Chapter 6 – Division
Tullius and Scott stepped over some charred husk corpses and entered a large side office. The connected rooms were noticeably cleaner than the previous areas, likely used for administrate work.
"Sooo," started Scott in a cheeky tone, unable to stop grinning under his helmet, "you got told off."
The turian gave a thoughtful murmur; "Yes, after imprisonment and the current situation, it's understandable that Commander Slater would be frustrated. It's also evident he's the type that dislikes failure. He clearly wants his stalled mission back on track, my questioning him in front of his subordinates was not a wise decision."
"Even though you made perfect sense," replied Scott more seriously now, "I mean, we don't even have a signature to track this thing, we're just wandering aimlessly."
Tullius nodded, his attention now on the read-outs from various desk monitors; "From his point of view, splitting up like we have will increase the chances of finding it faster, but without knowledge of what we're up against…"
"We could get ambushed by a marauder," finished Scott.
"That is one possibility."
"No, really, a marauder," pointed out the human as a tall shadow entered the room from the far end.
"Get down!" ordered Tullius as flashes of white fired through the air towards them.
From his crouched position, Tullius peered around the sturdy desk and glimpsed at the enemy before it took cover itself.
It was a 'harvested turian', clad in metal plating and Reaper implants, armed with a phaeston assault rifle.
Tullius began to feel what he assumed all humans felt when coming across husks of their own species. Disgust and dread welled up inside his mind, along with upset over one of his own being converted into such a monstrosity.
Nevertheless, it was now a deadly agent of the Reapers and no amount of psychological warfare was going to deter him from doing what had to be done.
Another volley of fire caused the turian to fully take cover again.
"What we do?" asked Scott as a single human husk also entered the room, already at a full run towards the pinned N7 Ops members.
"Well," observed Tullius; "the marauder obviously has more intelligence than the human husk's tactics."
"What you tryin' ta say?" frowned Scott as he watched the husk frantically clamber over upturned desks and debris.
"It's keeping us suppressed with gunfire while the husk rushes us. An effective combination, but I've studied these marauders since they first started turning up. Get ready to handle the husk, I'll handle the rest."
As the husk got closer, the marauder broke cover to stand and raise a strangely red glowing hand in the air. Ribbons of crackling red mist and energy arched from it's now clenched fist and surrounded the husk as it ran. The mist hardened into armour-plating causing Scott to do a double-take; "The hell?"
This was exactly what Tullius was waiting for. Using his omni-tool to cause an overload, the marauder lost it's shields and was vulnerable enough for an accurate head-shot to take it out.
It fell backwards, dead, it's arm still raised up in the air for a moment before dropping.
"Little help here!" cried Scott, now on his back, pushing the frenzied husk up and away from himself as much as possible, "It wants my brain-meats or something!"
Not wasting time to reload his sniper rifle, Tullius turned and rolled forward, omni-tools flaring into life on both of his arms and transforming into sword-like blades as he raised back up onto one knee.
With no armour around the husk's neckline, Tullius crossed his blades to either side before swinging his arms outward, decapitating the husk and causing Scott to yelp as the head dropped next to his own on the floor.
Quickly standing up, Scott kicked the severed head away and shuddered for a second before looking at his squad leader; "Wow."
Tullius nodded; "Surprised? I have a second omni-blade for close-quarters combat."
"No, it's not that, I've just never seen a turian roll along the ground before."
.***
Rebecca and Teela'Shal carefully stepped over the dead bodies of several asari littered on the wide mezzanine above one of the main reactors.
The human tried to calm her distress by rambling as she often did; "From their matching green and white uniforms, these asari must have been workers for this reactor, but they didn't go down without a fight."
Teela'Shal replied in a sarcastic tone; "You really enjoy stating the obvious don't you?"
Rebecca ignored this and continued her analysis, something her original squad were normally thankful for; "From the damage and… missing… parts, it looks like explosives were used? Missiles or something?"
"Do you always babble nonsense this much or are you just trying to annoy me?"
Rebecca began to wish that something bad would happen to her compulsory partner, but upon seeing a red targeting laser suddenly focus on the quarian, she wished she hadn't.
A small concentrated explosion staggered Teela'Shal against the wall to the side, causing her to scream and curse.
"Teela!" called out Rebecca, running towards her.
A second explosion shattered the quarian's shield and bashed her into the wall yet again, leaving her tremendously vulnerable.
Rebecca jumped forward at full speed, tackling her 'teammate' to the smooth but hard floor as a third explosion engulfed the human mid-air.
The human engineer opened her eyes and looked down at Teela'Shal, her HUD read-out showing that the quarian's shield was slowly re-charging and that her own took a considerable hit but would be fine.
"Get off me!" demanded the quarian.
"Eh?!" squeaked Rebecca, pushing off the floor away from her while still keeping low, adjacent to safety barrier along the mezzanine edge to avoid further attacks.
Teela'Shal slowly rose to her knees, inspecting herself while also keeping low; "I can't believe you! You could have ripped my suit!"
"I…"
"Do you know what will happen to me if it tears even a little?! You idiot!"
Rebecca couldn't help her body from shaking as she clenched her fist and punched at the floor with an echoing bang.
Her facial expression was hidden, but her voice certainly revealed that her introverted demeanour had finally reached a breaking point; "You… conceited… annoying, spiteful, little… bitch! I don't know what your problem is with me but I damn well know I don't deserve it! So you either get your shit together and work with me, or next time your life is in danger I'll happily leave you to get knobbled by the husks!"
Teela'Shal silently looked away for a moment as if ashamed, but it couldn't be confirmed due to the mask covering her face.
The human was still shaking, wondering if she actually sounded aggressive enough, but at least it 'seemed' to have the desired effect.
"It's a ravager," stated the quarian, moving to peek over the safety barrier and then quickly lowering herself to hide from the following volleys of fire.
Now full of curiosity, Rebecca scurried over to the barrier, gently peering over to the lower level; "What's a ravager?"
"Former rachni, transformed into mobile heavy artillery for the reapers."
The human was already disgusted from just looking at the large insect, it's frame embedded with lethal-looking twin cannons, but the description made her shiver and pull a face under her helmet; "Eww, gross, no, no. Why did it have to be rachni? Extra evil modded possessed rachni at that."
"I'm not a fan either. We should deal with it quickly…"
Rebecca noted the lack of insult or edge to the quarian's statement and grinned; "Ice and flame combo?"
"Agreed," replied Teela'Shal, pressing a few buttons on her omni-tool and then letting fly with a white cryo-blast cartridge.
As it sailed through the air and hit the oversized insect, Rebecca followed up by popping out of cover and clenching her fist before flicking out her little finger and thumb. Her omni-tool instantly spat out an incinerate attack to complete the tech-burst combination that she often shared with Scott.
Teela'Shal continued with some concentrated SMG fire to finish it off before it could counter-attack. On death, it collapsed in a puddle of steaming acid and caustic gas, the two large orange sacs at it's front bursting with a splatter.
There was unexpected movement as six large spider-like creatures scurried away from their dying host.
"Ewwww," panicked Rebecca, "those were egg sacs and, and, I really hate over-sized alien arachnids. They're coming for us!"
"Stand back and relax," said Teela'Shal calmly.
"But they're climbing up after us and if we lose sight of them they'll stalk us until our guard is down and then jump on our faces!"
"Trust me, these swarmers will be heading straight for us with no tactics, come here," beckoned the quarian.
Moving to stand next to the quarian, Rebecca watched her throw out a small black device to the ground a little distance in front.
Some panels on it folded out to reveal front-facing nozzle and a booster underneath, allowing it to become airborne, floating about a metre in the air.
The black sentry turret turned slightly as it detected the first two swarmers clambering over the barrier and released a stream of fire.
"You set it up as a portable flamethrower," squeed Rebecca as she witnessed the next four swarmers follow suit, exploding into puddles of green goo, "this is how everyone should deal with spiders."
After the flames died down, Rebecca ran a hand gently across the floating turret; "I… I want one."
"I call him Toasty," was the proud reply.
Rebecca's head span around in excitement; "I call my recon drone Fido. I though I was the only one that did stuff like that."
Teela'Shal chuckled a little and then paused; "Listen… sorry about before, I have my own… issues, and… thank you, for saving me earlier."
The human engineer prodded her two index fingers together shyly; "Ahh no worries, don't mention it."
"Something else, I may be able to help you with that."
Rebecca glanced to the black box attached to her waist that was being pointed to; "You can help me decrypt it?"
"We discovered the values of the recent Cerberus access codes had all been increased by sixty-four digits, if you factor that in…"
"Ahh!" exclaimed Rebecca now rapidly tapping away at her omni-tool, "No wonder my de-coder was taking so long! Excellent, thanks!"
.***
Leon was stood in one of the large control rooms, vacantly staring off into space and seemingly unaware of the threat looming behind him.
His eyes narrowed as a human husk dashed up to his blind spot, aiming for a tackle.
Leon couldn't be sure if the husk could feel surprise, but assumed it must have felt 'something' as it sailed through the air and hit the floor.
It instantly sprang back up and unleashed a flurry of slow but strong clawing attacks as if it desperately needed to rip the flesh off the salarian as soon as possible.
With every swipe, it's arms passed through the now slightly glitching decoy hologram, but the husk relentlessly continued trying to cause it damage.
The decoy began to walk on the spot as it was attacked, mimicking the real Leon as he marched forward, raising his M-77 Paladin heavy pistol and ending the persistent husk with a close-range headshot.
The hologram expired and vanished, leaving Leon free look over to the other side of the room to watch Slater deal with the last threat in the area.
The N7 Destroyer stomped his foot down on the ground, the shockwave staggering a marauder before Slater followed up with a fatal slashing attack with his omni-blade.
.***
"Where you going?!" called out Grogg, charging across the freshly made puddles of acid on the floor of the large cafeteria, "Don't wanna play no more?!"
"Yeeaahh, what's matter?" joined in Tessia, also chasing after the last two remaining ravagers that were trying to scurry away, "Only programmed to fire from a safe distance? Can't handle us up in your ugly excuse for a face? Diddums."
The two ravagers paused for a second to purposely burst their egg sacs in defence before continuing to slowly scuttle back.
This did not deter Grogg, who continued charging forward, the majority of the small swarmers all jumping towards the krogan and exploding with little effect against his powerful shields and fortified armour.
The less protected asari thrust both of her hands forward, creating a large stasis field on the ground. Upon touching the shimmering dome of warped space, the spider-like creatures instantly burst on the spot.
Running through the field herself, Tessia began to glow with biotic energy before delivering a powerful punch to the nearest ravager's weak spot, causing it to crumple to the floor.
As she shook off the greenish-brown blood and her extra biotic shielding faded away, she watched Grogg body slam into the last of the modified rachni husks.
"Bwahahahaaaa! Been a while since I've had so much fun," laughed the krogan.
A previously locked door inexplicably shunted open, releasing three human husks that instantly started running towards the two squad members.
Grogg stomped his right foot a couple of times; "More? Is it my birthday?"
Tessia reloaded her M-6 Carnifex as her stomach grumbled in hunger. She thought about some of her favourite foods as she walked towards the still active stasis bubble, knowing that she could have a rest from using her powers for a while.
The three husks tracked onto her and unwittingly ran straight into the field of stasis, instantly stopping them in their tracks. She raised her pistol, ready to deliver three separate headshots.
"What have you done?" asked Grogg with a hint of disappointment in his loud gravelly voice.
Tessia looked back to him; "It's a stasis field, basically they're frozen in time for a short while, kind of."
"Huh," grunted the krogan, "no challenge now, but sure I'll find my fun in it."
Without another moment of hesitation, Grogg delivered a shoulder barge to one of the husks, sending it's completely stagnant body sailing across the room. The second received a powerful running back-hand that had it's rag-doll-like flight concluded with a satisfying crunch upon colliding with a wall.
The krogan laughed; "Yep, still fun."
Taking the pause as invitation to have her own fun, Tessia levelled her gun at the remaining husk. One pull of the trigger left the husk headless, the body crumpling to the floor a second later as the stasis field vanished.
The serious look in Tessia's eyes faded as she skipped forward; "Sweet, now let's go find that artefact."
Grogg began to follow, cracking his knuckles; "And maybe some more reaper scum to knock around."
A loud noise began emanating from the hallway connected to the door that had recently opened, accompanied by two marauders stepping through and taking cover, ready to start a fire-fight.
"Hahaha," laughed the krogan, "looks like they really don't want us to go that way. Guess we get to keep cracking heads."
Tessia looked more concerned now as she paid closer attention to the loud thudding sounds still within the doorway; "Those sound like some very big, and very heavy footsteps…"
.***
Rebecca and Teela'Shal discovered a series of interlinked rooms and were searching various containers and lockers for their main objective.
"No luck again," grumbled Teela'Shal moving to the next room, "this is getting tiresome."
"Well, at least we're not getting shot at for a change."
"True, but I'm very much looking forward to leaving this place as soon as possible."
The two continued quietly searching until a three second jingle from a popular role-playing game sounded from Rebecca's omni-tool; "Black box is done. Want to see?"
"Read it to me while I continue searching, just the highlights."
Rebecca started scanning and flicking through the logs with small hand gestures over her omni-tool; "So… the Cerberus ship was transporting an artefact stolen from reaper-controlled geth. The geth gave chase and shot them down before they could escape with it. Ahh, the wreckage outside makes more sense now."
"Yes," replied Teela'Shal, "our mission originated from a tip-off that Cerberus had something important in their possession. Our spy was actually on-board, allowing us to track closely and retrieve the artefact from the wreckage shortly after the crash. Unfortunately, we were captured by the geth and they reclaimed the device."
"The logs mention that the geth they stole from were acting strangely, holding prisoners rather than out-right killing… speculation, speculation…"
Teela'Shal was now knelt down, hacking into a large safe-box that she had found in a cupboard; "Any data on the artefact?"
"Let's see… yeah, the image here… it looks like a dark grey… overgrown… alien-skin covered microscope? Yuck."
"That's the one," came the reply without any visual confirmation needed, "looks like it's made of some bio-material, creepy isn't it?"
"It was designated code name 'Item XXX', oh man, I'm already imagining the porn-related jokes Scott would come out with right now. Various tests were conducted, yadda-yadda... Oh sweet!"
"What?" asked the quarian, finding nothing but company documents and some credits in the safe-box.
"All the test results are here, including the exact frequencies it emits!"
Teela'Shal quickly stood and moved to peer over the human's shoulder, instantly tapping away at her omni-tool; "That's brilliant, we can tune in the ratings and detect it."
"Aww," smiled Rebecca, already one step ahead, "there's a cute little arrow indictor on my HUD and everything. Here, I'll share it."
Upon receiving the data and checking the co-ordinates, Teela'Shal's own smile turned to a frown of confusion beneath her mask; "That's weird, it's overlapping Rob's current location and moving with him. Are his comms down? Why hasn't he called in?"
"Huh? Slater has it?"
"Yes, no doubt," replied the quarian, quickly bringing up the direct voice-chat to Slater on her omni-tool, "Rob? Rob, come in."
"Oh no," trembled Rebecca after reading more of the report and quietly rotating her stance so her teammate could see the key phrase showing up on the display.
The quarian's heart skipped a beat as she read the words 'reaper indoctrination' just as Slater answered the call with a; "Yes, what is it Teela?"
Several questions and worries entered her mind but she tried to sound composed; "Just had a bit of bother and wanted to check the comms. No luck finding the device here so far, how about you?"
"No," came the reply, "we should keep going in deeper, it must be around here somewhere."
So shocked at his convincing lie, Teela'Shal spontaneously asked; "Are you sure?"
Rebecca began to hold her hands up as a sign of caution but it was too late.
Realising her mistake, Teela'Shal put her hand to her mask, wishing she hadn't said anything further. If Slater was really indoctrinated, the further questioning would seem suspicious and likely tip him off.
"Of course I'm sure, what makes you think I might have it?" asked Slater with only minor irritation detected in his voice.
The quarian tried her best to recover, acting-out a blasé sigh; "Just wishing we could get out of here faster, I really hate this place."
"I can understand that, but it should be over soon, get back to me if you have any luck," answered Slater, closing the channel.
The two engineers exchanged looks for a moment.
"Indoctrination is extremely potent," said Rebecca, remembering the warnings from her N7 training, "it's been causing governments to convince people to submit to the harvest, and navy squads to rip themselves apart… Is he hoping to have us randomly get killed here? Is that why he split us up?"
"Don't!" blurted out the quarian, her voice full of despair, "Just, it's… Rob would never…"
"I know, but he's not himself, I've even heard of… oh-ma-gosh, what's-his-name-Leon! We should warn him!"
Teela'Shal swiftly brought up a private message app on her omni-tool; "Discreetly…"
.***
Leon finished searching a storage room and returned to following his team leader as a small beep emitted from his omni-tool.
Upon reading the urgent message, the salarian looked back up to see that Slater had come to a halt and was facing in his direction.
With no clue what the human's expression was under his helmet, Leon simply waved his hand; "You okay?"
"Why do you ask?"
Leon sensed the man's paranoia and defensiveness, something that was certainly out of character and a further hint that the message he received likely had truth to it; "Just that you've stopped. Are we unable to move on? Road block?"
"What was the message?" asked the N7 Destroyer, nodding towards Leon's arm.
Determined not to raise suspicion, the salarian smiled; "Nothing important, a reminder I set myself to work on a project I have planned, can be ignored until after the mission."
Slater gave a low grunting nod as he turned and continued walking down the corridor; "Come on."
Glancing back down to his omni-tool as he began to follow, Leon noticed that the data for the reaper-tech had been sent, showing a clear indicator that the objective was extremely close to his current position and slowly moving.
His eyes locked onto Slater's backpack, the container which he now realised wasn't as empty as it had been made out to be.
As Slater turned ninety degrees to head down a different corridor, Leon averted his eyes and quietly gulped, fretting over if he had just been caught 'eye-balling' the pack or not.
With Slater now out of sight, the salarian breathed out deeply, trying to decide what his next move should be and also trying to come up with general conversation ideas to lower suspicion.
As Leon turned the corner, he was startled at Slater's sudden appearance directly in front of him, toe-to-toe.
In a split second, the salarian's first thought was that the corridor led to a dead-end, causing the man to turn around, but the searing pain in his lower gut instantly corrected him.
Slater leaned in closer as he pushed the omni-blade further through Leon's stomach, the blood-drenched tip through his back, dripping onto the floor.
"I didn't want to do that Leon," said Slater, a sense of confliction in his voice, "but, but you left me no choice. It's harsh, but I'm doing this for the greater good, you have to understand."
Leon grimaced as he coughed up blood, gazing at Slater's concealed face with large sad eyes, fighting the pain to utter; "Rob…"
Slater seemed to flinch at his teammate's calm reaction and retracted the blade.
The salarian cried out in pain and dropped to his knees, trying his best to let his final thoughts be of forgiveness, knowing that his murderer was not in control of his actions.
The N7-Destoryer's head twitched and lowered slightly, his voice proud but with a hint of concern; "I had to do it. It's not just me. You can hear the voices too, right? Keep them here, stay, stay… keep them here… It's not just me right?"
"You're…. indoc…"
"Don't speak, just stay still… the war will be better for it."
Leon could only watch on in despair as Slater slowly stepped towards him.
.***