze what happened here later," Shepard summarized. She ushered them into the tram, and after Legion had assured them the technology was still working like it was supposed to, they took it over to the station's intersystem satellite array.

"Arriving at dish access," the Cerberus automated messaging system told them.

"Warning: there are many more corrupted geth signals on this side of the station," Legion told them. "All are under VI influence. Our systems detect more destroyer units and more than one prime-control unit."

"Geth primes. Plural. Great," Shepard muttered. "This was meant to be simple recon, not a race through a hacked-geth apocalypse to keep some technological abomination from hacking everything!"

Garrus looked out over the tram platform. Cerberus had built its satellite array into a cliff. Over the railings, it was a long way down. Aite's air was fresh, and there was a nice breeze going, but that breeze would make calculating sniper shots tricky. Up ahead, there was a trio of bridges to the base of the satellite—a massive plate the size of Normandy at least. It was at least three stories above its base, and the base was a building all its own. Probably held an awful lot of geth.

"Attention: Satellite broadcast window is opening soon," the automated messaging system told them. "All upload data must be approved by your department supervisor."

On colony worlds like this, satellite arrays like this one were the only way to get messages out of the system. The planetary satellite that boosted intersystemic communications would only be available to transmit whenever it was within range of the dish, so the frequency of communications would depend on the satellite's orbit. Colonists or scientists with an array like this would save up messages to their homeworlds, their sponsors, or whoever and transmit as they could. Sometimes, there was too much information to transmit within the broadcast window. Communications specialists had to prioritize. Garrus had seen a couple short stints on colony worlds in his time with the fleet before C-Sec. He was glad he'd never been ground-bound in places like this for long. He'd usually had a shore leave someplace civilized every few weeks where he could send a message without the wait or deprioritization. He'd been a kid back then. It would've been hard to go too long without a message back to Mom and Sol, or even to Dad on the Citadel.

Of course, they weren't worried about some Cerberus rookie's messages to his girlfriend, his parents, and all his friends back home drowning out the scientific data to the Illusive Man today. If there are any rookies still left alive.

Shepard was looking through the storage rooms of the tram station, making sure their corners were clear and the tram was shut down in case reinforcements arrived to the main body of the installation, when Garrus saw the real trouble coming down the bridge. "To the right!" he called.

One of the incoming geth troopers was down before he'd finished saying it, and Legion was reloading a new heat sink into its Widow. Garrus shoved aside the jealousy over why the geth had a repeat of Shepard's gun—and you don't—to disable the destroyer's flamethrower tank. Shepard followed up with two pistol shots, just to be safe, and they watched the flaming remnants of the destroyer fall down into the valley below.

"Hope it hits the river or the rocks. Last thing I want is to start a brush fire on this planet, even if it's not likely to reach us here." Shepard remarked.

"Shepard-Commander, the distress signal received by the Illusive Man originated in this tram station," Legion told them, pointing. "There."

Shepard stepped into the storage room the geth indicated and walked up to the only terminal in the room. A yellow light flashed on the console. She hit a button, and a recording played. "This is Project Overlord with an emergency message to Cerberus Command. We've experienced a catastrophic security failure and are requesting assistance—" there was a static noise over the recording, then Archer's voice continued, now sounding angry as well as panicked. "What do you mean, our outgoing comms are jammed?! How can it do that?!"

The recording cut off.

Shepard pursed her lips. "Let's get to the dish."

Three more geth attacked on the bridges to the base of the satellite array. There was a tense couple of seconds where they were completely exposed, but Legion was able to seize control of one of the hacked platforms while Garrus and Shepard wreaked havoc with the electronics of the others, and then they were over, into the next building, and in real trouble.

The Cerberus automated messaging reported again that the broadcast window was opening soon as they charged into a room with no fewer than twelve hacked enemy units. There was machinery and raised cable connections running through metal casings all around the ground floor to use for cover, or they would have been dead in seconds. There were two more destroyers, several stealth units, as well as one of those primes Legion had warned them about—more tech than their three omni-tools could compete with all at once, with the seconds ticking down till whatever was wrong here could upload itself offworld to infect someplace else.

"Stay together! Don't let them pin any one of us down!" Shepard called.

"Watch the hunters! Don't let them get around us!" Garrus added.

"If you would help us with the shielding on the prime unit, Garrus-Vakarian, we can destabilize their attack," Legion said as calmly as if the three of them had been discussing calibrations on the Thanix.

"Do it," Shepard seconded. "I'll cover us." She'd pulled out the M-77 and was firing her own rockets back at the other troopers in between shots at the destroyers; they'd already discovered blowing up the tanks on the flamethrowers was effective crowd control.

Garrus and their own unhackable synthetic collective worked on bringing the shields down on the prime, making it susceptible to software attacks. Prime shielding was stronger than the stuff on the smaller, simpler units. Took more than one attempt to overload it and bring it down. Twice, Garrus had to break off the attack on the prime to handle hunters that got too close with his omni-blade. He saw Shepard take a couple bad hits to her shields from trooper crossfire. The room was precisely the wrong type of shape for this kind of firefight. It was too round, with too many ways for the geth to get around them. There were too many avenues to cover. There was a stairwell leading up to the satellite dish itself that gave some of the troopers the high ground; a storage area or something leading off to the right where reinforcements were starting to appear. The whole ground was just bad. They were effectively in a foxhole behind some rebar and a power junction, crouching down and taking potshots and fending off geth from every side.

"It's no good," Shepard called over the gunfire. "If we don't get out from this position, we won't be able to take down enough of them before they take us! How many in the storage area?"

"Two platforms . . ."

"Reading two units," Legion and Garrus answered at the same time. Shepard nodded.

"I got it. Stay on the prime. Take it out!"

She cloaked and vanished, and Garrus's infrared saw her, sprinting for the storage area, folding up the Locust and unfolding the Widow.

His shield diagnostics said his shields were up to 92 percent again, and he leaned out of cover into the minigun fire from the prime and the airspace open to the units on the stairs. He let loose another overload program.

"Enemy shields disabled," Legion reported. "Rerouting friend-or-foe identifier."

The Widow cracked out once, twice across the room, and suddenly there was a break on the enemy's right flank. Half of the remainder was turning in confusion to address the prime that had just opened fire on their ranks, and another third was trying to maneuver around to face the new threat from their left, Garrus and Legion's right.

"Nice one!" Garrus crowed. He moved along the rebar, took aim, and fired, and one of the snipers above exploded and fell to the ground floor. "Let's clean it up!"

"Affirmative," Legion replied, taking three pistol shots to nearby units. Each found its mark in a trooper already trying to fight the prime. Garrus hit the prime itself with another overload; ordinary geth units could usually only be taken over for a few seconds. He didn't know if compromised ones would do better or worse, but he didn't intend to wait around and find out. Shepard seemed to have the same idea. Another two rockets hit from her side of the room, and the prime went down.

There were about four left after that, and in another forty-five seconds, there weren't any. At least not on their current level.

"Let's head up," Shepard said, joining them from where she'd taken position in the storage room. "They were trying to keep us out of the dish. Didn't Archer say we needed to take down the antennae there?"

"Didn't our friend here say there was more than one prime in the building?" Garrus said in the same style.

Shepard didn't like that, but there was nothing for it. "We'll be careful. But I don't think we have a lot of time to spare." She looked like she was thinking, then she shot an apologetic glance at Garrus. "Should've brought down Tali and a couple of others, but since we didn't—"

"We'll take point," Garrus finished. "You can take out the antennae faster alone than the three of us could together." He shot a glance at Legion as the three of them climbed the stairs. "Any idea of how many are up there?"

"Our systems are picking up six remaining platforms, Garrus-Vakarian. Of those six, four are elite combat models. Two are prime control units."

Garrus hummed. "Find the rebar and support structures and hope for the best. You take the left?"

"Yes, Garrus-Vakarian."

"You need to destroy the support struts," Archer told them over the radio. "They have their own capacitors. Try blowing them up."

"Well. We love some old-fashioned sabotage," Garrus murmured, as they reached the top of the stairs and came out into the open air again. He heard the whoosh of a flamethrower behind them and the roar of a minigun. Shepard vanished. Legion sprinted left, and Garrus sprinted right, keeping low, looking out for the metal support beams along the ribs of the satellite dish.

Next tour, I get an M-920. Or a rocket launcher. At least a Widow.

He caught the shimmer in the air, colder than Shepard ran on the IF. He reached out, stabbed down with his omni-tool, and fired a three-shot burst into the central processing unit just in case. Hit the floor of the satellite dish as the prime eight meters ahead and to his left fired his direction. Explosions bloomed on his sensors—he didn't know which was a support strut and which was Legion, dealing with a destroyer back behind him, but metal squealed and shrieked around him, and the plating beneath him quaked in protest. The whole dish tilted, and Garrus swore.

Why, why, why is nothing ever easy?!

Fortunately, he wasn't the only one thrown by the destruction of the first support—ahead, the prime had staggered. It wasn't firing. Garrus hit it with an overload, fired a burst from the Mattock on instinct. Two shots missed. The other four hit, pocking the prime's plating and sending up sparks. Garrus steadied himself, crouched beside a maintenance walkway, aimed, and fired. The prime's eerie green central processor went out, and Garrus saw its shields were down. He fired a third time and saw it go down.

The dish rocked again. Garrus fell hard on his right leg this time, sprawling at the force of the explosion of the second support strut.

Shepard's voice sounded over his radio. "Back to the stairway, now!"

Garrus climbed to his feet, feeling the tremors of the satellite dish, the aftershocks of the capacitor explosions still reverberating through his armor, in his bones. He began a tactical retreat, taking out a destroyer as he moved.

Legion's voice reported another of its targets eliminated. Garrus had his first foot on the metal of the stairway down when the third explosion hit, and he saw it ripple across the satellite dish, saw the plating begin to buckle, and heard Shepard breathe into the radio.

"You've gotta be kidding . . . Move! The whole thing's giving way!"

He didn't know where she was—IR was just a wall of red and orange from the pyrotechnics happening at the dish antennae, the twisted wreckage of the dish supports. He saw Legion with his other eye, leaping toward him, leaping toward where he stood on the stair, felt the stair itself starting to shake and quiver.

"Move it, Garrus!" a human voice repeated, and this time he heard it with his ears as well as through the radio, and he listened.

The three of them jumped off the landing on what would be the second story of the building, and when they hit, sending jolts through their legs and twisting Legion's already-damaged leg plating—when they hit, they just kept running.

The collapse of Cerberus's satellite dish was a roar behind them, sending dust and sparks and cement down all around. They cleared the ground floor right as it was buried.

Garrus stood on the tram station bridge, staring back at the rising smoke where the Cerberus station satellite dish had once stood. "So. I guess we're taking the 'bring-the-whole-cell-down-around-their-ears option."


Niels made a run to Normandy to pick up half the combat team for a clean-up and security detail at the communications base. Lawson and Taylor were coordinating corpse retrieval, trying to identify the operatives who had died here before they'd arrived. Some had been buried in the rubble from the collapsing dish. Some had been dead too long. And they couldn't risk cross-referencing any of the digital means of identification with the base computers. Legion and EDI were working together, trying to establish a secure closed network. Their radios were probably safe. But logging into the Cerberus systems? The VI or AI or whatever they'd set loose here had taken over the geth, murdered everyone here, and had been trying to upload its programming across the galaxy. It was in the cameras, any logs still attached to the project network. Everything. It'd be a while before they figured out just how much of the technology had been infected.

They had the bodies lined up on a clear stretch of floor when Archer came out. They had found eight so far.

Eight.

Archer came out of some closet. His lab coat was wrinkled. His eyes had gray-purple shadows underneath, and his skin had the waxy, unhealthy look of a human who hadn't had enough to eat or drink lately. Shepard called for rations as soon as she saw him, but she wasn't happy.

"Doctor, I think you better tell me what the hell is going on down here."

He tried to smile, and he didn't meet her eyes. "Man's reach exceeding his grasp. Come on, I'll explain."

Shepard signaled. "Lawson, Taylor, Vakarian, with me. Massani, Doctor Solus, stay on the clean-up. Legion, keep working security with Tali and EDI back on Normandy."

Garrus walked up with Jacob and Miranda, and the four of them followed Archer into the station's control room.

Archer took them in. "Ah. Operative Lawson, Operative Taylor. I'm familiar with your work. I'm afraid I don't know your friend, however. Forgive me, Commander—your operation seems more . . . varied than others that I've seen."

Shepard folded her arms over her chest. "You may know him better than you think. This is Garrus Vakarian. He's been my colleague on several of my better-known operations since '83. In and outside of Cerberus. We're now outside."

Archer's eyes slid to Lawson. "It's as the commander says, Gavin," Miranda said. "Still. We had your coordinates and intelligence you'd been having problems. Do you want to tell us why you have live, hostile geth and a malignant VI down here? Your entire cell seems to be dead or MIA."

"Yes, I should thank you for your intervention. Unfortunately, I'm afraid all you've done is to buy us some time, and probably not much of that. This isn't over." Archer walked along the consoles, gesturing to the tech and the buildings as a whole. "This is Project Overlord, an attempt to gain influence over the geth by interfacing a human mind with a VI. The results have been . . . less than satisfactory."

Garrus looked out a window over the console. The professor was zipping a body bag over one of the more identifiable bodies. "I'd hate to see what you call a disaster."

"You can't dismiss the entire project," Archer protested. "We did succeed—at least partially. My brother, David, volunteered to serve as a test subject, but his mind couldn't handle the VI connection. He's like a virus now, infecting our networks and seizing control of any technology he finds. It's why you had to destroy the dish. Imagine if his program got off-world."

That was the he Archer had referred to then, Garrus thought.

"What's the worst-case scenario?" Taylor asked.

Archer looked back at them. "A technological apocalypse. Every machine, every weapon, every computer could be turned against us. If he hit the extranet, who knows where it would end?"

"How does he take control of electronics?" Shepard wanted to know.

Archer shrugged. "This is a hybrid intelligence the likes of which I've never seen. I don't know where the man ends and the machine begins."

Typical Cerberus. The effectiveness of the mission against the Collectors had been an aberration, and that was probably down to Shepard. Most of the operations he'd seen ended up like this: with some variation of scientific disaster and a lot of people dead. But this was worse, because now they'd created not just an evil AI but what by all measures appeard to be a crazy one. It's like they've never seen a synthetic horror vid in their lives. "You should've considered that before you started the experiment," he muttered.

Archer tensed and scowled. His eyes flashed. "We couldn't be expected to account for every outcome. Certainly not the abomination David has become. Dav—the VI has fortified itself in the main laboratory at Atlas Station. It's in lockdown now. To enter, you need to manually override security from our facilities in the Prometheus and Vulcan stations."

Shepard examined the consoles in the lab. "How does the lockdown work?" she asked.

"It's a failsafe procedure in the event of an emergency," Archer explained. "Normally, all three project leads have to agree to cancel the lockdown." His hand passed over his face and massaged his temples, but then he turned a dial and pulled out a lever, and an indicator on the holographic monitor over the console turned green. "I'm the only one left now. I can give my authorization, but you'll have to manually reset the other two yourself."

Shepard took an image of the lever with her omni-tool and hummed. "And what happens if I have to kill your brother?" she asked, catching Archer's eye.

Archer closed his eyes and didn't answer for a moment. Finally, he said, "Let's just hope it doesn't come to that." He swallowed, opened his eyes, and nodded at Legion down below. "Now let me ask you a question: Is your friend down there going to be a problem?"

Shepard shook her head. "That platform is running a network of geth more complex and sophisticated than anything we've seen yet. It was hacking the others right along with me to take them down, and our tech is protected by an additional security system designed specifically for cyberwarfare. Nevertheless, now I've seen the situation, I'd like Legion to help you secure all technology here. Whatever's happened at your other bases, I want this one stable. I'll press on to the other stations with squadmates running less tech. Tell me about Vulcan and Prometheus stations."

Archer pulled up an aerial map of the area and showed them the locations of the three other stations. First, he indicated an installation alongside the western ridge of the mountain. "Vulcan Station is our geothermal plant, generating power for the four outposts." He pointed next to a location in the valley to the immediate east. "Prometheus Station is a crashed geth ship full of dormant machines. We used them for our experiments."

If everyone else in the project was dead or nonresponsive, they would have had problems at both stations, Garrus thought. He could imagine all sorts of environmental issues at the power plant, and who knew how many geth like the ones here the VI had hacked at Prometheus Station?

"What happens on this station?" Shepard asked.

"This is Hermes Station, our communications uplink with the wider galaxy," Archer explained. "If you hadn't destroyed the dish in time, the outcome would have been catastrophic."

Lawson looked sour; Taylor serious. Garrus exchanged a look with Shepard, who just looked grim. "And Atlas Station?"

"Atlas Station is the main laboratory where our VI experiments take place. It's your final goal once you've overridden the lockdown. It's also where my brother became . . . something else."

"Tell me about it. What were you trying to do?" Shepard asked

"We wanted to turn the geth's religious impulse into a weapon," Archer explained. "When we saw them following Saren, we realized they could be swayed, and if a proper figurehead was created—a virus with a face, if you will—the geth might be controlled."

"Because weaponizing religion has historically had good outcomes," Shepard muttered, expression dark.

"It's an ambitious project," Lawson said, more diplomatically.

"It would be the perfect weapon," Archer said, and damn it if he didn't sound wistful. "Victory without casualties. We could avoid war with the geth altogether. That was the plan, anyway."

"What went wrong with the experiment, Doctor?" Lawson asked.

Archer shrugged. "David volunteered to interface with the VI to give it genuine consciousness. Theoretically, it should have been safe, but with artificial intelligence, there's no such thing as safe."

"Then you shouldn't have attempted it," Shepard snapped. She was staring down at the bodies below, the waste of it all.

"And what if you'd never attempted to find the Reapers, Commander Shepard? Where would the galaxy be then? Sometimes you have to ignore the risks," Archer replied.

Shepard pushed herself up off from where she had been leaning against the console. She took two steps around, looked Archer in the face, then to Taylor and Lawson. The disgust practically rolled off of her, and Garrus saw her swallow it for the sake of the others. What had happened here spoke for itself. Shepard was better off letting Lawson and Taylor take it in for themselves than giving Archer a lecture about it.

"We can't trust Cerberus's ground vehicles—only the Hammerhead," she said. "But we also can't leave any of the stations unmanned until we've shut down the VI at Atlas. That means this is going to take a while. We'll leave the bulk of the team here; keeping that thing out of whatever equipment it can use in this station will still be the priority. We'll leave two-man watch teams at both of the other bases once we've cleared them and keep Caleb on constant standby. I want Legion and Jack here throughout."

Legion to keep the VI out of the station they'd already taken, Garrus understood, and Jack to shut the whole thing down if they ended up needing that. He nodded.

"Mr. Taylor, Miranda, I want you back on the casualties for now. I may be back for one or both of you. For now, Garrus, I want us to take Massani, Goto, and the professor and see what we can find at Vulcan Station."

"Leaving Zaeed and Kasumi back once we clear?" Garrus guessed.

"Yes," Shepard agreed. "I want the professor's assistance in case we find any wounded, or with corpse retrieval if we don't. Zaeed and Kasumi should be able to hold the geothermal plant once we've shut down any compromised tech and hit the override. We'll come back and get Tali for the geth ship. Maybe some of the others, depending on what we find at Vulcan Station. But I want one or both of you at Atlas with us," she finished, looking from Taylor to Lawson.

"Understood, Commander," Taylor said. "We'll shut it down."

"The other stations are all within driving distance," Archer told them. "Best of luck, Commander."

Shepard shot one last look at Archer over her shoulder, and the four of them left the communications hub. "Keep an eye on him," she murmured to Taylor.

"Aye-aye, Commander," Taylor agreed. "Look, I understand your wanting to report this. This is a wild kind of shitstorm."

"I don't know. Transforming a colony into husks for science, trying to turn the rachni into tame war beasts, trying to set up a cult for the geth with a human-VI fusion. Seems on-brand to me."

Lawson frowned. "This is really how you see us? Cerberus. This is what you've always seen?"

Shepard glanced at Lawson. "You're probably the first competent Cerberus scientist I'd ever met or heard of," she replied. "But Project Lazarus still went down in flames, didn't it? On a couple different fronts."

"That was diff—" Lawson broke off in the middle of her protest. She looked hard at Shepard, then across the room at the professor closing the eyes on a corpse while Legion signaled to EDI from the center of the floor.

"Mordin," Shepard called. "Kasumi, Zaeed. Grab your gear. We've got to go."