Shepard watched the station stream by through the Kodiak's window, ignoring the bickering and light conversation emanating from the final two teams behind her, her mind entirely focused on the battered grey monolith before her. Her disquiet had grown the closer they'd come to the station, and now with her eyes running along the cracked and pitted hull she noticed what she hadn't before: scorch marks. Hundreds of them, pits and craters where what looked like bomb after bomb had exploded on the station. Whatever it was, it had been a war-zone in some distant past and that put Shepard's nerves on edge. The transmissions were recent enough, and everything about them checked out except for the fact that they were broadcasting from the inside of an apparently dead station, which no-one had apparently touched in years. Shepard wondered if they had to use shuttles just as they had in order to get on board: the structure looked as if it might collapse if she was to try stepping on it, let alone if a ship tried docking with it.
Within a few minutes she was doing just that, leaving behind Beta team (the smallest, consisting of the only two she could trust to work together productively: Garrus and Tali) on the Kodiak. Herself and Alpha team, comprising Miranda and Jacob, were left standing outside the station as the Kodiak silently took off behind them, gliding away into the night like a shinning silver minnow against the backdrop of stars. After it had gone, they turned and walked through the doorway, Jacob brushing away what was left of the door from a prior explosion.
The corridors inside were just as badly damaged, with chips and holes from gunfire sprayed across the walls. The lights above were barely active, flickering on and off in a random pattern that cast the place in complete darkness before suddenly blinding whoever was under it. Shepard fired at it, disabling it permanently so that the only source of light was from the doorway behind them.
"There's something not right about this." Jacob said, his weapon already out and pointing down the hall. "Look around: this place is like a war-zone, but there's no bodies, no thermal clips, no blood: nothing. It's like someone swept up and yet forgot to call in maintenance."
"He's right: there is something strange about it, and it's not the only thing." Miranda replied, her fingers dancing over her omni tool. "Shepard: you're not going to believe this, but we're in a breathable atmosphere."
"What? How is that even possible: I thought EDI couldn't detect any Mass-effect fields."
"She couldn't because there aren't any: whatever's holding this atmosphere in doesn't rely on Mass-effect fields to do it's work. And that's not all: this station's old, Shepard. It may even be older than the Protheans, I don't know: the design matches nothing we've ever heard of." reaching to her face, Miranda decoupled her breathing apparatus and sniffed the air.
"It's clean." she said, surprised. "I expected it to be stale or stink or something, but it surprisingly fresh." she sniffed again. "Almost minty." she said, appeased.
"That worries me." Jacob said, his back still facing them and his shotgun nosing into the corridor's corners. "In my experience, they reserve mints till the after party: I think we've stumbled in to the tail end of something big, Shepard."
Shepard breathed out calmly, allowing the tension and her annoyance at Jacob's bad joke to slope off with her breath. Fear of the unknown was troubling, but dealable. After all: she was far more afraid of what she already knew.
"Alright, so we've got a spooky battlefield with no sign of a battle, an atmosphere with no clue to how it's generated and a station that shouldn't be. I think it's time we informed the other strike teams so we can spread the confusion round. Jacob: keep on doing what you're doing. Miranda, you're on decorations: see if there's anyway to bring a bit more natural light in to this place."
The two set about doing their work, Miranda using her biotics to widen the holes that pitted the corridors ceiling whilst Jacob continued to press forwards, checking each and every corner and shadow as he went.
Tali was staring fixedly out the Kodiak's window into one of the breaches, her breathing quickening through her suit as she watched. Garrus reached across and shook her shoulder gently.
"Tali, what's the matter. You see anything?"
Her head whipped round rapidly, almost causing the Turian to jerk backwards in surprise. "What?" she said, as if puzzled.
"Did you see something?" Garrus repeated. Whatever it was seemed to have caused her to mishear him the first time. She still looked puzzled. "Out the window?" he continued.
"Out the window?" Tali said, turning to look at it. After she didn't say anything, Garrus craning his head in so that he could get a look too. The view opened out into a part of the station that looked defiantly worse for wear, as if proud in it's ruin. Parts of it flapped about as if in a breeze, though the pieces of broken metal and rubbish littering the floors didn't move at all.
"Well, I guess whatever it was isn't there now." Tali said uncertainly, as if unsure that it had gone and Garrus quietly agreed. He got the distinct impression that they were being watched, and not just this strike team: all of them, as if the station was crawling with a thousand eyes just waiting for them to turn their backs before they opened. The sensation was... unsettling.
Their radio suddenly crackled into life, causing both of them to jump in their seats a little, hands reflexively reaching for their guns.
"This is alpha one calling all teams. Do you copy?" Shepard's voice was a bit crackly over the radio, as if the transmission was suffering from some kind of interference, but it was unmistakeably her.
"This is beta one reading you loud and clear, alpha one" Tali said, having been the first of the two to recover.
"This is Kasu-Charlie one, Commander Shepard. Or alpha one."
"Delta one, a-okay at this end."
"Good, then listen up cause I'm only saying it once. Or twice for you, old timer."
"Piss off alpha one." Zaeed responded through the radio, as Kasumi laughed in the background. Garrus smirked before listening intently as Shepard explained what she'd found out so far.
"We already knew at this end, Shepard: Mordin had most of it figured out already. Shame we don't have anything new to confused Zaeed with long enough for me to have a proper go at stealing his dentures." Kasumi responded almost immediately after Shepard had finished.
Zaeed did not bother to grace Kasumi's tease with a response, instead replying
"It'll be a relief to get this headgear off, though I'll be damned if I know what the Krogan's going to do with its helmet. Just have to keep it on, I suppose." There was a few shouts in the background, followed by a thump before Zaeed came back on. "Yeah, he ain't happy about it, but I threatened to withdraw Miranda's punishment, and it turned out just like you said, Shepard. Worked like a charm."
Miranda's spluttering came onto the radio before Shepard switched it off, leaving some of the group snorting and Tali and Garrus exchanging grins. The threat of more bed-time stories for Grunt was not something Miranda looked forwards too: it had originally been designed as a punishment for them both, after a particularly vicious argument between them had left Shepard having to foot quite the bill for several Citadel bars. Well, to be completely truthful it had left Cerberus footing the bill, but Shepard was the one who'd had to fill out the forms. And, after claiming that disasters such as the 'Conrad incident' came from an over use of signatures, she hated signing anything. The punishment, however, quickly became one sided, with Grunt's original distaste for Human nursery tales soon being replaced with total fascination. Days afterwards he was still going round telling everyone he met that 'I'd have put Humpty back together again. Krogan are far superior to horses' and that the Duke of York's military strategy was unsound, but interesting. On the other hand, the process succeed in driving Miranda mad, as all too often the young Krogan insisted on acting out the stories as they went along, merrily wrecking the cargo bay as he went.
"Al right everyone, pipe down and get back to work: Tali?" Shepard said, as everyone else fell out of the conversation.
"Yes, Shepard." Tali said with some amusement: Shepard's original insistence had been that everyone using a radio had to be human because 'aliens don't get call signs', and yet here she was easily slipping into informal name calling. Typical Shepard.
"I'm gonna need a complete scan of the building when you get here: tell me what we're dealing with. I want to know how come the power's still active and how much of it we've got: where the hell this atmosphere's coming from and how long is it going to last. Oh, and I'm going to need some kind of explosive solution for any problems that crop up later down the line: could you tell me how much I'd need to take this whole structure down?"
"Blowing things up. Typical. Hang on: I'll need an ETA from Hawthorne." breaking off from the radio, she called out "You hear that?"
"ETA in about ten seconds, Tali." he called back, and she nodded in satisfaction.
"We're pretty much-" she started, before Hawthorne spoke again.
"Hold on: I didn't spot that piece of flotsam before. Best make it two minutes. No, wait... 3 minutes. Maybe half an hour if we can't land there... no, wait: we can. About thirty seconds, I'm sure of it. 45 seconds. A minute."
"What's with all the numbers? Why can't you just choose?" Garrus said, leaning forwards in his seat.
"It's this damned window, Garrus: I can't see heads or tails out of it and something's interfering with the LADAR. Makes flying out here's like stepping back a thousand years. It's like I'm blind."
"I can imagine- oh, we are here after all." Garrus continued. The doors hissed open and the two stepped out.
"About three more seconds." Hawthorne insisted as the two climbed out of the Kodiak, Garrus giving it a thump as he went to indicate that they were out. After a few moments, it took off.
"Tali?" Garrus spoke out after realising the Quarian was no longer by his side. Turning, he found her already dismantling one of the side panels, her omni tool glowing brightly as she started to pull out wires with the surprising amount of grace he'd only ever seen when she was working on machines.
"Hold on, Garrus... that's disappointing: the power levels are too low to be able to get any form of accurate readings... hold on, what's this? Garrus: patch Shepard through."
Confused, Garrus did so, interrupting the Commander from the start of a scouting mission to determine the station's structural weaknesses. He'd like to pretend it was because Shepard was worried that the station might collapse on them, but it was far more likely she was just looking for somewhere to plant a bomb.
"What have you got for me, Tali?" Shepard called out over the radio. "Tali?" she asked, when the Quarrian didn't respond.
"Listen to this. I found it in a data chip behind the panel. Shepard, it makes no sense."
The radio filled with static, the hiss seeming to jump every so often. After a few seconds, Shepard said dryly "Is this all it is, Tali? I've got an explosion to set up here, and all that seems to be on here is static."
Before Tali could respond, a man's voice interrupted the hiss flooding into their ears in a faintly British accent.
"Yep, and this."
There was a pause as the static continued to crackle away to itself, occasional jumps and breaks seemingly happening at a random pace.
"That's funny, Tali. It almost sounded like he could hear me." Shepard laughed into the handset.
"Well I can hear you."
"Shepard, this isn't me: this is a recording I found. An old recording, I might add." Tali said, a faint note of panic leaking into her voice.
"Then how can he hear me? Shouldn't that be impossible?"
"Yes, of course it is. He can't hear you, Shepard, it's only a recording. You were just lucky enough to say the right things at the right time." Garrus broke in.
"Well, not hear you exactly." The voice agreed. "But I know everything you're going to say."
There was more silence as the group considered this.
"Garrus." Tali said, sounding scared "It can't be luck: the chances of Shepard's answers matching his are, out of... let's say they're a about hundred billion to-"
"38" the voice calmly interrupted.
"Or there abouts." Tali finished weakly.
"This can't be possible." Garrus said, his voice sounding the worse for wear.
"What matters is that we can communicate: they've taken the blue box, haven't they." The voice's ending sounded abrupt, as if it had meant to say more before being cut off by static.
"Blue box? What are you talking about? What the hell do you want from us?" Shepard demanded.
"Look to your left." The voice responded immediately, before it cut off and the recording ended.
"Well, that was disquieting." Garrus said, breaking the silence that had descended over the trio. He could faintly hear Miranda and Jacob trying to talk to Shepard over at her end.
"Tali, one of his sentences sounded cut off, like that was more too it. Dig into the files and see if you can find anything else, like a transmitter or something that can explain what just happened."
"You're right: there is more, but it still looks like it was a recording. What's weird, though, is that it seems to have been tacked together: almost a cut and paste job. There's another recording, too."
"Play it. If this turns out to be TIM's idea of a joke, then I see nothing wrong with going back and making sure his favourite new base gets the explosion it deserves."
"Look to your left, look to your left, look to your left, look to you left..." The man's voice continued, on and on until Tali killed it.
"It was on an infinite loop." She said, quietly. "Shepard, I really, really don't like this."
As Shepard and Tali finished their conversation, Garrus began to feel the twitches along his head ridges that usually meant he was being watched. 'Look to your left.' the man's voice said in his head, and he did, looking down a corridor that seemed to be ina better condition than most, though the lights that ran along it still flickered on and off. Garrus took at first one step then another down the corridor, his eyes scanning the shadows for any sign of the movement he was certain would be there. And then he saw it, underneath one of the few lights whose output seemed constant.
"What is that?" said Garrus, gesturing at the wall up ahead, across which someone had scored letters into the wall with what looked like a knife, though what letters and with which language Garrus couldn't tell. Tali turned to look at them, and Garrus saw her freeze and then rush past him at considerable speed.
"Do you know what it is?" He asked, walking forwards to where she stood stock still, her head pointed at the wall with an intensity he'd never seen on her before.
"It's Quarrian: from a language that's only ever used in the flotilla. And it's impossible Garrus: it shouldn't be here."
"What do you mean?" Garrus said, confused. It couldn't be that unlikely that someone from the flotilla had visited before. He brushed past Tali and ran a talon along one of the strokes. "Someone from the Flotilla could have been here before. They're certainly not recent and whoever made them was either in a hurry or scared, but aside from that I can't date them. Do you think whoever made them's still aboard the station?"
"Yes. Yes, I am." Tali breathed in and out rapidly, her suits filters giving it a strange sound amongst the silence. "It's in my handwriting, Garrus: I couldn't mistake it for anyone elses. And it says ' Leave! Just take Garrus and go. Get to the Normandy now!' It's completely insane: I've never been here before: we've never been here before. So how..."
Now it was Garrus's turn to breathe in and out rapidly, his eyes widening as he processed the information. He briefly considered that maybe Tali was lying or out of her mind, but he quickly dismissed that: he trusted her with his life, and if she said it was in her handwriting and that she'd never written it, he believed her. And yet, that left so many more questions unanswered: why was he mentioned by name? How was it written, and who wrote it? The more Garrus considered this, the more he felt like taking the advice and getting the hell off this station.
He became aware that Tali hadn't said anything for a while, and that he couldn't hear her sharp breaths any more. In fact, he couldn't hear anything but silence behind him. Fear rose briefly, before it was quashed by the years of deeply ingrained military training. Taking out his rifle, Garrus turned to face whatever was behind him.
"Where's Jacob?" Miranda said suddenly, and Shepard turned round to find that the Operative was alone behind her. Trying to peer through the sheets of light that broke through the ceiling into the shadows between them, the two quickly realised that he was nowhere in sight: it was like the station had simply swallowed him.
"Miranda, try and get in contact with him through the radio. I'll see if the Normandy can pick up on him."
"Understood, Shepard. This is alpha two requesting alpha three, come in alpha three."
"Joker, this is Shepard. Can you get a fix on Jacob, over." Shepard said into her radio set, ignoring their assigned call-signs and undoubtedly getting a Miranda glare to make up for it. After a short pause, Joker responded.
"We're kinda surprised to be hearing from you, Commander. EDI ran a complete radio check about half-an hour ago, and found she couldn't contact anyone: we figured the station was interfering with your radios somehow, but if you can get through that probably makes it at our end."
"I'm afraid you're mistaken, Jeff: I have run several scans throughout our systems and have been unable to find an error. It appears that something is periodically interfering with transmissions from the station, though I am unable to determine what."
"Jacob, I can hear you breathing through the headset: for god's sake, answer me." Miranda hissed behind Shepard's back, her patience finally wearing thin.
"Well, keep trying EDI." Shepard said, part of her listening to Miranda and the rest considering their options. They needed to find Jacob, wherever he'd wandered off too. Deserting her team for what would probably turn out to be a pee was, quite simply, unacceptable.
"Any update on the situation?" She said a few seconds later, to be met only be static. A quick check revealed that her radio had been switched off, though she couldn't remember doing it. Perhaps it was caused by the problem EDI had mentioned earlier.
Turning, Shepard decided to see if Miranda was having the same problems as she was, only to find that the corridor behind her was deserted. Looking around, two things immediately sprang to Shepard's attention: first was that there was a single thermal clip on the floor, it's surface still glowing red hot and a quick inspection revealed that she had not fired it. Secondly, and more worryingly, Shepard realised that she was no longer standing in the corridor she was before. It was as if the station behind her had changed suddenly, like someone had swapped it with a different area of the ship, taking Miranda and possibly Jacob with it.
It wasn't much as theories went, but it was good enough for her to cope with. Right then: someone was moving parts of the station around without her or the current scientific community's permission. She'd never encountered anything like that before, but if, as she was beginning to suspect, this turned out to be something to do with either the Reapers or the Collectors then that sort of technology wouldn't be surprising. All she had to do was figure out a way to stop them, which was actually fairly simple now that she was thinking about it. Blow something up.
It was then that Shepard realised she'd left all of the heavy ordnance on the Normandy and that it was unlikely she'd be able to return given that the station was behaving the way it was. Cursing she thumped the wall in anger, and then she spotted somthing up ahead: an arrow pointing towards a corridor on the left, the outline glowing faintly pink due to the nebula's light. Look left, huh? The man on the radio had both sounded like he knew what was going on and like he was human: both of which meant he had an ass she could kick until he gave her some answers. Relishing the thought, Shepard set out.
Author's notes
I'm sorry to keep on red herring-ing you, people who have read this story, and I promise I'll reveal which monster I'm dealing with in the next update. It will also have Eleven in it, rather than Ten, so I'm sorry if I've accidentally raised anyone's hopes: there is a reason behind why I used Ten's clip from Blink which I think works within this. Also, I'm interested in knowing if the attempt at blending comedy and mild fear worked well or not: feel completely free to bash me if the juxtaposition just put you off. Anyway, thanks for reading and goodbye! (Oh, and if it isn't obvious, I've written Shepard as being a mixture of paragon and renegade, with a fair amount of leaning towards renegade. And she likes explosions. A lot.)