Chapter 4

"Alright, let's do this!" Shepard shouted in an effort to attract the attention of every Cerberus soldier in the area, "Tali, send in Chiktikka!" Tali popped out of cover for a short while and pointed her omni-tool in between two soldiers that had been within their line of sight at the time, and as her arm was stretched straight ahead of herself her invaluable signature combat drone was conjured into existence, instantly shocking one of the soldiers. The other Cerberus operatives rushed to the sight of the chaos to find a mere drone harassing two soldiers and quickly tried to dismantle it in a panic.

"That's why you get real soldiers for security not guys who think their pros because they know how to tell the difference between the barrel and grip of a gun," Reegar laughed sprayed bullets from his avenger into the general direction of the Cerberus soldiers. Some of the bullets had destroyed some of the enemy's shields and wounded them in various parts of their bodies and some had hit Chiktikka which made her explode from the damage, killing two of the operatives and stunning five. Shepard took advantage of the chaos that had been sown into the enemy ranks by casting a mass effect field into the heart of the stunned soldiers and slowly they floated off the ground coated in blue biotic energy and drifted slowly towards Tali who then blasted three of the soldiers, ejected a thermal clip, then blasted the other two dead with no effort using her eviscerator. They were left as nothing but mangled and butchered corpses at her feet, ripped apart from biotics and shotgun blasts alike. The last three had escaped the unfortunate ends of their comrades and attempted to flank the trio but Shepard took notice and chucked a singularity their way, stunning them which let Reegar gun them down with his avenger with one thermal clip.

"Nice work guys, let's get inside and pay Cerberus a visit," Shepard suggested cheerfully still holding on to his Vindicator. The three of them walked to the north side of the base at normal pace, where the entrance was.

"I'll go in first," Reegar declared as he jumped to the vanguard of the team's formation but the door held him back. When he looked properly he saw that the door's access symbol was orange and he let out a big sigh.

"I'll take care of it," Tali informed as she stepped up and scanned the lock with her omni-tool and fiddled around with various button combinations and arm gestures, "let's see, this is going to take a while," Tali coughed profusely before she was able to resume her work, "actually that was easy, it's done." Tali declared proudly as she hacked the lock and opened the door which led into a decontamination and air chamber where the door behind them closed and their suits were sprayed with weak cryogenic substances to keep them clean. The team wasn't interested in being cleaned though which Shepard made a point of as he biotically ripped apart the air-tight door right in front of the team which also blew back a small fire team of five that had been knelt down and waiting for them. The soldiers tried to get back up again to expend their thermal clips from their avengers on Shepard and his squad but the three of them combined shot them down first with their own weapons. Shepard examined the area once his enemies were dead and saw that what they had entered was just one massive round hallway with Cerberus adorned walls and lab rooms every few paces apart from each other which would be the only cover he and his team would have should they encounter more soldiers in the hallway and even then these makeshift bunkers might have enemies inside.

"Be careful team," Shepard warned, "the fight's not over yet." One by one the trio breeched each room, sometimes with more fire teams waiting to be slaughtered by Shepard's relentless determination to get the job done, sometimes they came across anywhere between one and four scientists who tried to fight back but they were cut down even more easily than the soldiers, but most of the time it was just science equipment and odd research that none of the team cared about. It wasn't until they came across the hideout's last room, which was twice as large as the other rooms that had been breached that something promising and truly awe-shattering was discovered by this relentless team of fighters.

"Ok guys, last room, let's hope this one here is promising," Shepard spoke in an optimistic tone hoping to increase his team's morale for one final time before the mission was finished. His Quarian squad mates nodded their heads simultaneously and Shepard tapped the door to open it. Inside he found a sight so surprising and confusing that the entire galaxy just shut out. The interior of the room was blank and his team now seemed non-existent. What Shepard gazed at that blew his mind back was the presence of several husks.

"Husks!" he thought, "why are there husks here?!" When the husks noticed him and his Quarian comrades the team ran back, even Shepard who had only needed the moaning sound of a husk to wake him up from his waking dream. The team spent thermal clip after thermal clip trying to keeping the husks at bay but there were so many that some grabbed onto Shepard and his team every few seconds. Shepard tried and tried and after calming down enough to get his concentration back he used a large reave field that incapacitated a large number of the husks at once while the ones behind them were stuck at the back unable to get through their now useless horde. Tali blew each and every husk she could back with her eviscerator while Reegar gunned downed hordes at a time with his avenger. 40 shots, eject, repeat. Shepard was the one who made it possible however, as he would either incapacitate groups with an area reave, make them float about with a singularity or toss them about like a child's action figure with pull fields. It took an entire 10 minutes to get rid of such a massive horde and by then they had collapsed on the ground from exhaustion, Shepard especially who was suffering from another headache from making so many biotic fields so soon after having an emergency repair done to his L5-X implant after the Collector base. Now the ground was littered with husk corpses everywhere, over the floors and some had even managed to be somewhat perched onto the walls. The sight of the number of disabled husks was overwhelming and morale destroying.

"What the… what were those things?" Reegar asked shocked. Shepard didn't blame Reegar for being so jumpy right now, he had been killing husks since Eden Prime and they still creped him out from time to time.

"Those were husks," Shepard replied, "they're human corpses modified by the reapers to act as shock troops.

"That is nasty, no wonder you want them taken down," Reegar replied hastily but trying to remain professional.

"Wait, why does Cerberus have husks in their base like this?" Tali asked confused, "it doesn't make sense."

"We have to check that room. C'mon," Shepard ordered. The trio rushed back into the large room where the husks had come from once they had caught their breaths while trying not to trip over the husks themselves and searched around the glass desks and lab equipment of the room the size of three apartment rooms combined. There were things worth seeing in this room, secrets to find unlike the others as the team would soon discover.

"Guys, look at this," Tali called to her team as she took a small hand-sized object out of a draw she was looking through. Shepard and Reegar gathered around her to see a bronze object resembling a straight river without any curves or turns with the Cerberus symbol right in the centre.

"What is that?" Reegar asked confused.

"Miranda will know," Shepard informed, "we'll take it back to her, could have some meaning to Cerberus."

"Hey look, eezo," Reegar pointed to a large storage area in the corner of the room filled with element zero presumably belonging to the fleet. There was way too much for the three of them to carry by themselves without mechanical aid.

"Joker, send the shuttle over, we have a large shipment of eezo to take back to the Migrant Fleet," Shepard ordered over his omni-tool.

"Aye aye Commander," Joker replied from onboard the Normandy as he sent the shuttle back just outside the entrance to the Cerberus hideout. Shepard looked around and saw twenty dead bodies placed in black zip-up body bags all lined up neatly on the ground, 10 side by side and another 10 on the ground above them also aligned side by side. Reegar picked up the datapad close to the bodies and the information he found disgusted him.

"I can't believe people would actually band together into an entire faction just to do this to their own kind," Reegar declared sickened.

"What is it?" Shepard asked grimly.

"Take a look," Reegar replied as he handed the Commander the data pad. The datapad held information regarding the biotic abilities of the now dead humans and all the brutal experiments that the test subjects had gone through which ultimately killed them. Shepard, outraged by Cerberus once again, biotically lifted the pad up above him and threw it as hard as he could into a wall which shattered it into a million tiny pieces that no one was ever going to bother to clean up, mainly for the safety of their fingers.

"Sick bastards, they were trying to make another subject zero," Shepard exclaimed disgusted.

"Hey, what is that?" Tali asked in suspiciously as she looked at a skeleton in a huge transparent capsule shrouded in a blue kinetic barrier. The other two came closer to the object. That wasn't a natural skeleton, it didn't look human for one and the trio could tell it was made of element zero.

"What the, EDI, check this out," Shepard called as he stood inches away from the kinetic barrier and waved his omni-tool over the skeleton for readings to give to the Normanday's artificial intelligence.

"Interesting, a skeleton made of element zero. I also detect information caches of dead biotics in the electronics near you. It is possible that Cerberus was conducting tests to improve the power of human biotics," EDI theorized to him and his team.

"By what exactly, replacing the skeleton with a new one made of eezo?" Shepard asked curiously.

"It is highly doubtful, but replacing a select number of bones may be possible. Regardless, there is something you should know Shepard. The skeleton, it has traces of Prothean DNA."

"Wait, Prothean, you sure your VI is correct Commander?" Reegar asked. Shepard was just about to correct him that EDI is actually a fully self aware AI, but given he is a Quarian and almost got killed by Geth not too long ago he decided it was best to leave him uncorrected.

"It has to be," Tali replied in Shepard's steed, "EDI doesn't make false readings." Shepard took pictures of the skeleton and the rest of the room with his omni-tool very quickly as he tried to think of more questions to ask EDI.

"Are the protheans known for having eezo bones EDI?"Shepard asked at last.

"No Shepard, which is why it is unusual. It is possible however given how advanced the Protheans were that they were able to convert an entire skeleton of a living prothean biotic into element zero for augmented power in battle, or if converted properly, could make any regular Protean into a powerful biotic. Cerberus could be trying to figure out how this is done to make human biotics even more powerful than the Asari."

"Doesn't explain why they need our eezo though," Reegar butted in, "surely they could get some somewhere else that is easier to obtain."

"Perhaps Cerberus just wanted to hurt an alien faction. They are extremists," EDI reminded.

"Well that's the understatement of the decade," Shepard replied sarcastically, "they're xenophobic terrorists that need to be purged. You two, let's get out of here, this place is just as much an abomination as the Collector base and I'm burning it to the ground." The Quarians obeyed and they got out of the base as quickly as they could and jumped into the shuttle that was waiting only two meters away from the base. As they looked out the door the hideout's roof had been blown off far away from sight by some sort of explosion which made fire and black smoke emerge from the top out into the sky, and eventually Shepard walked out the front door with the base behind him set alight by fierce flames, the symbol of anger, Shepard's anger towards Cerberus and all their experiments they've ever proceeded with that crossed the line. They won't be an asset should the Reapers come, they have to die and if he couldn't do with one frigate in space, he would at least get under their skin and send a message.

"We're coming for you Illusive Man," Shepard thought to himself as he entered the shuttle, "and you're going to have to pay back everything you've ever done to the galaxy, in blood."