Chapter 46

Day Five

"I don't enjoy killing, but when done righteously, it's just a chore, like any other. Practiced hands make for short work, and the Good Lord knows there's much to be done here."

— Joshua Graham, Fallout: New Vegas

Oh, he should have seen this one coming. Five G environment, mostly invulnerable green super krogan, he really should have considered that the requisite 'super virus' would also be on the list. Brola Dasd sat in his appropriated ship's med-bay, his face feeling as if it was on fire, his entire body streaming sweat, and his lungs heaving with effort to inhale and exhale fast enough to supply his ailing body with oxygen. A part of him felt beyond foolish for not having considered that it would be a bad idea to dive into a literal river of shit with a gaping wound in his stomach, but an even larger part of him said that, unlike the Council, the Alliance had AI, so as long as he sealed himself up in a fresh hardsuit, he could keep him, and whatever infection was currently growing large, white, pulsating pus-filled bulbs on his stomach, safe from spreading to the humans and making them angry. While he felt it suitably ironic that he could do what the Hegemony wanted, and wipe out the Alliance's capitol with an improvised chemical weapon, he also knew that it would literally do no one no good.

"Commander Dasd, we're almost there. They've already caught wind of us, a few ships are attempting to hail us."

Gasping for breath, as he morbidly poked at the rubbery pustules on his severely burning stomach, the pale-skinned batarian nodded, and started wrapping his stomach with a fresh set of bandages, which immediately started graying as they soaked in the sweat covering his yellow chest. "Our comms equipment is offline… We can hear them, but we can't broadcast. Make sure our weapons aren't charged. They'll come in for a visual inspection, flash some landing lights, let them know we're willing to follow directions." He forced himself not to gasp as he felt a lance of pain fired through his stomach as the raw, burned skin was pressed tight against his bandages.

Time stretched painfully far as Dasd finished bandaging himself up, took a quick double-dose of painkillers and antibiotics, and then began snapping into place the entirely too numerous pieces of the hardsuit. After several minutes, in which he only managed to get his left leg on, his omni-tool flared again. "They're escorting us to a military dock… When we dock, we need to come out without weapons." He informed his Commander, who nodded.

"Make sure everyone complies. I do not want to fight saltorians, disease, and humans all in one day." He coughed, phlegm flying out of his lungs and splattering over the floor as he did so.

The next half hour was filled with him suiting up, and was ended just as he snapped on his helmet, and the ship slid into the magnetic locks on Arcturus station. It lurched and jolted, and the pilot announced that they had docked. Dasd exited the med-bay with a noticeable limp, and had his hand pressed against the wounded side of his stomach, but he forced himself to stay as straight as possible. He made his way through the crippled, heavily damaged vessel, flanked on both his sides and his rear by the other surviving soldiers. Through their comm-links he heard idle chatter, but the thundering of his over-taxed heart in his ears, and the fears of what may be waiting for them in the center of Alliance territory deafened him to these conversations.

When everyone arrived and was accounted for at the airlock, the sick Commander gave one nod to the man standing next to it. The airlock cycled, and when it opened with a light hiss, they were greeted by more than a dozen Alliance Marines, their thick, digital-camouflaged suits of armor shined with the reflected lights above them, and all of their rifles were pointed at Dasd and his soldiers. The marines seemed to tense a moment, as the sight of more than a dozen wounded, armored batarians gave them pause and more than enough justification for a moment's hesitation.

One marine bravely stepped forward, slowly lowering his rifle to an alert-carry stance, as he made eye contact with Dasd. "Would I be correct in assuming you to be you to be the commanding officer?" He demanded hotly, briefly casting his gaze over Dasd's group.

Dasd nodded, his deep red armor clinking and clanking with the motions. "I am. We surrender ourselves to the custody of the Alliance… But haste is needed." He said, "there is a war going on, and every moment we spend here talking will just be a moment in which more lives are lost, and more still are condemned. We will not resist any of your commands, our only request is medical attention." Dasd spoke as clearly and as loudly as he could, without seeming threatening, but the problem was that his voice was weak and wavering, the infection from the saltorian sewage sapping the energy from him.

The Marine's expression was mostly hidden behind the dark glasses he wore over his eyes, the only hint to his thoughts being the light frown that drew tighter over his mouth as he thought a moment, then raised his hand to his right ear. "Clank?" There was a few moment's pause, as he no doubt either spoke with an officer of higher rank, or an AI who had a direct line to the same. "Alright. Out." He turned his partially masked gaze to the batarians, "you're all going to be remanded into military custody and brought to a hospital. Once we've confirmed that you're stable, you'll all be brought individually to questioning." He raised a hand and, with two fingers extended, made a brief gesture in the direction of the batarians, several Marines lowered their weapons and approached the batarians with handcuffs.

The next hour became increasingly blurry for the Commander, as he was shuffled from his ship to a vehicle, to a hospital, and into a secure wing in said hospital. His fever grew worse and worse with every passing minute, and his stomach went from fiery pain to chillingly numb. The last thing he remembered seeing before time began to skip, like a corrupted music file, was being rushed inside a military hospital, passing by dozens of occupied rooms and seeing the servicemen inside. Some medics rushing too and fro here, a few marines in hospital fatigues there, a flash of doctors and medics shining lights in his eyes, the sight of his hardsuit being removed from his body and one of the doctors visibly recoiling at the sight of his stomach, eventually he simply blacked out, his last waking thoughts being whether or not he would feel the needles and drugs through his fever-induced coma.

Standing outside of the batarian's room, a Marine Lieutenant had his hands crossed behind his back, his brow furrowed as he watched the medics stick the formerly red-armored batarian with everything they had in their attempts to fight off whatever it was he had contracted. His ear twitched to the sound of footsteps, and the hairs on the back of his head told him they were coming for him. The Lieutenant turned his tanned head over his shoulder and he saw an MP walking hurriedly down the hall, a clear purpose in her step.

Oh boy… The Lieutenant turned around. "What'd you find?"

"We searched the ship, Lieutenant Miller." Said the MP, as she smoothed out a wrinkle on her gray, digital camoflaged pants. "One of the healthier ones told us there were fifteen survivors, but our headcount only had thirteen." She explained, before nodding into the sealed-off surgery room. "Including him."

"Maybe the disease took 'em out?"

"We thought so too, until we searched the ship. Looking from the inside out, it didn't look like it was shot at in a naval engagement, but breached, as if someone cut their way in. There were clear signs of battle, and a lot of partially burned metal. Most of the bodies were pushed into the ship's emptied armory, but we did find two others."

"This merits mention?"

"The bodies piled into the armory were either burned or blasted apart, but the bodies we found in the engineering bay had knife wounds. We had an AI hook into the ship's computers and search for security cameras, but the ones in the engineering bay were destroyed." Said the MP.

Miller narrowed his eyes, "when?"

"Five minutes after they docked. They didn't catch who broke them, but it wasn't the batarians. Sir, we think they brought something with them."

"Shot in the dark - they don't know." Miller said, to which the MP nodded grimly. "So we've got thirteen batarian soldiers, in a critically damaged ship with signs of forced entry and heavy battle… And two more dead ones, with knife wounds inflicted as recently as an hour ago… With all indications being that it wasn't in-fighting." He surmised.

The MP nodded, "pretty much, sir."

"What've the station's security feeds seen?" Miller asked, briefly gazing over the MP's shoulder, almost as if this phantom killer would suddenly appear before him, as if willed.

"Nothing, sir. I already checked in for any suspicious activity."

The Marine sighed, and turned back around to watch the surgery being performed on Dasd. The sterile white room was bustling with activity, doctors and surgeon mechs alike operating on the man. If this phantom killer had stowed away on the batarian ship, it was likely after batarians, so what was he dealing with? Who had they pissed off recently? N7? Drell Assassins? Had they brought some kind of Asari super-killer onto their station? Or were they dealing with some sort of super-black-ops SIGMA mission?

With a tightened face, he nodded once. "Alright. Give me a minute, I'll send a report to the Admiral. He'll get security tightened and we'll start sweeping, looking for whoever had these batarians so spooked." He felt the corridor grow colder as he continued to speak. "Pray we don't -" Before he could finish, he felt a sharp, cold sting of pain literally burst through his chest as something thick and muscular coiled around his throat and caught all of the air in his lungs. Before he could even croak, the massive steel knife was ripped back out of his chest, and the last thing he felt before the world went black was a piercing sensation in the back of his head.

Before the body even hit the ground, the towering figure in a thick, blood-stained spacesuit had already slunked away without a sound. He daintily placed one hand on the door to the surgery room, within which was the batarian these people were trying to save. He leaned forward, and as if signalled by it, pushed on the door precisely when a drop of blood fell from its knife and hit the ground. The door opened with a light hiss, causing the figure to wince, but the surgeons and medics inside were too focused on their patient to notice it. At least, that was what it thought for a moment, before the heads of the machines working alongside the fleshy, familiar looking creatures sprang up, and turned a complete one hundred eighty degrees. What they saw, however, was not an eight foot tall goliath, with a thick frame and a thicker spacesuit, but they simply saw a swinging door.

"Zack, I need a scalpel, we need to remove this burned tissue." Said one of the flesh creatures. "I swear, it looks like he stabbed himself with a plasma torch." It muttered.

"Steiner." Said the machine, "did you call in Lieutenant Miller?" It asked, still staring at the door, though its hands moved independently of its head, almost as if it didn't even need the small glowing steel spheres that passed for eyes. Its hand clasped over a clean scalpel, and quickly brought it to Steiner's field of view, but when two seconds passed and it had not been taken, or even responded to, it turned its head back around.

Before the machine could even make eye contact with Steiner, the woman's corpse fell onto the batarian with a loud, wet smack, before it was dragged by its own weight to the ground. The machine's head now snapped to full attention, its scalpel raised, but its sensors felt something thick and clothed wrap around its spinal column. With a vicious wrench, it was torn from its feet and slammed into the ground with a metallic clang, before a large boot was lifted upwards and smashed onto its head. Unfortunately for its briefly seen assailant, it knew not just how fast machines like it could perceive information and act upon it. The AI, Zack, knew that the platform being assaulted wasn't built for anything even approaching combat - it was only rated to carry anything up to and including SIGMA sized and weighted patients, and it had no onboard weapons or servos required to act and react in a combative manner. What it could do, however, was record the information it had gathered in the few seconds it had before its CPU was smashed to smithereens, and upload it to the AI Cloud.

Within an attosecond, every AI connected to the cloud knew that something was happening on Arcturus, and every AI on Arcturus knew that something was happening in the Ermey Memorial Hospital. Being a military hospital, it was equipped with standard security features, and many of those features flared to life in an instant, sealing the killer in with his prey, and locking all of the injured and recovering soldiers and marines where they could be safe from it.

The stealthy goliath simply stood up straight as alarms started blaring and red lights started flashing. It didn't know what it had done wrong, but it was sure that the machine had had something to do with it. With a simple, almost inaudible sigh, it briefly stabbed the batarian on the table, in its throat, and turned to the hermetically sealed door separating it from the hospital's now darkened corridors. There was always another way out, these creatures wouldn't keep him sealed for long at all.

Though, as it looked at the now peacefully sleeping face of one of the fleshier, unknown aliens, it couldn't help but think that it had seen its visage somewhere before, impossible as the notion may be.

With nothing to do as he was forced by the incessant AI in his neck, his commanding officer, and the first medical officer that had seen him to stay in bed as his body recovered from the intensive augmentation surgery, and the reconstructive surgery done to get him healthy after his battles on Manheim, John S2-15 had taken to perusing military archives, specifically for military applications for smart watches.

"So… Tech armor suspends warp fields between stationary energy shields." Said John, seemingly to the open air, as he stared down at the softly glowing, dusty blue holograms hovering above his right arm.

"Yes." Briefly pulsed the watch, "though given the lack of prevalence of element zero in Alliance territory, it isn't used much outside of N7, OD3, and SIGMA forces." With each syllable, a light gray pulse flickered outwards from the watch's core, a light, friendly female voice echoing outward. "It gets pretty expensive to wire Eezo into every soldier's armor."

The surgically scarred child soldier nodded once, "but a biotic can replicate the effect."

The AI speaking to him slowly formed in a whirlwind of dust-tech, its gray form taking rest at the top right of John's display as it nodded. "It wouldn't be difficult, no. But I would need to get into your suit to help expedite the process." Though it could tell from the look in John's eye that his mind was elsewhere. "What are you thinking?"

"Detonating a warp field, either intentionally or unintentionally, would create a lot of heat." He said, "one would think that to be a non issue, but it could damage sensitive electronics, or make one an easy target for heat-seeking munitions… Or allies in the vicinity." Not to mention keeping warp fields contained would, ironically, make one just as easy a target for snipers using thermal scopes. "And I would think suspending a warp field in between two energy shields would attract attention."

"That's why not many soldiers use it. It's like lighting up a big flashlight that says - I can take more rounds than the guy next to me!" The AI said, though its brief grin was petered off when John didn't reciprocate or laugh in the slightest. It was taking getting used to, talking to him. "Besides, your Titan unit's shields are strong enough to take an antimaterial round, why are you so interested in bolstering them?"

"Weapons." Said John, as, through his enhanced senses, he literally felt his skin settling and the nanites beneath it facilitating the healing process. He couldn't heal as quickly as, say, a krogan, but given enough rest and food, and he could be on his feet in a few days after sustaining as many injuries as he had. It was today he was hoping to be released - he had gotten more than one message from his brothers on Titan Med, they were starting to wake up. Fortunately, Ducard hadn't been stupid enough to try and get to them first, though John could tell the Commander was dragging his feet in regards to getting him transferred.

"For?" Cassidy pressed, "something like this is good for swarm tactics, but it's unlikely you'll be fighting vorcha any time soon, and the strength boost when applied to your own shields is minimal, so what are you looking for?"

John idly reached back with his free right hand and rubbed at the base of his neck, where he knew Cassidy's implant to be. "What all can you see in my PBI?"

"Everything that flows through it. Why?"

"Can you read my memories? How does it work?"

"It doesn't work exactly like that, but I can read your neurons as if they were data. The PBI acts remarkably similar to a gray-box. Is there something you want me to look for?"

John shook his head, "you'll be seeing it soon enough." He said, as he thought back to his previous battles. "In nearly every major encounter I've had thus far, except for training and Torfan, I've been involved at some point in a melee battle. Notable ones include Miranda's mansion, the Spartec base, and Manheim. All of those encounters had something in common: While trained for it, my enemies weren't prepared for such an encounter, and lacked the experienced with which to deal with it."

Cassidy picked up on John's thoughts with remarkable fluidity, "you're thinking that you can use this." She surmised.

John nodded, "but charging into a gun fight with the intent of punching everything to death is a death wish. I'll need a control, a weaker fighting force to act as something to base and build my results off of."

"But not a variable?"

"The SIGMAs on Manheim were the variable. They proved it was possible, but I need to make sure. I'd need to test it on a regular infantry force…" He closed out the pages on smart watch military apps, and opened up his files on Titan II armor. "The EVA thrusters, they use mass effect -" He was cut off when his watch briefly flashed red, and a new voice entered the conversation.

"Sergeant Major, a location has been sent to your smartwatch. Report ASAP." Clippedly said the voice of Ducard, before it cut out just as soon as it had arrived.

John narrowed his eyes, "what's happening?" He asked his AI, as he cast off the blanket on his hospital bed, and got to his feet. The cold floor beneath them sent a brief jolt through his system, but he was already across the room and throwing on his black and red combat fatigues as Cassidy responded.

"Hold on…" A split second passed, "okay, a batarian cruiser just showed up in-system. Thirteen soldiers aboard, all injured. They were transported to Ermey Memorial, but something got brought with them. It's already in the hospital, unknown number of casualties."

"It." It wasn't a question, but a fact.

"This is the only picture we've got." Said Cassidy, as John finished strapping on his boots and affixed the holster for his pistol onto his hip. An image appeared on his watch, one of a figure in a large white spacesuit, its foot a blur as it rushed down towards the camera.

"That's not a lot to go on." Said John, as he jogged out of the room and began sprinting down the hospital's busy corridors, easily dodging and weaving into and out of the way of the doctors and medics, who he passed by so quickly that all they saw was a seven foot tall black and red blur, and a brief rush of air.

"It got onto and off of the ship without anyone noticing." Said Cassidy, as John charged through the hospital and to its main entrance.

Out of the door he went, being greeted by the brightly lit city in the stars. The sounds of commerce, travel, and conversation briefly overwhelmed John's senses, as he lifted his smart watch and checked its GPS. He quickly oriented himself and found where he was supposed to go: The parliament building.

"They left you a car, should be coming up now." Said Cassidy, as the ground in front of John opened up with a light mechanical hiss, and a darkly colored jeep raised up from the dark depths of the station. "And I checked the ship's travel logs, you might find this interesting." She said, as John hopped in and jabbed his thumb on the ignition button.

The vehicle roared to life, a heads up display quickly flaring up on the windshield, guiding him to the main roads. John shifted into gear and took off with a squeal of tires, and a blare of sirens. Military and police vehicles on Arcturus came with them, he remembered, so as to facilitate easier travel during emergency situations. "What is it?" He asked, his deep voice overpowering the sound of wind beating at the jeep and the siren alerting everyone to make way.

"Checking its travel logs with the Alliance travel database, I didn't get anything. But then I used my security -"

"Details." John interrupted, "I don't need to know how." He said over the wind and the noise, as he hit the on-ramp for the one major highway in the station. "I need to know what." Even after a week, she still had yet to pass this learning curve.

There was a moment's silence, though if in hesitation or consideration, John knew not. "The ship went from Hegemony space, to a point several hundred parsecs from Sol. Their location matches that of Zeta Orionis, Alnitek."

John's neutral scowl tightened, as he recognized the name and the implication. "Orion's Belt." Saying the name conjured up images of eight foot tall bipedal lizards, from his combat classes almost a decade ago. "They found the saltorians. Check the activity in Ermey with our discoveries about their military. Specify their BattleVectors." He ordered, as he barreled through the traffic that parted before him like the red sea, the wind beating at his shaved head, and his heart remaining calm and tranquil in his chest.

Despite the displayed speed of over one hundred and twenty kilometers per hour, John's reflexes for a moment made him feel as if he were moving at a crawl. Everything around him was moving at a snail's pace, he could tell that the driver in front of him hadn't turned sharply enough for John to clear him perfectly, and he was therefore able to twitch the wheel to the right just enough such that he and the driver would pass by eachother harmlessly. He moved and perceived fast enough such that he was able to look to his left and inside the car as he passed by it. To the driver, it would have happened in a flash, but to John, it went by long enough for him to memorize every detail of the driver's face, the tanned flesh, the brown, narrow, confused eyes, the scar on his left cheek. The world sped back up when John looked forward again and focused on the road, just in time for Cassidy to get back to him.

"I've got a match." Said Cassidy, "BattleVectorian Wraith. Specifics are sparse, but we do know they function similarly to N7 Shadow Infiltrators."

"Shadows have tac-cloaks. Do Wraiths?" The Alliance had only been researching and watching the saltorians for a decade, give or take a few years, but whenever they got new information, it usually made its way to the SIGMAs, and subsequently the II's in training, expeditiously, and as John thought more about them, the information began coming back to the forefront of his mind. He remembered that they were born up in a high gravity environment, that their tech resembled that of Earth in the late twenty first century, that they fought like krogan but were religious like drell. If he had to guess, upon being attacked by the Hegemony, they had declared some sort of holy war on them, and the Wraith that had hitched a ride wouldn't stop killing until all of the batarians that had attacked it were dead. "And tell me how many batarian immigrants live on Arcturus." If they were lucky, the Wraith would stop once all of the batarians were dead, and that meant in an emergency, John could offer them up to appease it.

"There is no evidence to suggest that the saltorians have light bending technology, but the wraiths are very good at their job. It is yet unknown how they are so good, given their size and mass; and there are eight thousand batarians on Arcturus, though none close enough to Ermey to be a problem." Cassidy reported.

"How's my armor?"

"Still being repaired. It won't be finished for another two days. But it and I have learned from Manheim, future repairs like it shouldn't take nearly as long." Cassidy assured.

"Anything I can use right now?"

"Not much beyond the gauntlets and the combat harness, but those together weigh -"

"I know," Said John, as he took the next exit and came within eyesight of Arcturus' Capitol Square. "Send what we've got to Ducard, along with an ETA and a request for the salvageable parts of my armor to be deployed." He paused, as the vehicle roared over the roads and the sirens blared their warning call. "Can you take control of this station's gravity?"

"I have the necessary clearance to take control of its life support, if need be. SIGMAuthority extends to AI." Cassidy responded, "why?" She added, after a moment's pause, nothing but curiosity in her synthetic tone.

"Saltorians were brought up in a high gravity environment. It is likely that their durability reflects this, meaning small arms weapons will be functionally useless aside from multiple rapid-fire high impacts, so I'll need either heavier weapons, or something that can penetrate their defenses. Hardlight may do the trick, but in this lighter environment, they'll be around five times as strong as any of us. Without my suit, I think it and I will equal eachother, but I don't know. So in the event of a confrontation, I'll need every advantage I can get." John explained, as he grew closer to Capitol Square, and the roads grew emptier.

"But cancelling out gravity would only hinder you, as well, without your EVA thrusters."

"Not true. I have biotics. If I raise the mass of an object and then throw it forward, the force will carry me with it in a null-gravity environment." Though John's mind was less occupied with the how of fighting a saltorian, and more with whether or not he would in the first place. It was just as likely that Ducard would elect to go himself, and leave John behind to protect the Board.

"Your heart rate is climbing. What are you thinking?" Cassidy asked, as John slowed the vehicle down.

"Manheim is still fresh in my mind." John remarked, "I wonder if Ducard will want to keep me from fighting because of it."

"Are you saying you want to fight?" Cassidy questioned.

"I'm saying I want to get this all over with, as fast as possible. I need to speak with George, with Craig. With the Twos." Said John, as he reached a parking spot in front of the parliament building, and hopped out of the vehicle, which was quickly consumed by the mechanical flooring. "And considering the fallout of what will happen today, it is looking more and more likely that I won't get that chance, and that makes me angry."

It took 2-15 two minutes to go from the entrance of the parliament building to where Ducard had set the E-Beacon. He attracted many an eye from the tourists wandering about inside, including the increasing amount of secret servicemen as he ventured in deeper. The former, he ignored, the latter, he simply flashed his rank and his SIGMA credentials, before he finally entered a small office. Inside he found Ducard in full armor, two members of the board, a dozen secret servicemen, and even a squad of N7. In any other situation, the office would have been spacious, but with this many people and this many guns, it felt cramped.

The first person John made eye contact with was Ducard and his golden visor. The two nodded to eachother, and Ducard turned to face him fully, briefly indicating a small crate to John's right. "John." Said Ducard's filtered voice, "we received Cassidy's report. Compounded with the physical evidence we've found on the ship, we agree - the batarians made contact with the saltorians, and for reasons currently unknown, they went to war." He spoke, as John opened up the crate and found the requested pieces of armor.

"What's the plan?" John asked, as he affixed his gauntlets on over his jacket. The limited power they were able to generate on their own allowed them to at least read his bio-signature and seal themselves to him.

"The Wraith has already broken free of the room Ermey's AI locked him in." Ducard responded, "Arcturus Police are cordoning off the area and the hospital's staff is being instructed to stay in their rooms and arm themselves with anything they can."

"A saltorian alone can overpower any human." Said John, as he locked on his armored boots and slipped on the plates of armor onto his biceps and his thighs. "And we don't know what Wraiths are capable of beyond stealth." He added.

"We know." Said a new voice, prompting John to turn his head as he hauled his combat harness up. All of the weight of the armored plates and their sensitive electronics, without the muscle suit to assist him, immediately put a strain on John's body, but his augmentations allowed him to continue to move without much issue. The speaker, an aging gentleman quickly identified as the Director for Defense, had a narrow frown on his face, as he stared at a tablet on his desk. "But it's also moving through the hospital's security measures without any hints of slowing down."

As John threw on the heavy harness, he made eye contact with the other Director in the room, a Quarian in a white and red suit. "Where are the other Directors?" He asked, turning his eyes to Ducard, as the I passed the II a rifle.

"Tyson is on his way back to the station from Earth. The Director for Foreign Affairs is in the embassy on the Citadel. Trent is on Sparta speaking with General Howe. The rest are elsewhere." Ducard responded, as John strode over to the desk, joined by Ducard, the two Directors, and one of the N7.

"Then what's our plan?" John repeated.

"Priority number one is evacuating the surviving batarians, so we need to move fast." Said the Director for Defense, as he pulled up an image of the hospital and expanded it, forming a hologram above the tablet. "We know that at least ten of the batarians are still alive, and we have been able to track its kills. If it keeps going the way it's going, it'll find the hospital's power station. Our best guess is it thinks that cutting the power will lift the lockdown and grant it easier access to the batarians."

"Backup generators will last for an hour, but after that, everyone in that hospital is at risk." Ducard spoke, as he pointed at a point deep in the hospital's basement, marking it with a bright red dot. "The batarians were all ushered here, into a secure wing meant for potentially mentally unstable patients." Green dots appeared on the hospital's third floor, near its rear right side.

The N7 at the desk spoke up, his face masked by his breather helmet. "If we've got police in the area, then he's probably already preparing for folks to come in for him." He said, "so we go in there, we'll be walking into a death trap."

John, however, shook his head. "We don't have to be." He turned to Ducard, "sir?" The Commander nodded, giving the floor to John. The child soldier rotated the hologram and zoomed in on the rooms with the batarians, "Lieutenant." He pointed at the N7, "your squad can repel in from above." He pointed at the roof and dragged a line down to the windows right next to the batarians. "Take the quickest route in. Find the survivors, extract them." He turned to Ducard, "sir, you and I go in. Find the saltorian and engage." He heard a cough, and turned to face the Directors.

"There are things we need to discuss with him, Sergeant Major, and given the unknowns of the situation, we would prefer he stays here." The Quarian said from behind the bright blue hologram, to a brief nod from the gray-haired human. "And if possible, we need you to capture it. There are parts of this story that we are just not aware of, and having both sides will help our understanding immensely."

John stared through the dusty hologram, before turning his attention back to it, then back to the Quarian. "Sir. This is an alien that evolved in gravity higher than Dekuuna. It is stronger and more durable than a krogan, and given its stealth effectiveness, it is not unwise to assume it is trained in resisting capture and breaking free if all else fails. I do not doubt my ability to kill it, but if you want me to capture it, working alone I cannot guarantee mission success." Though even as he spoke he was trying to come up with ways he could put the creature in a stasis powerful enough to keep it bound until he could lock it up.

Serios, however, shook his head. "If something's going on in the Alnitek system, we can call the expeditionary flotilla and get a report from them. If you have to kill it, do so, but if you can bring it alive, then do that."

John narrowed his eyes, a brief thought occurring to him as he thought back to the aftermath of Manheim. Was it possible that they were sending him out on purpose? He was the greatest threat to the I's and their lies to the II's. If he died, especially in combat, they could perpetuate it and their loyalty would never again be a question. The thought made him angry, but over a decade under the all-seeing eyes of Ducard and the other instructors had given him good control over his composure, and his expression didn't change.

John nodded once, slowly. "Understood." He looked back to the hologram, "the plan doesn't change. Lieutenant, take your men in above. I'll breach here -" He pointed at the ambulance dock, "- and try to cut it off before it can cut the power. Get it out of the hospital." He stood up straight.

Ducard took this moment to speak up, "unless there are any questions, we need to move ASAP. We know that the power's still on, and we have proof of life for those ten, but if this thing keeps up its momentum we'll start losing batarians left and right. We already lost their commanding officer, any more information and we're sunk."

John turned to the N7, who nodded, and then back to the SIGMA. "We're ready."

As big of a space station as it was, Arcturus was still a space station, and that meant, for the most part, there were no aircraft inside of it. The only aircraft that could effectively operate in the station's interior were shuttles specifically on rotor-wing settings, and helicopters, and even then, there were less than fifty; the majority of the station's air power came in the form of fighter jets that protected its exterior. John and the N7 found themselves in two of Arcturus' few helicopters, and in less than sixty seconds they were each at Ermey Memorial Hospital.

Upon crossing over the dozens of police vehicles and touching down, John tapped his earpiece as he stalked inside, "Cassidy. Door." He said clippedly, a moment later, the large doors that let in patients being transported by ambulance opened, and he entered. "Ducard. I'm in. Making for the power room." Since his helmet had taken the brunt of the damage during his fights on Manheim, he had instead been given a Marine's helmet and a set of HUDGlasses, which immediately painted the quickest route to the hospital's power room.

John stalked slowly through the hospital, focusing his attention on his motion tracker and his surroundings. This Wraith specialized in stealth, and no one had any idea how it was so effective, which meant that John needed to use all of his senses and resources if he wanted to be able to find and kill it. He moved through the brightly lit hospital quickly, making for the stairwell that led down to its basement. He passed by many rooms in the tight corridors, most of them had orderlies, medics, and nurses pressed against the doors, peering outside, trying to discern why there was a security lockdown, and if possible, when it would be lifted. When they saw John stalking by like a predator, they quickly fell back, suddenly very satisfied with their lack of information, so long as it meant they wouldn't get a bullet to their skull.

Reaching the staircase, John stacked up behind one of the freely swinging doors, and gingerly tapped on it. It swung on its hinge, revealing a darkened stairwell with fewer lights than the hospital's interior, and on the ground, a thin pool of blood. Carefully, John pressed one hand against the door, and used the other to firmly grasp his rifle, and moved forward, entering the silent stairwell. On the ground to his front was a dead Military Policeman, the safety on his SIR halfway between on and off, indicating that he had had just long enough of a moment to attempt to flip it, but had died, or been separated from his rifle, before he could have done so. The blood was slowly oozing out of a vertical stab wound in his neck, and the injury was large, indicating the knife's blade was at least as large as a human neck, designed for hunting and killing prey much larger than a common man.

John stepped over the body and descended the stairwell, his unblinking eyes wide as he checked, and double checked his corners. He was searching for any possible sign of a hidden aggressor - even going so far as to check for disturbances in the visual patterns of the wall, indicative of some sort of chameleon or octopus-style natural camouflage, as opposed to ripples in light indicative of a tactical cloak. But his augmented eyes saw nothing, and as such he kept going, making it to the door leading to the basement, before he paused, his eyes narrow. This door's hinges had been broken, and it was partially opened. Before John could make any kind of conclusion beyond confirming that this was, indeed, the door the alien had used, the lights went out, plunging him into darkness.

Almost instantly, his heart beating wildly, John's eyes adjusted to the dark and he saw, in deadly slow motion, a toweringly tall figure in a pale white spacesuit rushing him, a massive knife in its right hand, and its left fingering a large pistol strapped to its hip. With his superior reflexes, John launched himself back with both feet, pressing the trigger of his rifle as he did so. As the muzzle flashes briefly lit up the pitch black stairwell like a strobe light, and the barking of the gun sounded off in the cramped stairwell, echoing back and forth in a deafening cacophony of thunder. The figure's suit absorbed or deflected most of the bullets, with the few that penetrated it just digging a few inches in and getting stuck fast.

"Power back in three!" Came Cassidy's voice into John's ear.

John hit the ground five stairs up, and quickly swung his rifle downwards, catching and halting the Wraith's knife attack. If the Wraith were surprised at his reflexes, it didn't even show it, as its tail unfurled from around its stomach and seemed to coil like a spring. John predicted what it was doing just a second before it did it, and he was able to bring his foot up in time to kick the prehensile appendage away as it sprung forward, hitting with an unexpectedly large amount of force, enough so that the recoil from John's improvised deflection caused him to lose balance on his remaining leg. He fell back and the Wraith darted forward, silent as a leaf falling to the ground.

"Two!"

John falling backward, and the Wraith lunging forward, gave it the force required to jar the rifle from his hands. It clattered to the side, smacking into the wall with a thud of metal on stone, and clacked onto the ground, as the saltorian pushed forward with its knife, and reached down with its free hand. Thinking fast just as he hit the ground, John threw his left hand around in a small arc, slapping at the knife with his palm and deflecting it from its intended course, while his right hand surged downwards for his pistol. The knife scraped along the dark ground and hit the base of the next stair, and though the saltorian's grip was too strong for it to be broken, it did stun it just long enough for John to wrench his pistol out of its holster.

"One!"

As the power came back on, flooding the stairwell with light, John slammed his pistol into the saltorian's thick visor. His gun barked twice just as it brought its own massive pistol to bear. John immediately noted the discrepancy in calibers of bullet and summoned up a barrier, just as the saltorian's visor shattered in a shower of glass and its pistol barked with the sound of a cannonblast. The enormous .75 caliber round slammed into John's barrier, immediately bringing it down to one eighth strength. The saltorian jerked its now uncovered face to the side, giving John the time he needed to wrap his free arm around the Wraith's gun-arm, and his own gun-arm around its knife arm, and lock them both down down, digging the barrel of its enormous gun into the ground.

The saltorian didn't take the test of strength lightly, but instead avoided it altogether by wrapping its tail around John's leg, and using all of its not inconsiderably vast strength to whip John off of the ground, in between its legs, and into the low-lit basement. He hurtled through the air, crashing through the freely swinging door, before landing on the ground with an 'oof' and sliding several feet, his barrier inadvertently lowering the friction between his back and the ground. John recovered quickly, springing to his feet and holding his pistol firmly in both hands, but the Wraith had already vanished.

"It's in the room. It's not immune to motion trackers." To cement the AI's point, a red dot appeared on John's HUD, moving fast.

John whipped to the side and opened fire. The saltorian had leapt over a crate of medical equipment like a predator, its knife reared behind its head and its gun held in front of it. John's bullets all hit their mark, but none of them penetrated the thing's suit, or even the scales on its saurian head. The saltorian's gun went off as it arced down to the ground, and John, knowing it would penetrate his barrier, moved as fast as he could. In the depths of the hospital's basement, lit by red emergency lighting, John saw the .75 round soaring through the air in slow motion, allowing him to watch as it literally whizzed past his head. Immediately upon concluding it would miss him harmlessly, John's focus went to the Wraith, who charged in close.

One wide, savage swing was ducked by the smaller SIGMA, who slapped his pistol in its holster and hammered his fists onto the Wraith's gut. Three punches were let off before the Wraith caught one fist and wrenched it around, and though it was powerful, John had been in far worse pain. He ignored the swelling in his right arm and instead coated his left arm in a biotic field, increasing its mass and slamming it into the side of the Wraith's gut. This impact stunned it for long enough for John to follow up the left cross with a right jab, this one slamming onto the saltorian's snout and snapping its head back. The Wraith, however, then weaponized its head by ramming it onto the next fist hurtling straight for it.

John and the Wraith stood there, struggling against eachother for a full second. The Wraith's thick, leathery scales hardly even bulged underneath John's fist, and John's arm shook underneath the strength of the Wraith's neck's dense muscles. The two made direct eye contact with eachother, the Wraith leering into John's dark sunglasses, and John not blinking as he stared into the sideways, diamond shaped ocular appendages. After that single second, the Wraith threw both hands upwards and pushed John's fist from his head, before locking his comparatively massive hands around John's tiny upper back. He rammed John downwards on his knee twice before John caught it and pushed to the side, spinning out of the Wraith's grip and around his back. John firmly side-kicked the Wraith in the back, pushing it forward an inch. Just as John's foot got back to the ground, the Wraith spun around, making John dodge several more lightning-fast punches and swings by less than an inch, each. After the third dodged fist, John ducked down and then pushed forward, both hands held up in a boxing stance. He slammed his fists repeatedly into the Wraith, trailing upwards from its lower stomach, all the way up to its chest, getting stronger and stronger as the sounds of metal striking kevlar grew louder and louder, before he finally ended it with a wide, powerful haymaker to the Wraith's head. The Wraith's face snapped back and forth before the saltorian rammed its fists into John's gut and face in a quick, one two punch; John used the recoil of his own body to take one step back and get back to dodging, bobbing and weaving, ducking, intercepting, or deflecting every punch that came his way.

To an outsider, it would have almost looked as if the two were dancing, with John using his superior reflexes to predict every movement and react accordingly, able to dodge each blow with the minimum effort and distance required, before lunging back into the fray, whereas the saltorian acted as if it were some sort of meaty tank, able to take each and every one of John's blows full force and only flinch for the briefest of moments.

John caught a wide right cross with his forearm, his entire skeleton absorbing the force of the impact. He chopped downwards on the crook of the Wraith's elbow, causing it to snarl in pain before its tail swung outwards. John lifted his leg and in spun it around the thick appendage, locking it in the crook of his knee and then kicking downwards, causing the Wraith to lose his balance just long enough for John to punch him several more times in the head. The sound of metal striking flesh filled the room as John launched jab after jab on the Wraith's exposed face, before finally, with a burst of biotic power, he slammed both palms into the Wraith's gut and sent it sliding back on the flats of its feet.

The Wraith instantly adapted and whipped its pistol off of its hip and fired another enormous bullet. Both John and his AI, each with their own vastly superior reflexes, realized almost instantly that its trajectory put the bullet on a direct collision course for the SIGMA II's head. The augmented human's reflexes kicked in, and in those precious milliseconds his augmentations bought him, he threw his torso back. As he fell backwards, the bullet soared just over his nose, skipping off of his barrier like a stone off of water and bleeding some of its kinetic energy onto him. John flew back several feet and landed on his hands, his legs splayed out shoulder-width apart.

The saltorian quickly slammed into the lightning-fast SIGMA II, its shoulders hitting John's armored feet. It was here, as it brought its knife around to jab at the unarmored parts of John's leg, and its gun around to shoot at his chest, that Cassidy acted with the speed only an AI could achieve. After accessing the computers in John's gauntlets, and using them to take control of his boots, she was able to have a much more limited form of control than she would have had were he wearing the full set of Titan armor, and even though the parts of the armor only stored just a small amount of power on their own, the limited control and low power was all she needed. The EVA thrusters on John's boots flared to life, and blasted the Saltorian's shoulders with all of the force they could bring to bear.

Since the Titan II's EVA thrusters worked on a 'biotic rebound' effect, by creating a miniature mass effect field that decreased the mass of the air as it passed through a heating element, once the air was heated up, its mass was lowered, causing it to be lightly flung forward, and once the oxygen molecules left the mass effect field, their mass snapped back like a rubber band; this caused what would normally be a negligible amount of force to multiply exponentially. It was designed to allow SIGMAs to quickly be able to cross large distances in zero-gravity environments, without the need for plasma torches or bulky EVA packs, but in this situation, its force was used as a weapon, blasting the saltorian to the other side of the room and shredding its suit from the shoulders up. The recoil also sent John flipping feet over-head, sending him soaring through the basement in a backwards spinning arc. He landed on his feet and scraped across the ground for several feet, digging small grooves into the stone ground before finally coming to a halt, one hand dug into the ground, and the other, with his pistol, held out to the side. Had anyone else been present to see it, it would have been a literal blink-and-you-miss it moment: The Wraith had fired at John, John had dodged the bullet and kicked the Wraith so hard that they both flew across the room.

John quickly darted to another crate filled with medical equipment, his eye on his motion tracker, as Cassidy's voice sounded in his ear. "I can't do that again, John. On their own, your armor pieces don't generate that much energy fast enough."

"What's his suit made of?"

"From what I saw, some sort of multi-layered kevlar and dragonscale armor. If the apparatus on its back is any indication, it's an armored EVA suit." Cassidy responded, hurriedly.

John's eyes narrowed, he had destroyed its helmet, but he didn't hear the hissing sounds of atmosphere being vented. Had it shut those systems off? And if it evolved in a high-gravity environment, this sort of atmospheric pressure shouldn't be nearly dense enough for it to be breathing properly. He scowled, as he slowly peered above his crate, in the direction of the Wraith, he didn't like not knowing these things, but he forced himself to focus on what he did know: This creature was certifiably bullet proof, and its defenses were only compounded by its armor.

I need to tear apart its armor, expose its scales underneath… Thought John, as he stared across the red-lit room, slowly leaning onto his haunches and standing up. But in order to injure it… I'll need a lot of force… We need to take this outside. He swallowed deeply through his drying throat, and crept forward, an idea forming in his head as he shifted his pistol into his left hand, and brought his right hand to his hip, the violet flames of his biotics blanketing his form and slowly revolving around his hand, coalescing into a dark, violet-blue ball of rapidly shifting biotic energy.

Charge… Warp… Follow. John scowled, and then pulled the trigger.

The bullet sailed over the medical crate, and John made a point to pull the trigger again, forcing his gun to click on empty. The Wraith bought the bait, but instead of leaning over the crate, it darted out from underneath it, practically hovering just a few inches above the ground. The moment John saw the flurry of motion, he cloaked himself in mass-lowering biotic energy, and leapt forward with all of his strength. Before his foot had even left the ground, his mass, assisted by his powerful biotic amps, had hit zero, and he zoomed forward with a loud thunderclap and a rubber band-like twang. Since the Charge technique worked directly on a line of sight, John had his eyes locked firmly on the space just to the front of the nearly prone Wraith. He crossed the distance between the two in an instant, the shockwave barely overpowering the Wraith's own leg strength and forcing it to stumble backwards. John threw his right arm forwards, and just before Wraith regained his footing, John's hand extended as far forward as it could and the Warp attack he kept contained was launched forward. Just as the Warp left his hand with a loud boom, John's hand was shot backward like an elastic band snapping back into place. The saltorian was hit full in the chest by the Warp and sent flying further back, crashing into the sealed metal shutter door, and tearing through it, landing outside and sliding several meters across the ground.

John had just a moment to take a look at his hand, his eyes wide and his scowl deepened, as he saw that it was bright red and throbbing, as if he had tried touching something hot, or thrusting it into an open flame. He knew instantly that he had done something wrong with the attack, but had not the time to figure out what went wrong where, as Cassidy's voice filled his ears.

"John, he's outside. Arcturus Police have a visual and are requesting permission to engage."

"Negative." Said John, "small arms are ineffective. Tell them to evacuate… But leave their vehicles."

"Say again?"

"Leave the vehicles." Said John, as he reloaded his pistol and charged outside, hopping through the saltorian-sized hole in the shutter door, and sprinting up the previously locked and sealed down loading dock, thinking blithely that if he had had his armor, he could have just made an entry point here, as opposed to breaching at the ambulance entrance. "And man the station's cameras. If I lose sight of this thing you need to keep an eye on it." He ordered, as he crested over the dock and into the brightly lit parking lot.

The saltorian was right in the center of a small grassy patch, just before the inbound road. It was lumbering to its feet, covered in the rapidly shifting mass effect fields that were shredding apart its armor, exposing some parts of its green-scaled body. In the distance, Arcturus Station's police force were receiving Cassidy's orders and were fleeing from behind their flashing red-and-white vehicles. John slowed to a walk, and then to a halt, five meters from the Wraith, who ripped off the remnants of its helmet, and cast it aside like a useless hunk of plastic and glass. It too quickly shed the thick gray and black pack on its back, disconnecting the oxygen hoses and swinging it off of its shoulder with a practiced ease, leaving it to hit the grass with a heavy thunk.

Now fully free of its useless equipment, the Wraith reached up to its back and grabbed the wooden stock of its heretofore unused weapon. John's eyes instantly recognized it as their main infantry laser weapon, they called it the Energy Lance. The Wraith, its large, narrow eyes locked to John's, holstered its pistol and gripped the rifle with both hands, before twisting the stock counterclockwise. In a fraction of a second, the previously cool, gunmetal gray barrel immediately lit up, glowing white hot as its smooth bore sealed off, and the entire barrel flattened and extended into a sharp, pointed shape, showing John that the 'Lance' wasn't simply a gratuitous addition, but a meaningful hint, albeit a misnomer. As the Wraith brought its lance down to its side, blade pointed outward, John slowly scowled, and holstered his largely ineffective sidearm.

John's eyes flickered to the abandoned police vehicles as he clenched his fists. Both were quickly enveloped both in hardlight, forming a single, searing hot blade on his right gauntlet, and a small, cold aspis on his left. Both John and the Wraith braced their feet behind them, as John raised his shield and reared his blade, and the Wraith gripped its sword with both hands, raising it in front of him like a medieval knight. There was silence between the two for a few moments, as the air around the Wraith's bright white blade was distorted by the sheer heat it gave off, and John's shield dully rang like freshly pinged glass.

"Egono inveniet thee dignuma." Spoke the alien in a deep, hissing drawl.

John's scowl tightened, but he said not a word. Instead, he bolted forward.

A/N:

I had meant this to be out about a week ago (as of its initial release)... But then I decided I could've done the basement brawl a bit better.
One thing led to another, and all of a sudden what had been a prelude to the big spectacle turned into a SIGMA and a saltorian getting into a kung-fu fight.

I actually had to stop myself, because I could totally see myself having the Ip Man vs Mike Tyson fight just playing on repeat, as I churned out a fourteen thousand word chapter, its latter half nothing but the two of them fighting in the basement.
But no, instead I'll put that time into the next chapter, which is actually mostly written already. I just want to take what I've got and make it bigger.

'Till next time!

-PFB