Six-year-old Kal-El sat on the carpeted floor of his bedroom. Dozens of six-inch tall plastic action figures crowded together in front of him; some were warriors adorned in bulky armor and carrying guns, and others were civilians in plain garb. They moved of their own accord, and spoke in low voices. The boy liked designing toys on his parents' 3D printer.
He someday wanted to make a toy as realistic as the Citadel model beside him, originally given to him by his mother. He picked up the model and looked at the undersides of the partly-opened five arms, or wards, to see the cities. The manufacturers' machines looked to have meticulously copied every possible detail onto the scaled-down version. Why were all the plants dead inside, when I first got this? He had since opened the small Citadel, placed artificial trees and lawns inside, and used sticky-gel for water in the streams and ponds. I'll visit the real place someday, he thought. Ma said so.
He set the model back down and looked to his planets. They were plastic balls attached to the ceiling by string, though he had gone through a lot of work making them appear like random planets, using paint and clay. Sunlight entered between window blinds and hit miniature Mars. The red planet was supposedly once similar to earth, his home, but that was millions of years ago.
A knock came at the door. He grinned and stood up. "Come in."
His adoptive mother entered, dressed in a sleek, tight body suit. Her ridged cranium was shaped like a wide diamond, the bottom point reaching down to the top one-third of her face. She had four circular eyes, two on each half of her face, the small secondary pair set further back and up from the primary. The prothean woman also had four breasts, one pair under the larger.
"How's your project coming?" She stepped to the edge of his fighter-shaped bed frame and sat, knees together.
Kal went to his desk, snatched a small remote control from a drawer, and walked over to her.
"I followed all the instructions in the manual," Kal said. "And I put the control together all by myself. My own hands, my own basic tools."
His mother nodded. "We depend on synthetics to do our work, but a soldier should always prepare for when he's in a tough situation." Her voice was the most soothing sound he could imagine. "That's what you are, Kal-El. Our little soldier."
He sat down beside her on the bed and leaned on her shoulder. She put an arm around him and kissed the top of his head.
Kal's father always acted like a disaster had happened when she reciprocated the boy's affection. "When he's a grown human, will you bring him lunch every day in his barracks? When he scratches his cheek on the battlefield, will you rush to him with a bandage?"
Despair weighed in his stomach. Someday soon, he knew, the Mars Council would separate him from his mother in a bid to toughen him. How could he convince them that his mother was the best thing for him? He looked up at her, eyes misted.
She smiled, holding him tight to her. "Show me, when you're ready."
He wiped his eyes, pointed the controller at the Citadel model on the floor, and flipped the main switch with his thumb. The control shook and buzzed as a thin cloud of glowing particles writhed out. The cloud stretched out and engulfed the mini-Citadel, then spread to cover the action figures. Civilians tried to run away, or stood in place and screamed. Soldiers fired condensed air at the giants upon the bed. Static electricity sparked over the toys. Kal pressed a button. The toys lifted from the floor and rose toward the ceiling.
A smell of burning plastic and rubber filled his nostrils, and he realized the control had begun smoking. His mother gasped. "OK, dear, turn it off." He did so. The Citadel and artificial people flew in all directions at great speeds. Parts exploded and planets bounced wildly off the walls. A stray piece smacked Kal's forehead, and another struck his mother in the eye.
"Are you all right, ma?"
She covered her eye with a small, three-fingered hand. "My eye will be irritated for the rest of today, but yes."
"I'm sorry."
"I'm sure you did the best you could." She stood, brushed off her front, and took a bossy tone when she next spoke. "Get this room cleaned. And throw that dangerous controller in the trash compactor outside, before it explodes and burns down the facility." She opened his window, making visible the topmost portions of smooth, blade-shaped skyscrapers. Dusty, lightning-shot clouds boiled in the distant sky.
"Can't a bot do all the cleaning?"
"Did a bot make the mess?"
"Hey, ma. Wait." He took the Citadel from the floor and held it up between them. "Next I'm going to make a replica of the research facility, and put as much care into my work as the makers of this."
His mother titled her head and frowned. "Your father brought that home from a tour one day." Her voice dropped. "He acted so funny when I asked him about it. Keep this a secret, but I think he was a little shy at bringing you a gift. He can be adorable when he wants to."
Ages later...
Kal steered the Mako up a curvy path between a cliff face and drop-off. Snow and wind beat at the vehicle. The interior was warm, but horribly cramped. The Commander sat in the driver's seat, wishing he could stretch his limbs, while Wrex and Garrus sat in the back. They stayed quiet except to point out enemies or geographical anomalies on the radar. The squad depended on the radar to compensate for poor visibility, and sometimes even that was a sketchy guide. Kal tried to use his x-ray vision, but high concentrations of certain minerals in the mountains left his field almost as limited as his partners.
Two geth juggernauts and an armature waited half a kilometer ahead. The armature fired first. Kal answered with cannon rounds. He pressed the propulsion and rose above the enemy missiles.
Cannon shells hit the armature. It stumbled. He used the moment to gain speed and crash through the mech's legs.
The juggernauts each shot a rocket at the Mako's back.
Kal tried to swerve away, but the rockets hit and he lost control, slamming into a pile of snow against a large rock. He grabbed the control rod of the mounted machine gun and rained fury down at the two geth. He blew the shoulder off one, causing it to drop its gun. He backed the vehicle into the second, knocked it over, then drove forward to commence the trip.
The cliff face lowered and leaned away from the road in some spots. He turned right and drove up a steep angle.
"What are you doing?" Wrex asked. "Bad time to be trail-blazing, don't you think?"
He ignored the question and jammed the pedal when they reached a place where the cliff started gaining serious height again. We'll need an extra boost with this one, he thought, and used his physical contact with the steering wheel to issue his own energy field over the vehicle and reduce its mass right as the acceleration reached maximum. The Mako had an eezo mechanism in the engine, but sometimes the land and atmosphere of a planet won out over the modern ground transport.
The wind became harsher than ever at this altitude, and Kal had to increase their mass immediately. They traveled up and down large formations, or took detours around, but slowly gained altitude until the sky-reaching tower of Peak 15 dominated their view ahead.
"Stay here. I'll be right back." Kal latched on his helmet.
His two squadmates were silent for a moment.
"We'll wait ten minutes at most," Garrus said. "Too late to go back, and too hazardous to go looking for you out there."
Kal opened the hatch, climbed out, shut it back, then kicked off the ground and flew into the sky.
He stopped a few klicks into the air and floated in place. I'll check up on Ashley and Kaiden at the port. He turned his head and squinted, using his telescopic and x-ray eyes to search for his other two comrades. For all I know, they may be the pair to run into Benezia. He looked into a garage, where geth waited in resting, then a cafeteria. Bodies lay on the floor or slumped over in seats. Human, turians, and asari were torn apart by bullets. Further out was a wide open plaza with stairways leading to offices. Ash and Kaiden were in the furthest office on an upper floor, gunning down a crowd of husks. They looked to be holding their own.
He closed his eyes, restarted the settings, turned to face Peak 15, and opened them again, beginning to readjust for a thorough scan from bottom to top. Again, he saw a garage, this one occupied by geth and krogan. The cafeteria's windows were busted, and winter had begun to claim the inside. There was an elevator at the end of the top landing, a rectangular room to the side... wait. Three organic creatures patrolled the landing, each half as tall as an average man and best described as a cross between spiders and crabs. Rachni? Where was the queen? Further search into corridors, a VI core and main reactor revealed dozens of rachni; though the place was devoid of any humanoids. He had read reports before the mission that explained these structures on Noveria were for the purpose of genetics research and related business.
Benezia better be on this planet, or the whole trip was a waste. He uncovered a tram station. Its rail led through a tunnel in the mountain, back out across an open pass, then into a second tunnel.
The tram's nose appeared at the tunnel exit. An asari, wearing a black body suit and armed with a pistol, sat near the front. Kal reached for the com button on his helmet. "Garrus. Climb in the driver seat and follow my signal."
"What signal?"
The tram entered the next tunnel for Rift Station. Best confront them before they can hide behind armies of geth and rachni. He flew down into what he guessed to be the far edge of the Mako's radar range, then curved up and away in the tram's direction.
"Gotcha, Shepard. Heading your way."
The tram was almost completely in the tunnel by the time he came within reach of the back. He uprighted himself, grabbed the corners, and set his feet on the icy ground. Sparks gushed from between the vehicle and rail, turning snow to steam. A constant screech canceled the noise of the wind for a few moments. Then the tram stopped. Kal let go and ran a hand over the foggy back window in time to see three asari commandos thrust their arms out at him. He flashed straight up into the air as the entire back wall exploded outward. He turned and floated back, stopping above the snowbank framing the tunnel entrance. The commandos ran out, pistols raised.
"Good afternoon, girls."
They turned and fired.
Kal slam-landed on the bank. Snow fountained up around him and spilled over onto his enemies, burying them. "Take them alive," he said to Garrus. The Mako was almost over the last rise at the other end of the pass.
He jumped down to the base of the snow hill and entered the tram. The front window was busted through. Someone stood in the tunnel beyond. He strode out the window, stopped a few meters from the stranger, and scanned them with both x-ray and infrared vision. She was definitely an asari matching Benezia's description. For some odd reason, there were bulging implants nestled between her head tentacles; the devices were secured to her skull, and connected to multiple sections of her brain by intertwining wires.
"Know why I'm here?" He asked.
"You are out of time and place, Kal-El." The voice was masculine and monotone, reverberating in the tunnel. "A relic flaunting obsolete technology, deluded into thinking he can turn the tides of my dominion."
Kal found himself feeling intimidated. "You're confused, Benezia. Let's find you some help."
The light of biotics brightened around the woman, and she turned to face him. Her eyes were whited out. A glowing circuitry pattern crept from under her hood to her cheeks. "That personality is gone. I consumed her every memory and thought."
The man shook his head. "Asari matriarchs exercise great power over their minds and spirits. Their entire reproductive system is based on mental imprinting."
The woman aimed the palm of her hand at him. "Call out to her. Beg her to reclaim her body. You will fail to reach her."
He darted to the side and zoomed forward, meaning to pass next to her and make her stumble.
She caught his ankle when he had almost flown past, and displayed superhuman strength and speed by using his momentum to spin him back around.
His head skidded on stone.
She let go and threw him into the opposite wall.
His fell hard to the ground and his body went stiff. He could barely breathe, as his diaphragm had been so lowered when the stasis attack happened. Benezia appeared a blurry shape standing over him.
The cells in his body would experience a second of vulnerability when the field disappeared, in which time he was as vulnerable as a normal human. And he was certain his armor's barriers were damaged from the earlier pounding.
Shots hammered his head rhythmically, slowly cracking his helmet. He mentally fought to stay conscious while pain pounded in his head and his lungs burned for air.
He understood the closeness of death in that moment. His mother was a nice memory to hold at the end, for comfort and inspiration. She was the heart of his existence, even thousands of years after her death. He owed his values, principals, and thought processes to her.
There's a chance to win, though minuscule. Go for it.
He tried to bend at the waist, and kept trying until the stasis field flickered off. His preparation did bend him at the waist, right gunfire flashed bright in his vision. A searing pain ran from his forehead and over his scalp, but he had narrowly dodged being shot in the head while exposed. He drew in cool, life-giving air.
Kal rolled away and climbed to his haunches. Benezia stood a little distance off, moving her pistol to aim at him. He leapt to the side a millisecond prior to the assault, and a bullet grazed his shoulder.
Then he felt that refreshing electrical crackle on the surface of his skin. He was back in action.
Benezia fired at directly at him. The bullets entered his armor, but glanced off the suit underneath.
The woman growled and flung her arm out, tossing away the gun in the same action.
Kal kicked off the ground above the reach of the biotic push and shot duel heat beams from his eyes to the nodes coming from the asari's scalp.
She cried out and fell to her knees, gripping her head.
Kal zoomed forward and slapped her in the face. The attack was light by his standards, but sufficient to send the woman sprawling to the side, where she lay still. He used x-ray vision to confirm her heart was still beating, then walked to her and tore off the sleeves of her robes, using them to secure her hands behind her back. He tossed the woman over his shoulder and began walking down the tunnel, back to his squadmates.
"The rachni queen," Benezia murmured.
The man stopped mid-step. "The queen is near, after all? Where?"
"The other way. Drop me and go the other way. Please free her from her prison."