„A salarian," Wrex said heavily. „And he got business with krogan."

They were walking through what must have counted as a krogan city. Shepard had yet to see something that could qualify as a normal shop, or a street, or a civilian car.

Or a female.

Food was distributed in military rations, so were the med packs. There were no mornings or evenings, just shifts and patrols, precisely like on a warship. Life in clan Urdnot's territory was surprisingly organised: she did not expect that. It was military precision though, clean, focused and efficient, and apparently, it was working.

„Actually, it's about another salarian," she explained, while Wrex guided them through to one of the outposts. It was neatly camouflaged: Shepard noticed good, old-fashioned LO tech, old enough to fool advanced equipment whose designers probably hadn't even heard of such ancient tricks. „It's a, uh, rescue."

„Who are the poor bastards that got your friend's friend?"

„Clan Weyrloc, apparently."

The big krogan laughed.

"Go full Shepard on this one."

"You sure? I don't wanna ruin this sweet little krogan survival plan of yours."

She was beginning to understand what exactly Wrex was trying to accomplish in this place-he explained it before, but Shepard was always „believe when you see it" or maybe "see it to understand it" kind of girl-and why all krogan she passed wore full combat gear. Of course, anywhere in the galaxy krogan wore their heavy armours, but somehow she'd expected that on their homeworld they'd be at least a bit more casual. Some of them. Any.

And they were, she knew. Just far away from anyone who could do them harm and she understood why a Cerberus ship would be viewed as such. It pained her, it filled her with helpless rage, but she understood.

"Guld is a damn madman and if he goes down, it'll be better for everybody, you aliens included."

"Noted. I think we need to head back, my team should arrive shortly. And there's probably already a line ahead of your throne."

Walking in the shadow of Wrex's colossal silhouette, Shepard couldn't help but feel tingling of guilt somewhere in her stomach. Wrex was trying, trying so hard to build something on this fucking, helpless ruin of a planet-and she promised to help a salarian who turned out to be one of the chief contributors to maintaining a sterility plague. Technically, it wasn't lying-but it certainly felt like it, filling her gut with hot oil and covering her hands in sticky sweat even beneath heavy armour gloves. The thought of it-genophage-still seemed too big, too complex to even ponder about.

Mordin Solus ensured that genophage has been maintained.

Genophage.

Practically a swear word, at least in Urdnot dictionary.

"There's something off about you, Shepard."

She looked up sharply. "What?"

"No, wait. You had the scar, didn't you? Hell, I forget."

"Ah, those." She touched the narrow, nearly invisible cracks that would not get off her face no matter what high-end cosmetic she'd use. "It's a side effect. I don't care."

That was a lie.

Her team was waiting precisely where Wrex'd ordered his people to escort them to. She tried to read Solus' face and failed, but the Urdnot krogan around him, restless and groaning, were easy enough. It seemed the only thing stopping them from working out some stress on a visiting salarian were their clan leader's orders. And, as Shepard had expected, they actually backed away a little when Wrex approached them.

"So. You must be-" Wrex froze in this unique way that Shepard learned to recognize long time ago. She felt her muscles tighten, her vision sharpen; one hand reaching for a weapon, the second already blazing with vivid blue-and then Wrex chuckled. "Massani? That you?"

Zaeed pushed his way through from behind Krios. He wasn't laughing, thank God, but the grin on his scarred face allowed Shepard to relax.

"Urdnot Wrex. Hell. I thought you dead."

"Look who's talking."

It took them the distance to a waiting Tomkah vehicle to tell the story-only in short, of course, and Shepard suspected that the proper telling in those guys' narration would need to wait for a free evening, or better yet, a free weekend. Predictably enough, they'd worked together once and after everybody around Zaeed, also predictably, had died, only he and Wrex were left alive on a ruined ship about to explode. They'd lost their comms. They'd both thought the other was dead. They were on the opposite sides of the ship. There was only one shuttle docked in and they'd both made a run for it.

Both survived, both thought they'd left the other one behind in the explosion, both didn't see anything strange about the whole affair standing now opposite each other.

"Would make for a good love story," Shepard said as they reached the Tomkah. Jack snickered somewhere behind her. "And now let's go find clan Weyrloc. See you later, Wrex."

The tank's heavy hatch closed behind her and they drove forward, straight into oncoming Tuchankan night.

Her first near-death experience awaited maybe twenty meters from where they'd parked the Tomkah.

"Fuck, they're fast," shouted Jack, pulling a turn that should twist her spine at least twice and somehow managing not to get hit by a goddamn flame. "That shit fucking stinks!"

Shepard wasn't listening. There was a whole pack of this unholy offspring of crabs, rachni and perhaps resurrected soul of Jonathan Martin. Jack wasn't lying nor exaggerating: whatever were their red bodies covered in, it reeked of chemicals Shepard didn't want to touch. And when they breathed fire-which of course blinded her whole team, because for some reasons their noctovision couldn't work out contrast in time-somehow a term "waste disposal plant" came to mind.

I wonder, she thought, with one accurate biotic throw blasting one of the creatures upside-down for Zaeed to kill, if this is some local equivalent of our rats. Or maybe pigeons.

"Careful, Shepard," Mordin bellowed from somewhere behind her in a note even higher than usual. "They expl-"

And somehow, she was lying flat on the dry ground, far away from the chain of exploding klixen.

"For fuck's sake," Shepard wheezed, practically jumping to her feet. "Big, fire-breathing and they fucking explode? What the hell are they made of?"

"Post-nuclear mutants," Mordin explained, and Shepard could swear there was some sick fascination in his eyes. "Effects of prolonged radiological exposure. Doubtful we'll encounter any on Weyrloc territory. Krogan can't tame them, unlike varren. Can't use them to attack enemies."

"Thank God for small miracles."

They moved on, Shepard and Mordin in front, with Zaeed and Thane watching their backs. Something was still wrong with Shepard's HUD; angles seemed too small, shapes weirdly flattened. Maybe going in by night wasn't the smartest idea after all.

This is what happens when you try playing covert. You've always sucked at hide-and-seek.

She'd rather blast her way through clan Weyrloc, simple and straightforward. But this wasn't an option, not when there was a life at stake. Krogan were also simple and straightforward, true, but not enough not to think about killing Maelon if Shepard simply broke through. So they had to sneak around and be fast.

It was all about a salarian, so they were doing it the salarian way.

Even despite the distance and all the interference, EDI managed to pick a safe-ish path for them. With outposts and Weyrloc guards flagged on the display, the only variable were the patrols. Those they managed to avoid, mostly thanks to Jack's supernatural ability to pick out anything even remotely resembling a watchman, and Thane's creepy skill of disappearing in the shadows. They moved forward. Silently and more or less invisible.

"Entrance," Mordin said when they were deep into Weyrloc territory, with many, definitely too many krogan behind their backs. The five of them hid all around a big block of a building which seemed relatively whole, but half-buried in rubble. Shepard knew it was supposed to be a former hospital, but everything about it-location, outlook, even goddamn lack of doors-screamed "bunker". "South-east, five guards."

"Everyone, rally on Solus. Only five?"

"Affirmative."

Shepard's brain did the math while her body moved from one deep shadow to another, followed closely by Jack. They didn't know what was waiting behind those doors. The chances to get inside unnoticed were practically non-existent. Sneaking around made sense when one knew their playground; perhaps now it was time to just be fast.

The krogan were there, pacing nervously in front of the heavy doors, but only three of them. It took her a moment to notice two smaller silhouettes, a little further from the walls, paying much more attention to the perimeter than krogan did.

"Vorcha. That means Blood Pack. Interesting."

Shepard watched and counted in dark and silence. She waited for a returning patrol, or maybe an upcoming shift change, but no. The five guards were apparently meant to stay in this place, guarding the only entrance.

"OK, we're doing hit and run." Go full Shepard on this one. "Thane, Zaeed, I want you back here, long range. Jack, Mordin, take the vorcha. I'm gonna hit them from behind." As she was speaking, her amp was already warming up, biotics buzzing up and down her spine. "On my mark. One, two, three."

Mark.

She charged and the world limited itself to a bulking, unsuspecting figure of the krogan in Blood Pack armour, waiting on the far right to be tackled and sent into next Thursday. The world wheezed and warped all around her, the physics took a break, and she rushed forward in whirls of biotic blue.

The magic, the perfect aspect about this technique, was that she didn't even have to touch their targets. It was all mass effect fields and physics and rules kicking back in, usually crushing her enemies' bones on the way. All she needed to know was that her hands were free and so if anyone was still breathing after the hit, she could always correct this with the shotgun.

As she did now.

Well, so much for covert action, she thought as the blast echoed all around them. She looked around, readying herself for another attack, but there was no need. Mordin was already working on the door.

"Strange location for holding a salarian prisoner," he said without looking up, as if they didn't just massacre a mercenary squad in mere seconds. "No fences, no alarms, no patrols."

"But he's here?"

"He's here."

"Then let's go get him."

So here, Shepard thought gloomily, fighting the urge to look away. Now I've seen a krogan female.

This wasn't a hospital, and probably was never meant to be. Hospitals didn't leave their deceased patients rotting away in the corridors, hospitals didn't reek of smoke, chemicals and decaying meat. Hospitals weren't usually built like mazes with whole levels hidden underground. There were bodies everywhere in various states of degradation, and not only krogan. She's seen human remains on the floor-on the goddamn floor. They passed a room full of small glass tanks, lit ominously by red emergency lamps, containing nothing but salarian internal organs.

How much does it say about my team, Shepard let her thoughts wander while Mordin stopped by one of the krogan corpses, that an assassin seems to be the one most disturbed by all this?

Zaeed and Jack fell unusually quiet since they'd entered the building. They both tried at first to throw some occasional comment, snarky or simply grim, but it bounced off the rest of the squad and so eventually they've given up. Mordin was focused and intense, keeping the horror at bay with words; he talked and talked, analysing, planning, projecting. He turned the shock into productivity.

Thane was angry.

He kept calm and professional, but really seethed. Shepard wondered how the hell didn't his gaze set this whole place on fire.

"Why leave them here," Shepard said, looking around for something to cover krogan's sunken, dull eyes and streak of coagulated brown fluid that ran from her mouth onto dirty operating table. "I mean. There's no sense. Whatever they're trying to accomplish, it's a corpse. Corpses tend to mess up anything... science-y."

"Wouldn't expect reason from madman," Mordin answered, putting an old thermal blanket over the body, and there was a hint of anger and disgust in his voice. "No doubt now. Maelon's mad. Not know what pushed him to it, though. Might be being enslaved. Possible other factors. Doesn't matter. Have to stop it all."

"Stop it all? What all?"

"Weyrloc trying to cure genophage."

She kept her gaze steady on Mordin, didn't look around, didn't seek confirmation from other team members that she'd heard right.

"Is this even possible?"

"Specify, Shepard."

"Curing the genophage? Is this possible? You should know. You, of all people, should know."

She was getting dangerously near the topic, she knew, she could feel it, see its gigantic shape somewhere under her feet like a ship's crew could see the monstrous silhouette of a whale just under the sea level.

Mordin sniffed, and, for once, fell silent.

"No," he said finally, but there was doubt in his voice, uncertainty that was so unlike him. "Don't think so, at least. Definitely not here, not in effect of these barbaric methods. Genophage cure would take years to formulate. More time to distribute. Not easy. Can't be done by one salarian and one clan."

"But theoretically?"

Somewhere in her head Wrex's deep growl echoed around.

Mordin looked up at her, and only just now Shepard realised how perturbed he was. He wasn't shaking, he didn't cry; but the salarian's face, usually so live and friendly, was now stern and angry, full of hard lines and strained muscles.

"Theoretically everything's possible. Nothing useful from this place, though."

"On that we can agree."

It didn't seem right to just turn away and walk further into the bunker's corridors. Shepard actually had to remind herself that technically they were in the middle of a battle, deep into enemy territory, and that they should wrap this all up quickly.

So she let the dead where they rot and left, feeling like a traitor.

"Good!" Shepard shouted in between deafening blasts of her shotgun. Weyrloc Guld's head stopped looking like anything organic one shot before, but she just wanted to make sure. The bastard gave Mordin a new scar to worry about and got through Shepard's shields before she managed to bring him down. "Keep them busy! Mordin, to the door!"

Krogan kept flowing in, but they were disorganized, enraged and chaotic. Shepard's team had two excellent snipers, biotics and fantastic position which altogether gave them solid five minutes before they'd have to think about exit. She ran to the doors, punched the green button and they entered.

It was dark, damp, and surprisingly quiet, given the amount of fire just outside. The heavy iron gate slid closed and Jack's shouting got cut off like a radio turned off.

"Come on, Maelon," Shepard said, changing the modes in her HUD to see better in environment without constant blaze of their guns. "Come out, we're not gonna hurt you. We've come to rescue you."

"Hurt me?" a voice said, angry, high-pitched and clipped. The salarian came out from behind sophisticated-looking table. Still slouching, he looked like a rabid dog ready to attack. Shepard half-expected him to drool. "Like you've hurt all these innocents?"

There was a moment of stifled silence when suddenly Shepard tried to redirect her train of thoughts. Or push it off its rails.

"Bold words for someone who left dead bodies rotting all around his lab," said Shepard, her mind suddenly clear, knowing, just knowing, what really happened here. "Whose victims died after weeks of torture."

"Who the fuck are you?"

"No proofs of mind control," Mordin murmured, tilting his head. Something blasted behind heavy doors, but the sound of it was faded, far-away, as if someone was barely watching a war vid. Mordin began to walk: slowly, in a semicircle, almost absentmindedly. Maelon didn't take it well, constantly turning his head between Shepard and his former colleague. "No struggle. Volunteered to work with Weyrloc."

"With Blood Pack," Shepard concluded. She heard the rush of blood in her ears, the sight of decaying krogan before her eyes and Wrex's sardonic laughter bouncing off the inside of her skull. Her hands were free, her shotgun cold and safe in its holster, but salarians were weak. Weak bones, weak spines, and Shepard's amp was hot, almost scalding, begging her to do something to make everything they've seen on their way here right.

"You're too intelligent for this kind of rationalization, professor," Maelon snarled. "You realize this is only a reaction to what we've done in Firebreak. What salarians and turians did all those years ago. The most basic rule of universe!"

"What, you think this is somehow STG's fault?"

Her blood was simmering.

"Chains of cause and effect! Nobody can play God without the universe noticing! We wronged them, they tried to compensate! If krogan were never sterilised, they wouldn't need to organize places like this lab! This? This is nothing compared to what they must do on a daily basis to just survive! As a species! Salarians caused this, of course we did, it's on our heads, and, and, professor, if you'd see what it means, what it really means, what we... what we..." Mealon's voice trailed off, vanished beneath what looked like too much emotion.

"What you did," Shepard said, her voice hoarse, "is what, if we were on Earth, would be called a crime against humanity. There's no excuse."

Maelon laughed.

It wasn't cold, cynical or even mocking. The salarian laughed as if he heard the best joke ever: air left his lungs in loud bursts, he wheezed and gasped, clinging desperately to the edge of a nearby table. He seemed to try to point a finger-to Shepard or Mordin, she wasn't sure-but the wild spasms that had taken over his body made it impossible.

And then, when he ran out of breath, he threw himself on Mordin.

Shepard reacted instantaneously, yanking Maelon off his feet in a slash of blue light. She didn't have to do anything else-there was a gunshot, one, two, and Maelon's lifeless form hanged in air like a puppet with its strings cut off.

Mordin hid his pistol and sniffed.

"Will take a quick look at the research," he said. "Suggest planning a way out."