AUTHOR'S NOTE: Hey guys! Just a quick thing to tell y'all about. In this chapter you'll see a pair of C-Sec officers, a Turian woman and a Human male. This is a cameo of a story from a friend of mine, that, despite its name, is actually extremely wholesome and very well made. You can't find it on however, and links here just don't work. So, go to Archive of Our Own, and look for "C-Sex." He's got 2 stories about them. One early in their career, and one just after the citadel coup. So, go say hi to Bryoche!
Garrus Vakarian
None of my old contacts on Omega have been able to pick up the trail, and I wasn't exactly expecting them to be able to. Illium could have had a lead, but the only contact I have there is Liara, and I've checked with her already.
The closest thing to a Turian matching his description was a female with the same colony markings. He may have gone barefaced, but those just attract more attention. It's not impossible, but it could be a hard trail to pick up. And considering that a return to any Turian world would need heavy documentation, he's spent so much of his life in Terminus. Assuming that's even true. But at the Citadel, I can probably find something. Since his accounts were all emptied on Omega, he has the credits to bribe an official to skimp on some of the documentation. But he'd still show up on the security cams in immigration. If I can confirm he's on the station, I can use my old network of contacts to narrow it down to the bastard himself. And that's why I was here in the C-Sec headquarters. A few familiar faces, but plenty of new ones, and more humans than back when I served.
Who I needed to see was in the surveillance division. The guy I'd go to back in the day to start a good deal of my cases by seeing if he could pick up any and all surveillance related to the crime or help search for the suspect. And if we ever encountered red-tape, he'd go home sick for the day, and from the privacy of his home terminal, and find the private security camera footage we couldn't get access to. I could never put it into a report, but it gets me an ID and generally something I can look into. He'll help me out.
Normally I wouldn't have bothered checking the directory to find him, I know C-Sec like the point of my talon, after all. But it has been two years. Maybe he got a promotion, maybe he got a new office. As it turned out, I was just going the same way I had been in the past, but his title was different now. No longer another Surveillance officer, but now, an Overwatch Lieutenant. He always thought the title was weird, but it's standard in the Hierarchy.
Ah. there it is. Nelson Waring.
I walked up to his door and gave it a knock.
"Come in," he responded the slight hint of aging in his voice was a bit more prominent. He's in his fifties, now. Still young these days, but there's still a sign, if small, of getting old. I opened the door to see the old, dark-skinned man sitting at his desk, working on… some report, or other.
He looked up and gave a double take before grinning.
"Garrus! Long time no see!" He gestured at the chair on the other side of his desk and we shook hands as I sat. "It's good to see you, but I know that look. You're here with a purpose. I'd ask what you've been up to, but this is probably related. What can big brother do for you?" He and a few of the other Human officers were fond of calling him that. I never understood why they just told me it was just something from older Human media.
"Long story, but, yes. It is," I answered. He always was good at reading people. One of the reason's he works Surveillance. "I'm looking for someone. They betrayed me. Nearly got me killed, and got my entire team killed." The cheerfulness on Nelson's face faded to seriousness.
"Where from? And what was the team?"
"Omega. We were vigilantes, of a kind. Trying to take down the gangs and help out the innocents."
"I'll do everything I can, but since this isn't an official expedition, I am going to be limited."
"That's not the first time," I remarked. He allowed a smirk.
"True. Give me an image, a name. Anything that I can run through the VI's search." My omni-tool lit up with a folder of images of Sidonis, of his head, his body, as well as video clips from ops with audio from him so that his voice can be narrowed down if possible. "Well, there's no shortage here. But I guess working with someone for two years can give you a lot to work with here. I'll run this through immigration security right away, searching within…?"
"The month and a half."
"Right, I'll just do two months. I'll filter out the Turian space immigration, but I'll keep everything else open. No clue where he decided to arrive at the station from." I nodded in response and just waited. Even with all the high tech VI's working the station, they had a lot to sift through, and it took ten minutes for the search to finish.
"Here we are. Got a facial recognition narrowed down to just one individual, it's not confused between any others. Going by the name of Vipius Sullin. Came in on a shuttle from Elysium, and has a curiously and absolutely coincidentally vague documentation. I'll be sure to file an investigation request on the officer who oversaw him for bribery," Nelson remarked on the side. "He came in through Zakera ward. I'd send in the order to some of the surveillance officers to spread the net, but I'd need this to be an official investigation. So, what I'm going to do instead, is this. I know an officer in Zakera, she and her partner investigate narcotics and smuggling. Your old friend here would be looking for someone right up their alley to get him under the radar, I'm sure. I think they're on break, but I'll give 'em a call right now." Nelson typed at his terminal, I stood and walked behind him to watch. In a sign of good discipline, the officer, despite being on break, answered quickly. The vidcom showed a female Turian with red colony markings, and surprisingly, they were the same as my own. She had her right arm resting on the table so that the omni-tool would show her. She was still in uniform and sitting in the booth at a restaurant. Just at the end of frame on the right was a shoulder, I believe Human. She had a cup of… dextro noodles in front of her, a spoon resting inside the cup.
"Nelson? What do you need?" She asked. Another voice, definitely a male human, her partner, I'd assume, spoke up, and then leaned into frame. A short beard, blue eyes, and hair that was somewhere between red and brown, but definitely closer to brown.
"Hey! Come on, Nelly! We're on break," he muffled, still chewing a bite of whatever he's eating, having pushed it to the side of his mouth, as Humans can, and with a smirk on his face. The Turian just gave him a sideways glance.
"Well, I had a question regarding some information on smugglers of the sapient variety, but I see you're busy with your boy-toy. Want me to call back?" Ah. Partners in more than one way, or just teasing?
"Nelson, we-" she stopped herself, mandible twitching. "Never mind," she sighed, as the human tried, and failed to suppress a chuckle. She ignored it. So, maybe not so much teasing as it is truthful. "What do you need to know?"
"Got an old friend tracking down a fugitive from Omega. Turian, male, not barefaced. Came into Zakera's immigration from Elysium. Don't expect you to have anything on the guy himself, but where he might have gone."
"That's an easy one. Fade. He does regular smuggling but knows how to make people disappear if they want him to. I'm going to bet your friend's friend went to him. We'd be going after Fade and digging more up on him if we weren't working on this Krogan drug cartel. I'll send contact information on someone who can arrange a meeting. Anything else?" Nelson glanced up at me and I shook my head to the side.
"No, that's all. Thanks."
"Oh, hey, waiter? Another Fine Turian Brandy for the Fine Turian lady here!" the human called out with mischief in his voice. Her mandible twitched and flexed again. she shook her head and politely excused herself, her mouth just barely noticeably curving into a slight grin, despite her brow plates furrowed in a frown., which was immediately followed by the contact information for someone called Wisp.
"Thanks, Nelson. This helps a lot."
"Anytime, Garrus. Happy hunting." I nodded in reply and left his office. As I was making my way back out of HQ, I studied the information on this, Wisp. One of Fade's underlings. Shifts through offers that aren't worthwhile and gives the good ones to Fade. Not immune to bribery. Or threats. Keeping him in play so that they can strong-arm their way to Fade when they can focus on him. Let's wait until we're out of HQ to send the message. Five minutes of walking and elevators later, I was back on the Presidium. I raised my Omni-tool to send a message, and just as I had begun typing, my Omni-tool was pinged by an alert. Urgent.
Immediate recall. All hands return to Normandy immediately. Collector ship dead in space.
Damn it. Damn it, why now? I'm so close, why now? I growled quietly in frustration but got it under control. If a Collector ship is dead in space, it's big. Probably the one from Horizon. It would have no doubt made it to the Omega-4 by now, so it must have been sitting in space for a while, and we need to be there before it gets some… Collector retrieval party.
Stay here, find Sidonis. Kill him.
No, no, I shook my head. I can't just abandon Shepard. And most certainly not for something this dangerous. Not something that could be a trap.
And if Sidonis gets away again?
I took a deep breath. I'll find him. He can't hide. And when I do, I'll have Shepard at my side. He can't escape the both of us.
Commander John Shepard
I didn't like it. We had no choice but to investigate, but I didn't like it. Call it a gut feeling. TIM had called up the Normandy to tell us that a Turian patrol sent a distress call about encountering a Collector Ship in the Eagle Nebula, outside the bounds of the Korlus system in open space.
According to the distress, the ships had received catastrophic damage but managed to cripple the Collector vessel. The goal here is to board and gather intel, particularly anything about how to get to their home world. Side objective to learn what they're doing to the Colonists.
Why do I have a bad feeling about this? A Turian border patrol would have a damn hard time against a Collector vessel. True, the report says the hull is intact while the systems are offline, but it would have to be the same ship that was at Horizon. And it's been a while since then, and the ship would have passed by Omega-4 by the time it got to the Eagle Nebula. So either they'd have just ignored what damage they sustained to go after more colonies, or they're using themselves as bait. And if this is all a trap, the last place I want to be when it's sprung is in the middle of a Collector ship.
TIM himself admitted that it will no doubt be a dangerous mission, but he seemed strangely adamant that the situation was legitimate. At least it's only two relay jumps to the Eagle Nebula, and we can make it there in just a few hours. Considering this wasn't a standard ground op, I'm throwing in a few more boots on the ground. Tali, unfortunately, is still not cleared for combat, despite her arguments, and is still close on getting to designing a working prototype shield generator, and Kasumi needs a bit longer to recover, I'd say.
That means Garrus, obviously, is on the ground with me. But also, Samara, Thane, Jack, Grunt, Zaeed, Miranda, and Jacob. I want all biotics on deck, our living tanks, and my right-hand man. While he and I aren't as good at hacking as Tali or Kasumi, with EDI's help we should be able to handle it.
As everyone was doing the final checks to their gear before we boarded the shuttle, just waiting to exit FTL, make sure the area around the Collector ship is safe, and then board, I noticed that Garrus was… off. Agitated. I'll need to check in on him after this.
In the meantime, I was getting updates from Joker and EDI. When we had exited through the relay, we ran a scan in the direction of the coordinates the ship should be. There was a faint, but still-present strange energy signature right in that direction. So, it's not improbable for the Turians to have stumbled upon it when seeing the strange signature. Obviously, we could get no updates while in FTL, but we exited just outside the long-range combat distance. No visual on the ship, unless you count a faint speck, but sensors were able to confirm its presence, an intact hull, and the wreckage of a Turian patrol group. The Collector ship had minimal emissions, and the infrared scanners suggest most everything inside is offline, and the thrusters are all cold. Even in space, the heat from thrusters that large wouldn't die away for one or two hours.
So not only are we going to need to fully seal our suits in case they try to vent us, but because it's likely their life support is offline. Additionally, EDI confirmed the drive core was offline, so we'll likely be working without gravity either. At least on the plus side, EDI found an opening we could use to land the shuttle. On the downside, it was the only opening, and that made it all the more sketchy. The Normandy would remain to wait with the bridge, facing open space, but keeping approximately 20 seconds of shuttle travel between the Normandy's cargo bay, and the opening in the hull. The shuttle took off and landed. Hm, considering it's just open, no airlock, there is certainly no atmosphere. But there is gravity, if relatively faint.
Strangely, the 'opening' in the hull sort of… extended beyond the hull itself, like an external landing pad. Well, at least if things do start going wrong, they can't close a door on the shuttle. We disembarked. The architecture within seemed… organic, yet mixed with smooth, utilitarian metal supports and doorframes. All the metalwork was entirely unremarkable, just shiny and smooth, nothing more. But the organic work, whatever material it is, and considering how insectoid the Collectors are, it's like a hive. Considering the next chamber that, in theory, would have been the other side of an airlock, had some form of… strange sacs on the ceiling, that only reinforced the comparison.
"Time to squash some bugs, Shepard?" Grunt asked.
"If we see em," I answered.
"Shepard," EDI chimed in as we moved inwards. "I have compared this vessel's EM profile to that of other known Collector vessels. This is the same you encountered on Horizon."
"Think we might be able to rescue some Colonists?" Garrus asked.
"If we can, but we aren't equipped for a rescue mission. Still. EDI, keep the other shuttle on standby, as well as the others of the ground team, and a security team of the ship's security and marines. If we have civvies to escort, we'll need the help."
"At once, Shepard." We kept moving, some of the organic hive-like structures growing and spreading like boils or some kind of infection over metal support beams. We passed a few empty stasis pods, but that was all. Until we stumbled upon a pile of decrepit, dismembered, decayed bodies suffering from exposure from the vacuum, and by the looks of it… something else. They almost looked partially liquified. Like this was less of a pile of bodies we were staring at, and more of some kind of amalgamation of bodies mushed together. I remembered playing Halo when I was young, one classic game in an old emulator console with hundreds, and compared it to the proto-gravemind.
"Jesus…" I murmured.
"What were they doing to them?" Miranda questioned, nearly sounding shaken. No one seemed to have an answer, so I pulled up a video feed and sent it to Mordin.
"Professor? Any idea what we're looking at here?"
"A moment." The Salarian was quiet as he studied the scene. "Markings on the bodies suggest victims either injected with compound or had bodily fluids drawn. Likely both. Exposure to acidic compound possible considering deformation of bodies. Hypothesize failed test subjects. Perhaps Collector experiments require specific markers in genetic code that did not match victims here. Tossed aside."
"Keelah, what did they do to them?" I heard Lia ask on the other end.
"Better off not seeing. Still civilian, still young. Don't yet approach such acts as Salarian, or soldier, would," Mordin answered her. The comm ended.
"As twisted as this sounds, I wouldn't be surprised if these were the lucky ones," I uttered.
"Yeah, living as a test subject kinda fucking sucks. I'd know," Jack remarked, shooting a glare at Miranda. I admit, my blood was boiling a bit at the sight. I couldn't help but think what else they're doing to people further in.
If that's what the failed subjects look like, the ones undergoing more testing probably would make the monstrous experiments at Auschwitz look tame. Moving on, we passed more bodies, but most were still inside opened stasis pods, like they were abandoned in the middle of being moved. They were all obviously dead, possibly by vacuum exposure, but, it's not impossible they died before then either.
Then came a lab of some sort. Bathed in a low, light blue light from behind the lab tables. One with a collector corpse, two with stasis pods, and upon closer inspection one of the pods had another dead Collector. There was a console still with power besides the one in a stasis pod, and… how the fuck can I read that display? I can't really make a whole lot of sense of it, but... I can. Comparing genetic sequences, mostly. I interfaced my Omni-tool with the terminal to get EDI access. Good thing at least some aspects of Collector tech appear to be wireless.
"Were they experimenting on one of their own?" Garrus asked, studying both Collector corpses.
"Analyzing data, Shepard," EDI stated. A moment later, she continued. "The Collectors were running baseline genetic comparisons between their species and humanity. Their motivations are not revealed, but the preliminary results reveal something remarkable. It is a quad-strand genetic structure like those gathered from Prothean ruins. The only other race known to possess this trait. Comparing from ancient busts and paintings on Thessia, the Collectors bare striking resemblances, but heavily modified both genetically and cybernetically."
"That's why I could read the monitor, and understand that glowing bastard on Horizon!" I exclaimed. It's all the Cipher! The Reapers didn't wipe out the poor bastards, but turned them into some kind of abominable slave race!" I exclaimed.
"Wait, wait, wait, the fuck?" Joker butted in. "So not only are the long thought extinct bugs alive, but Saren's entire plan was to turn us into the next batch of these things?"
"They will fall all the same, as they have before," Samara stated in her usual stoic tone.
"Fair enough. And we'll be putting them out of their misery," Garrus added. I took a breath and shook my head. That gut feeling is only getting worse.
"Let's get moving. We can freak out more about this later on the ship." Jack and Grunt just huffed, and we moved on. Past rows of more stasis pods, to a room where the ceiling was full of them, and some kind of tunnel that extremely resembled a structure in a hive was filled with even more.
"I detect no signs of life in the pods, Shepard. Either these ones are empty, or the colonists within have died without the external life support.
Goddamnit. Goddamnit all.
"Shall I order the second team to stand down?"
"No, not yet. Either we'll find survivors further in, or we'll need the backup to escape," I answered, trying to calm myself. The gut feeling getting more intense. It's like it's all been planted here to unnerve me. Piss me off so that I might do something stupid. Now, we were moving upwards up a ramp, organic growths still appearing to have spread like cancer.
"Commander," Joker piped up on comms. "You gotta hear this. On a hunch, I asked EDI to run another analysis on the ship. Long story short? This ship's EM is identical to the fucker that blew up the original Normandy."
"Not a coincidence. Absolutely not a coincidence," I grumbled. "Triple check all systems so that the Normandy can bug out on a hair trigger. Scan as best you can for Collectors waiting to ambush. This has got to be a fucking trap."
"So, are we leaving?" Jack asked. I stopped as I debated with myself for a brief moment. We need that intel, we've got Mordin's countermeasure, and we're a biotic powerhouse of a squad right now. If tech gets in our way, we have an AI on our side.
"Tighten formation, watch all angles and above. We need this damned intel." The squad followed suit, and we kept moving up the ramp. At the end, it turned right into an absolutely massive corridor that probably spans the length of the ship. Along the walls and spires lining it? Pods. Nothing but pods.
"They could take every Human in the Terminus systems and still have more empty pods," Thane stated.
"My god, they're going to target Earth," Miranda murmured.
"And what makes you think they're going to stop there?" I questioned, turning my head back at her. A chill ran down my spine, my gut just screaming to get the hell out of here, blow this ship to kingdom come. We just… had to keep moving. And finally, we had something to work with.
On a kind of metal platform surrounded by tubes with some sort of viscous yellow fluid, there was a console with a flickering green light. It was five hexagons in an X pattern, and it seemed like… at least a safer bet than the experiment terminal that this should get us into the ship's systems for EDI's data mine. With everyone on the platform, I began the uplink.
"Data mine in progress, Shepard," the AI answered as lists of files flew past my display. I couldn't keep track of any of them. Then static, an alert on the display.
"Initiating reset," the voice of Harbinger echoed.
"Uh… that can't be good," Joker remarked as the display blinked out, both on the console and my Omni-tool. There was a mechanical whirring inside the tubes beside us, it seemed like some kind of tech had raised. I couldn't tell what they were, and was not about to devote time or focus on finding out.
"We're fine on this end. Status report, now!" I exclaimed.
"Major power surge. Everything went dark but we're back up and running now. Systems steady, still ready to bug out," Joker explained. Thank fuck.
"I was successful in diverting a majority of the overload to non-critical systems." Well. Thank fuck for EDI.
"Defensive positions, now," I ordered. The trap has been sprung. Unfortunately, before anyone could take cover on the rims of the platform, it whirred and slowly spun up in the air. "EDI?"
"I am struggling to maintain the connection. I am not alone in the system." The platform came to an abrupt halt, throwing Jack and Zaeed to their backs on the ground. Samara and Garrus helped them up while everyone else dispersed to cover as best they could. It was going to be tight, and more platforms with Collector troops were inbound.
Shit.