IMPORTANT AUTHOR'S NOTE! PLEASE READ! : Right, so, I had planned for this to be an actually properly sized chapter. Take a good sized chunk of Overlord with it. But hardware is making it difficult for me. So all the way since I started writing Into the Great Unknown, back in 2017, I've been writing these Mass Effect novelizations (the parts that relate to in game at least) with my Xbox on and with the game at the scene. Let's me describe the environment better, decide if the dialogue that naturally happens fits, the tone and everything of it, character appearances, also the numbers of hostiles, though that hasn't stopped me from free handing combat a little in case enemy placement wouldn't actually make sense for whatever reason. I figure you guys get that. The problem: The xbox is wearing down on me. This process is getting more of a hassle and I'm getting tired of it. But hey, don't worry too much.

SOLUTION: I have a main solution that's going to be happening regardless, and a little branch I could explore depending on what you guys think. First: I've already got a pretty good quality PC that I play everything else on now anyways. And I already own the trilogy, dlcs, so on so forth as well. Plus, mods. I've mentioned before how I wanted to see if some ME3 mods might be decent enough to incorporate from the reputations I've heard of them. So I'll be trying to bulldoze through ME1, but we all know the kind of slog that is, and it's not helped that I did it on PC a few months ago, but thanks to weird BS, a Steam copy of it didn't transfer to an Origin copy, meaning I gotta do that over again. Not too excited, but can't be helped. What this means, is that if this is the sole path I take, it might mean next chapter is delayed. By how much, I can't be absolutely certain. But I'd keep you guys updated.

WHAT I COULD DO: If you guys want, (either private message me, leave a review, or if you're in the discord, just put that in the ideas and criticism chat, [Discord's invite code is Nqm2ZqQ] what I could do is just try to free hand it altogether. Any neccessary references pulled from a guide or something of that sort that I look over. Might mean it takes a little longer to go through the slog, but it should also keep the content coming, even if some things don't line up. I mean, I know what I have here doesn't line up fantastic aside from the environments, but that's also because Shepard's order once they land just makes sense as the thing to do in that scenario.

Anyways, please let me know what you'd like for me to do, maybe throw in why if you can, and I'll take it all into consideration and come to a conclusion. One way or another, y'all will know the results next regular upload date. Hope you enjoy!

Commander John Shepard

It was convenient that we still had another day of travel before our arrival in Aite. We were feeling sore, though thanks to my enhancements, I was less so, but we were both still tired from not getting a full sleep. But neither of us cared, we were feeling good, as to be expected. I still made sure she went to go see Mordin, since the medications are from him, and went with her to make sure that she did. Chakwas would be next if he recommended. Mordin simply drew a little blood and ran a scan on both Tali and the blood. She was having a reaction, which Mordin had said was always going to happen until sometime with more… direct exposures, but the inoculation had been doing its job. No anaphylaxis, while Mordin explained Tali's reaction was to the modern Quarian what the common cold is to Humans. Bit of a headache, runny nose, and some lethargy. She should be all good in a day or two, and even clear for fieldwork tomorrow, provided nothing worsens. But Mordin warned us not to… repeat those activities for a minimum of a week. As for my own little inoculations just to keep Dextro from messing with me, I might have a slight cough and or a bit of gas from my own… ingestion, and cleared us both to go about our day and our duties.

As for the crew, I knew Tali must have told Kasumi, from the wink and grin she gave me while I was having lunch, while the remainder of the crew were in the range of having no idea to having an assumption that we did. Of the lot of them, that closest candidate is Garrus. He's still been more on the quiet side since the business with the dossiers, still pretending like that never went around, though spending most of his time in the gun battery regardless. Still needs to come out to eat however, and it was during breakfast that I think he noticed something was different, from slight shifts in behavior of Tali and I while also our mutual tiredness and the occasional sniffle from Tali. But now we were on a shuttle down to the facility on Aite. Tali and Garrus, as always, I was also bringing in Samara and Grunt, while Miranda pointed out that it would be good to have her on the field for Cerberus systems and protocols. EDI could of course be of aid as well, but considering we're dealing with some Organic/Synthetic hybrid AI, it would be unwise to attempt to have EDI interfacing with anything in case it saw an opportunity.

The planet itself was gorgeous and even had rings but was unfortunately also a doomed world. One of its moons is in an unstable orbit and slated to crash onto the surface within two centuries. It had an abundance of life on the surface and a few minor colonies established, all on borrowed time.

Naturally, TIM had not provided us with any more details on the facility, so we relied on orbital scans before our descent. The main facility was centrally located but was more of a bunker. A few miles to the north was a more volcanic region that had a thermal power plant facility connected to the rest, and to the south east was a crashed Geth ship, a Cruiser by my guess, that had a research outpost of the facility. Likely just to study what they couldn't bring back to the main or where they retrieve what they can bring back. Finally, to the south west was a communications facility, and judging by its size, might also be where the researchers would sleep. Yet the complex was dwarfed by the massive Satellite dish beside it. That's where we'd be starting, for one main reason. It was the only site that had actual landing pads, though granted that's not a limiting factor for us, anyone who had been trying to escape would have come here, if anyone survived, it's likely they might be here, though certainly not a guarantee. I may not care about the lives of Cerberus, but information is information, and they'd have it. What was strange, however, was that we were picking up minimal Geth activity. Even at the Geth ship. A small handful had been seen in our scans on the move, and a few more just… there. As if on standby, or even offline and just balanced. As we got closer in the shuttle, we began receiving a signal, which Miranda confirmed was coming in on Cerberus emergency channels. We weren't on the ship, so the danger of accepting the message, considering what we're dealing with, was minimal.

"This is Dr. Gavin Archer. Please for the love of god respond! I can see you descending to the southern landing pad!"

"We read you, Archer. Give us a sitrep," I answered. I heard him release a breath of relief on the other end.

"What we have is a catastrophic VI breakout. There are Geth patrolling and killing anyone they see. I've made it to a saferoom, but the VI is attempting to use the Satellite to upload itself through the comm buoys to the Extranet. You must-"

"No need to worry about that, Doctor. It'll be gone in a moment." I cut the line and contacted the Normandy. "Normandy, we need some well-placed Javelin missiles to take down the Comm satellite. Bring it down."

"At once, Commander. Relaying your orders," EDI answered. The shuttle touched down and we disembarked in time to see the Normandy make a fly by, roaring overhead almost deafening as a pair of Javelin torpedoes struck it in its support tower, loud and large explosions that we felt the shockwaves of knocking us back a few steps, Normandy fading away back into the sky. The creaking of metal from the massive structure audible even at our distance as it tipped and collapsed into the countryside on the far side, away from us and the facility.

"I figure that solves that problem," I remarked on the comms with Archer.

"...Well, yes, I suppose that does. Though my… employer would have preferred that not have been destroyed. I-"

"I know who you work for and I couldn't give less of a shit what he thinks. Commander John Shepard. I'm not here to protect Cerberus assets. I'm here to keep your abomination from taking control of Geth at large. We'll clear out the Geth here, then we're going to have a chat on how to shut it down."

"Doctor Archer," Miranda joined in. "This is Operative Miranda Lawson. We are still here at the Illusive Man's request, you will cooperate."

"Of course." We now entered the facility, the doors marked with the Cerberus logo, the windows of the entryway showing a cargo bay to the right and a lobby to the left, a lobby with two corpses on the ramp down to, plasma burns along the wall. Another body through the lobby underneath the entryway we were just on, and we passed through the door. Another body, and what would probably be the storeroom's office to the side, though the door was locked. Doesn't matter, the windows show no Geth are within, next door. A control room, glass along the far wall and haptic displays showing the satellite dish that was now a pile of rubble. The displays all flashing red. Figure this is where we'd have lowered if we car- The displays went green with a strange outline of haptically pixelated eyes, and even the surrounding part of a face, the eyes simply white, no nose, not much of a forehead, but a separation between the pair of eyes as there was electronic shrieking from the terminals around us. If there were words in it, I couldn't make any of it out. Though the final noise I had a hunch for. I'll wait till it bitches at us again.

"Cerberus Bosh'tets," Tali murmured. The face remained, and appeared on displays on the walls behind us, just looking at us, a nearby camera locking onto us. All things considered, worth the ammo to shoot them. The camera was simply obliterated by the round, and we continued through the next set of doors. The VI screeching at us again but faster, certainly couldn't make anything out that time. Another door, more bodies, more appearances of the VI.

"Whatever it's saying, I think it's ending with 'Stop.' Can't make out the rest, not yet."

"It's a hybrid VI, right? Merged with a person? Don't suppose the poor idiot is still able to speak through it, even if he doesn't have control."

"Maybe not wanting to think about that at the moment," I remarked. Within the following thirty minutes, we had cleared out the comms facility of Geth, having met the bulk of our resistance in the cafeteria, the Geth eyes glowing green instead of red or just plain light. There were standard Geth, but also a handful of Destroyers and even Geth armed with rocket launchers. If there were more Geth, and larger Geth, it's likely that the destruction of the dish took them out. After we completed our sweep and clear, we met with Archer by the facilities entrance. Looks like he was somewhere in his forties, brown hair balding, thin set of facial hair around his mouth and on his chin, goatee, and mustache.

"So, who are you exactly?" I questioned.

"Dr. Gavin Archer, the Chief Scientist of this facility. And… according to the station's vital trackers, the only one left." His voice, now that I was paying more attention, he clearly had English ancestry, if not being from there directly.

"And now the sitrep with details."

"Beyond Man's reach exceeding its grasp?" He murmured, before looking up. Lawson was pacing behind me, Tali with her arms crossed beside me. "I don't know how much the Illusive Man told you. This, is Project Overlord. We were attempting to gain influence over the Geth by interfacing a Human mind with a VI. The results should be obvious.

"It astonishes and insults me that the entire Galaxy continues to chastise my people for the Geth after three hundred years of exile, and then go and perform experiments such as this, despite having the luxury we didn't have of knowing how dangerous the Geth are," Tali ended with a hint of sniffle, angry.

"Your plan is simply to destroy them but reclaiming them would be far more valuable. And we did succeed, at least partially."

"You sound like Admiral Xen. And even as an Admiral, she is a Pariah amongst my people."

"Explain how you had any success here, Doctor," Miranda continued.

"My brother, David, volunteered to serve as a test subject. But his mind couldn't handle the connection. The merge is possible, we know. It's not unfeasible that it could be regulated for organic control. Regardless, now he's like a virus. Our networks are completely infected and any technology he finds he attempts to infect. The terminal I contacted you on was from a closed circuit. You cannot interface with anything while you're here, manual manipulations are vital. I believe technological attacks should be safe, as a simple electrical surge or a projectile shouldn't allow a window for data to transfer to your own Omni-tool. If that happens, there's no telling what damage he could cause to your hardsuits and their systems. Or if he gets to your ship."

"And evidently you didn't take the grandest of precautions.

"We couldn't have predicted every-"

"Oh bullshit. The machine takeover is already a historical event. And the Virus AI is a basic Sci-Fi trope. How do you prevent that from becoming a crisis? No transmitters, no receivers. It gets power, and the only paths for data can go to one singular, closed system terminal that records the results. You don't upload or download from it, you just read off the fucking results. That VI can't go anywhere." Archer was just silent, looking out the window at the landscape behind the landing pad.

"The core of the VI is in the main laboratory at Atlas Station, but it's in lockdown now, and every Geth within is likely prepared to defend it. There are three nodes for the manual override. The first is right there," Archer walked to a console beside us, turning a handle of a cylinder, pulling it up, turning it again, and pushing it down. "The other two are at Prometheus and Vulcan stations. Prometheus being the Geth ship, Vulcan being the Geothermal plant." Fitting enough names.

"Is that Vulcan with a C or a K?" I asked, mostly just trying to get anger off my mind.

"With a C, but I don't see how that's important." Ah well, Vulkan always was my favorite Primarch.

"We can just take our shuttle to them then."

"I'm afraid that wouldn't be ideal, Commander. With how close we are to Geth space we have defense turrets. Several of them Anti-Air."

"Then the Mako, we can get that airdropped."

"A Mako would also be unadvisable. Particularly for Vulcan station. There's active lava flow, and you'll likely need to cross over plenty to reach Vulcan, and as for Prometheus, the route you'd have to take would lead to a relatively minor cliff face, and not even a Mako can climb a ninety degree angle." I sighed.

"Don't tell me we're going to need the fucking Hammerhead…" I muttered.

"The experimental Hovercraft, yes? We had one, but it was destroyed. It would be perfect for traversal."

"Goddamnit."

AUTHOR'S NOTE: Just a reminder, let me know.