Chapter 8: Object Rho

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With a heavy heart I brought the Kodiak in for landing on the asteroid 157-Golgotha the home of 'The Project'. Before we left the Normandy I had visited Engineering but Tali was nowhere to be seen, probably avoiding me and I couldn't really blame her. Still I had huge doubts about this entire mission, doubts I could only share with her. I had forgotten just how much I had come to depend on her sympathetic patient listening to my uncertainties and reservations, things that the Commander of the Normandy and Savoir of the Galaxy just wasn't allowed to have and certainly not express to his crew.

The asteroid was huge, easily as big as the one the Batarians tried to smash into Terra Nova with an even more extensive network of facilities. I marveled how Kenson and her team had managed to smuggle this much material past the noses of the Batarians and assemble it without being noticed. The irony did not escape me, back then my mission was to stop Batarians committing an appalling war crime by destroying an innocent human colony with an asteroid and I was praised as a hero. Now I was prepared to do the exact same to a Batarian colony; am i not the war criminal, the terrorist now? Well, not if could help it… not if I could find another way.

Kenson sat beside me in the co-pilots chair looking remarkably relaxed and confident even smug considering the conversation we had earlier. She had radioed ahead to tell her people that we were coming to review the evidence and to "tidy up the lab" for us. Seeming innocent enough things to say yet why it did it make the hairs on the back of my neck rise up? I have come to trust my instincts, relay on them in a way that only another soldier who constantly faced death would understand and right now my instincts said I was heading for a trap. "Now remember the first step in avoiding a trap, is knowing of its existence" I thought rolling the ancient maxim around my mind while keeping a tight hold on my rifle.

We landed and Kenson lead me swiftly into 'Project Base'. We passed through a maze of corridors; clearly the facility was even more extensive than it seemed on approach. Everything seemed calm and well run with staff going about their various duties and responsibilities on an orderly fashion paying little attention to us. I relaxed a little but just a little. We finally reached the main lab and Kenson smiled "Commander" she said with a hint of the theatrical "I give you 'Object Rho'"

The door of the lab swished open to reveal a huge structure dominating the room resembling a gigantic open flower the size of a shuttle surrounded by flickering blue energy. I entered, drawn to its its graceful sinuous beauty. An alarm somewhere in the back of my mind recalled the Black Narcissus flower although the objects colour actually seemed to alternate between deep blues and blacks and purples. Narcissus I thought clumsily, what was it about Narcissus? The myth of a man lured by Nemesis to a pool where he saw his own reflection in the water and fell in love with it and being unable to leave the beauty of his reflection, died.

I shook my head and came to my senses "You have it out in the open!?" I said thickly "Kenson this is not good"

She chuckled ominously "Relax Commander, it will give you all the proof you need"

Suddenly something black and oily was inside my mind its writhing tentacles burrowing fast and deep. It made my mind see images like the Prothean Beacons did, forced them into my skull violating my consciousness but in a far more brutal and insidious way. The Thing made me see the entire Reaper fleet in all is callous glorious invincibility hanging in space like a malevolent horde of insects and made me hear their dark oily whispers as they conspired against us. I saw their lead ships hit the relay and vanish and then the heard the sounds of whole worlds screaming, the smell of entire races burning in my nostrils as they hung in the sky their dark gigantic tentacles grasping and crushing all life.

And then the Thing showed was on the surface of one of those burned black worlds piled high with corpses and swarming with horribly twisted and mutated creatures, people the Reapers had melded into willing slaves to their bidding. Against the horde I stood with my crew, Tali and Garrus by my side as they had from the start. I pulled out my heavy pistol from its holster and pointed toward the Reaper-spawn but then the black oily whispers spoke to me again in their indecipherable tongue. I turned and pointed the gun straight at Garrus's head.

"DO NOT RESIST, GIVE YOURSELF OVER AND BE SPARED" a familiar voice as deep as the earth itself boomed.

"Boss what the hell..?" he began before I cut him short with a round through his skull his head exploding into a pulpy mass.

"Shepard!" Tali cried "Why!?... We're your friends!" I turned towards her and pointed the gun point blank against her visor and paused. She was crying now, sobbing as if her heart would break.

"STRUGGLE IF YOU WISH SHEPARD... YOUR MIND WILL BE MINE"

Harbingers voice exploded inside my head, my pistol shaking, clattering against the plastic visor while Tali remained rooted to the spot. A sudden beautiful calm overtook me and I shot once cleanly punching a hole through her purple visor, the quarian falling back in a bloody broken heap. I laughed with cruel delight and put bullets into Mordin and Kasumi as they begged on their knees for mercy. The rest of the the crew followed until there was nothing left but a mound of corpses covered in dark sticky blood. Then I saw my hand and I understood. I was a husk.

Screaming I broke free of the vision only to collapse on the floor of the lab. Kenson bent over me with glowing eyes and said in the same voice deeper that the earth itself:

""TAKE HIM TO MED BAY. WE WANT SHEPARD ALIVE."

And then, everything went black.

A/N Thanks for your reviews and comments