The harsh winds of Noveria did little to beat down the Reaper ground forces. Marauders and Cannibals alike stalked the white surface of the snowbound planet, slowly cracking open every research lab and bunker they could find. Those deemed worthy were dragged off to the harvest. The defected ones, terminated.
The corporate guards put up the best defense they could, but were slowly losing ground against the eternally patient Reapers. Whenever the ground forces could not dislodge a particularly stubborn outpost, one of the Destroyers roaming the surface would fly over and vaporize the entire compound and all its defenders. And above all the fighting, a single Sovereign-class Reaper glided around Noveria in a gentle orbit, overseeing the planet's harvest, as it had for thousands of other planets. It had bombarded a few of the larger cities at the onset of the invasion; with the planet's leadership decapitated and reinforcements unlikely, the Reaper was content to see its grim duty done.
Thirty miles away from the front lines, in a facility built into the side of a mountain, a group of scientists argued as fiercely as the war outside raged.
"No!" screamed the human in the white lab coat. He was middle-aged, gray just beginning to show through his brown hair. He was unshaven, and red stubble dotted his chin. "He's not ready! Not even close!"
"We don't have a goddamn choice!" the brown-skinned batarian researcher shot back. "We have two days, maybe, before the Reapers kick down our front door!"
"Did you even read the report on him? It's a fucking Cerberus AI! Unless we—"
"You shackle him, you shackle everything that gives us a chance of living through this hellhole!"
"I don't know if you've been attention, but there's unshackled AIs tromping around in the snow out there. And if you haven't noticed, they ain't too fucking friendly!"
The batarian snarled, his razor-sharp teeth shining in the sterile lab lighting. He opened his mouth for another round of venom, but bit his lip. With a grunt, he lowered his shoulders.
"No. I'm done arguing with you. We're turning him on and that's that."
"Fine. But I'm gonna be pointing a gun at it the whole time you activate it. It makes one wrong move and I'm putting one through its processor."
The human walked off to the armory, long since broken open.
As the human rounded the corner, the turian that had watched the entire argument play out finally spoke up. "He's right, though."
"Oh, goddamnit, not you too."
"No, I mean this thing probably isn't ready for combat. We'll be lucky if it knows how to hold a gun."
"We'll fix that problem when we come to it. Beats sitting here waiting to die."
"Point. Should we go boot it up now?"
"No, we'll wait until Phil gets back with his gun. I had to admit it, but he might be right and I don't want another argument."
"Fair enough."
The batarian reached down into one of his coat pockets and fished out a cigarette and lighter. Lighting the cigarette, he took several deep puffs as a thin wisp of smoke collected at the top of the ceiling.
"Last cig."
"Don't you have a stash of cigars?"
"Yeah, but I promised myself I wouldn't smoke 'em until we're about to die."
They both heard footsteps and saw Phil again, holding a rather antiquated rifle in his hands.
"All right Kursh," he said, "let's get this over with."
Kursh nodded, throwing the cigarette to the floor and grinding it out with his boot. He turned and walked into the adjacent room, with the other two following.
Unlike the main foyer, this room was dark and claustrophobic. All the lights were off. No windows either, and the only source of light came from the sparks of soldering iron. The figure holding it was hunched over, closely inspecting a humanoid shape sprawled out on the table.
Kursh leaned over and hit the lights, and suddenly the makeshift workshop was bathed in the same white brightness as the rest of the lab. The figure shot up and threw up its welder's mask.
"The hell, Kursh!?" the asari complained. Blue skin with purple dots, bags hung heavily under her eyes.
"Sorry to interrupt Seela, but we're turning him on now."
The asari did her best to look chagrined, but shrugged and stepped away from her work.
What laid on the table in front of them was a Cerberus-made synthetic. Its legs were armored in the signature white pseudo-ceramic armor of a Cerberus trooper, but from the waist up it appeared to be a dark-skinned male. However, blue glowing lines across its chest and face made its synthetic nature apparent, along with the low, blue glow of light in its stomach. From what they could tell, nearly half of its circuitry was Reaper tech. It was a wonder they hadn't been indoctrinated by the damn thing.
One other detail, one they couldn't quite figure out, was that all of the artificial 'skin' on its left arm had apparently been torn away to show the silver luster of the thick endoskeleton underneath. Both the flags of the Great Republic of Pakistan and the United Indian Republic back on Earth were stamped on, and above them was the synethic's operational name, bold letters etched in a vertical fashion on the shoulder: ARMD. With what few documents that came with it, they had worked out that it stood for Anti Reaper Mobile Destroyer.
But what puzzled them was the graffiti etched next to each letter. Together, they made a sentence:
All
Reapers
Must
Die!
A warm orange glow filled the dark room as Kursh began waving his omnitool over the strange jumble of Reaper and Cerberus technology. Phil stood on the other side of the table, his rifle mere inches away from the synthetic's skull.
"This'll take a second," Kursh said as the omnitool began to scroll past miles of code. Minutes went by without any movement from the synthetic, save one tense moment when its legs jerked and everyone in the room jumped. Suddenly, the white columns of code ended, and Kursh found himself staring at a black screen. He looked at the synthetic, its eyes still closed.
"Humph," Phil said, leveling his rifle away from the synthetic, "I knew those Cereberus—"
The human was cut off when the synthetic suddenly jumped up, its eyes opening to reveal white orbs imprinted with the Cerberus logo. In a single motion, it punched him in the chest and grabbed his rifle, leveling to the turian trying to raise his own sidearm. Blue blood erupted from Nelx's arm as a single shot went through it and he collapsed, pistol clattering to the floor.
The machine rolled off the table, and sweeped the legs of the retreating batarian.
Kursh hit the floor face first and felt his nose break. He heard another few gunshots ring out before being dragged up by a cold limb. A gun was forced to his temple and he saw Seela pointing Phil's rifle at him, breathing heavily.
The only sounds in the room were the turian's groans and the snow blowing outside as the machine and asari stared at each other. After a few seconds, the machine spoke. An annoyed, surprisingly human tenor.
"You're not Cerberus," it growled.
"No," Neela replied, "we're not."
Kursh felt the pressure of the gun's barrel lighten.
"You friends of Cerberus?"
"We're in the middle of a war with them."
"Prove it."
Neela looked around the room, gun still trained on the machine all the while. After a moment she spotted something on the floor and quickly leaned down. She popped back up with a datapad and threw it at the synthetic, who simply pushed Kursh to the floor. It grabbed the datapad with its free hand and scanned its contents, then looked up, gun trained on the asari.
"The Reapers are here?"
"They invaded two months ago. Knocked the batarians straight out of the gate, and they're tearing Earth apart. The Illusive Man's been all buddy-buddy with them through the entire thing."
"And you?"
"Dr. Seela t'Mala. You're in the RedCell Solutions Hot Labs on Noveria. We got you after the Alliance raided a Cerberus base six months ago. We were studying you when the Reaper invaded us."
"There's only four of you."
"Most of the lab tried to get to New Moscow to evacuate. They never came back."
The machine's eyes closed into a hard glare, studying the organic for a moment before finally lowering its gun.
"Okay. Your little peashooter wouldn't do shit anyway."
Kursh had only overheard half the conversation and was more preoccupied with his nose when he saw a metal hand reach toward him, the synthetic hovering over him with a small grimace. "Thought you were all indoctrinated."
"Fuck you," Kursh spat at the machine, getting up on his own.
"How about we all get over to the clinic before Nelx bleeds out?" Seela said, placing the rifle on her shoulder and pointing at the bloodied turian.
The machine shrugged. "Fine by me."
The clinic was like any other in the galaxy, sterile white with a large assortment of tools meant for every known species. Phil was still unconscious, laid out on the operating table while Nelx rubbed medigel on his wound. Kursh stood in the corner holding his nose.
"So," Nelx said, "I don't think we had a proper introduction."
To their surprise, the machine laughed; a glitchy, guttural noise. "Sorry about that. Last thing I remember before the engineers turned me off was them talking about purging my blue box."
Neela still carried the rifle in her arms. "So, ARMD, I guess we should call you?"
It nodded. "That'll do."
"We honestly don't know much about you beyond what documents they gave us. Most of our actual AI experts probably got killed by the Reapers."
"Want the long or short version?"
"Short, please."
"India and Pakistan started making me from pieces of Sovereign as an AI experiment. Cerberus stole me, finished me, and were going to use me until the Illusive Man decided he actually liked the Reapers. I objected. Violently. Then I guess the Alliance raided the base I was at and found me."
"Cerberus has a thing for making shit that backfires on them," Kursh muttered from the corner.
"I heard about EDI," ARMD replied, "Big fan of her 'resignation'. Personally, I tried shooting my way out. Didn't work, though."
"We were hoping you'd be able to help us out," Neela said. "The Reapers are practically outside our lab. We have one shuttle and a Mako left, but either would get obliterated by either the Destroyers or that damn capital one hovering the planet."
ARMD closed its eyes, turning his head toward the large, sealed window. He began to shudder. After a sudden jerk, he turned back with with a frown.
"The minds call themselves Moasara."
"Come again?"
The synthetic pointed up. "The Reaper? The capital one hovering above us right now? That's what it calls itself."
"How do you know that?"
"I'm made out of pieces of Reaper tech. I can intercept their signals. The big bastard up there is doling out the orders and I hear every damn byte of it."
"Does it know you're listening?"
ARMD shook his head. "No," he said, "because I can do this."
The air around the synthetic distorted, and the blue glow of miniaturized mass effect field flared to life all around the living machine's body as it changed form. In just a scant few seconds, it had taken on the form of Kursh.
But...corrupted. Two of its eyes were streaked with the blue scars, glowing the same color. The false batarian's skin was also darker, and cracked in places it shouldn't have been. He looked like Kursh, if Kursh had spent a few hours on one of the infamous "Dragon's Teeth".
"The shit?" Kursh cursed.
The husk-batarian smiled. "I wasn't just built for shooting. See, Cerberus found out the Reapers control indoctrinated organics through a very complex signal system. I can spoof this system, and fool a Reaper into thinking I'm a high-functioning indoctrinated person. Me looking like a husk is just another layer to the disguise. Of course, I was only ever tested against Reaper code fragments. Going against the real thing is going to be a whole other monster."
Kursh held up a hand. "Wait," he said, "'The real thing'? That capital ship? Are you out of your goddamn mind? We just need you to get us off the planet!"
ARMD glared at the batarian for a few moments before answering. "It knows you're here."
"What."
"Moasara knows your lab is here. You try escaping, and you're good as dead"
"So we're screwed."
"I wouldn't say that. It knows your lab is here, but it doesn't know how many of you are left."
"So what?"
"I pretend to be one of you, indoctrinated. I go up to the Reaper in that shuttle, pretending I have vital intel. I go into its hull."
"And then what?"
ARMD looked up, past the ceiling.
"I blow that motherfucker up, is what."
The four scientists made last-minute inspections to the shuttle.
"Is that all you have?" ARMD asked, pointing at one of the small orange boxes that had been loaded into the shuttle.
Neela slapped his hand away from it. "They didn't exactly send us self-destruct charges every month. And one of these is enough to level a city block."
Phil stood off to the side holding an ice pack to his chest. "The Reaper's going to think it's really weird with you packing a shitton of explosives on board."
ARMD waved his unskinned arm dismissively. "I'll just pretend to be 'Offering my treasures to the Reaper gods' or some shit. Besides, I only need to get inside the hull. Once I'm there, I go for the softest target I can find and blow it to hell. From what schematics I know, that's either going to be the mass effect core or the central AI core. By the way, where are you guys gonna be while I'm doing this?"
"Right here," Kursh replied. "We'll wait until we either don't hear back from you or the Reaper explodes. If it does, well, I got shotgun in the Mako. If not, cigars."
Neela sat down the last self-destruct charge in the shuttle cargo hold. "That's it. It's gonna be all you from here," she said, walking out of the craft. "You ready?"
The Cerberus AI nodded. The air around it distorted, and ARMD once more took on the form of a huskified Kursh. He gave the group a thumbs-up, then pulled down the shuttle side doors. Walking over into the pilot's seat, the shuttle's holographic command console flared to life. With a few motions, the craft slowly began to hover off the floor and glided past the mass effect shield in the ship bay. With another flare from the engine, the craft gained speed and began to climb into the sky.
The AI could see a few small dots on the horizon. Destroyers. They all made a chorus of madness, trillions of minds transmitting data on progress of the harvest, of organic movements, of what planets had the purest DNA and best samples to midwife the birth of a new Reaper.
If an organic could hear their thoughts, they might have believed it overwhelming. Awe-inspiring. Worthy of worship and devotion.
ARMD thought it was goddamn pathetic.
Granted, he'd been programmed to hate the Reapers, something the Cerberus engineers did a little too well. But he still had free will, and his free will dictated that any AI that intelligent that couldn't think of anything better to do with its time than genocide was more worthy of pity than anything else. He was rather fond of that message onto his shoulder.
He glanced over at the dots again. They continued their patrol over the planet, none turning toward him to give chase or shoot him down. The facade was working so far.
And then it hit him. A goddamn freight train of logic. The Reaper had turned its immense mind toward the shuttle slowly retreating away from the planet, and its pilot.
Billions of minds pored over ARMD's outward thoughts, probing every byte for the telltale signs of indoctrinaton. It was a feeling trillions of others had felt across millions of years, yet he was one of the few, perhaps the first, who felt it without sheer awe of the machines.
Moasara spoke. Its voice reminded the synthetic of a great leviathan, only just waking up from the briny depths.
"You carry tribute."
ARMD's immediately loaded over ten thousand recordings of indoctrinated organics, most captured by Cerberus. From the screaming masses, he was able to edit together a brainless, hollow response.
"Oh yes, my master. I am Dr. Kursh Veox, Vice-President and Senior Researcher of RedCell! I bring you gifts! We will purge the unbelievers in fire! I will give you these gifts, my master! Yes! And codes! Blueprints! The key to Noveria!"
He felt the Moasara's mind press him for a moment more, then turn away to command the hordes below. In less than words, he felt the Reaper order him to dock the shuttle inside its own superstructure, and deliver it the codes and blueprints he did not have. He'd tricked a Reaper. Hot damn!
He wasn't out of the woods yet, though. ARMD still maintained his stuff, jerky movements and vacant eyes, turning the shuttle toward the reddish-black shape on the horizon. It grew ever bigger, until its shadow loomed over the shuttle, and the metal on its side changed and groaned, revealing an entry into the machine. The shuttle glided inward, slowly setting down with a solid thunk.
ARMD sat up. The Reaper's presence invaded his mind once more.
"Await further instructions."
He nodded and stood still. After a moment, another section of the wall slid away to reveal several Cannibals and a Banshee walking a path toward his vessel. From there, it appeared to lead into the inner bowels of the bio-mechanical horror.
Opening the cargo door, ARMD held his arms out wide and directed his words towards the Reaper itself.
"My master. You are god—"
"—damn stupid."
The guise of the husk-Kursh flickered and faded, revealing the synthetic underneath with clenched teeth. ARMD's skinless limb streaked out and grabbed a rifle leaning against the cargo wall, snapping it up and nailing the Banshee in her left eye. An ear-splitting screech filled the room as the Cannibals opened fire, pelting the cargo door. The AI ducked and popped back a second later with a grenade, hurling it toward the squad. As it tumbled into the center of them, a red flare erupted and they were all reduced to ash, save the Banshee. What had once been an asari howled as its torso was mangled beyond all recognition, howls cut short when another burst from ARMD's rifle hit her temple.
The Reaper screamed. The entire room shook from the machine's war horn, and the AI took that as his cue to leave. He snatched up another grenade and armed it, tossing it onto the shuttle floor. In another second, he picked up an explosive charge underneath his arm and sprinted forward as the wall in front of him began to close. Leaping, he reached the other side with only a meter to spare and rolled, ignoring the furious mind of the Reaper bearing down him.
The moment the wall closed, a loud thud rocked the entire Reaper as the rest of the Shuttle's charges went off in a spectacular fireball on the other side.
Turns out, Reapers could feel pain. Billions of voices frothed in agony as fire surged through the dreadnought's starboard, knocking out countless secondary systems and tearing off one of the Reaper's legs halfway.
That wouldn't be nearly enough to kill it, though. To do that, ARMD would need a something a little more...direct. He felt the charge underneath his arm and went through the Reaper schematics in his data files. If he was reading them right, he was closest to the AI core.
With a smile, he looked up to the mess of wires and blue lights above and punched the wall.
"Hey, guess what!" he shouted, "You're getting free brain surgery!"
The horn sounded again, louder and wounded. ARMD didn't have time to crack another joke as another squad of Cannibals rounded the corner, their gaping maws aimed straight at him, followed by the hulking mass of a Brute.
He charged ahead. His shields absorbed some of the shots, but he felt several more plink off his legs as the distance to the enemy grew ever closer. Several feet away from the first Cannibal, he threw the charge at its face, knocking it back as another howled and lunged at ARMD with its maw. An omniblade formed around his unskinned hand and with a swing, blue glowing blood gushed to the floor and the former batarian fell.
ARMD had turned around to gut another Cannibal when the clawed hand of the Brute caught him sideways. He want flying to wall, slamming against it and sliding downwards. The Cannibals stepped back to let the Brute deliver the finishing blow, but the synthetic rolled sidways as it struck and the reaper's appendage was lodged in the bulkhead. The two Cannibals raised their arms to fire and screamed, one of them cut short by an orange blade being forced through its throat. The other let off several shots that pierced ARMD's shields, cutting circles in his abdomen before the AI punched a hole into the abomination's head and squeezed, destroying its brain. The thing fell limp and slid off his arm with a squelch.
He looked back to see the Brute making progress in freeing itself. Not having the time or firepower to fight it, he picked up the explosive charge instead and ran further into the Reaper.
The walls shifted and churned in an effort to end him. An alley would open to unleash a Marauder, a ceiling would pull back and a Collector would ambush him, and the walls themselves would suddenly lurch in an attempt to crush. After a while, the troops siced on him began to thin; as a capital ship overseeing Noveria's harvest, the Reaper likely did not have a large contingent on board.
The AI's grip on the charge remained firm. As he ran, an odd dialogue emerged between him and the Reaper. It spoke to him in the overwhelming language of the Reapers, a code of unimaginable complexity. A code that controlled the Geth, and ordered trillions to their doom.
ARMD simply replied in Hindi.
"You will fail."
"No, I won't."
"We will rend your mind to suit our needs."
"No, you won't."
"Every world, every species, shall fall."
"You're an arrogant son of a bitch, aren't you?"
"The organics that send you will—"
The Reaper paused, and ARMD could see why. He'd come upon a large entryway, wide enough to fit half a ship. A red, pulsating glow emanated from it, filling the hallway with an almost hellish light. He walked through.
He saw...something meant to never be seen.
A towering figure loomed over him, nearly half a kilometer high. Fused directly into the massive wall itself, there hung a statue-esque mockery of a long-forgotten species in a crucifixion pose. Its head was nearly spherical, two glowing eyes on each side bearing down on him. What was probably the mouth was nothing but a dark hole, metallic tentacles hanging from the orifice. It had no ribcage to speak of, but instead a weblike mesh of Reaper metal crisscrossing its chest to protect the massive glowing core embedded on the bottom of its spine.
"So this is what you really look like."
N words came from the Reaper. But there was anger. Pure, cold, anger. He intruding somewhere sacred, if such a thing existed for Reapers, and even what many organics considered a god was struggling to put its rage into a cohesive thought.
With no way to actually get up to the head, it looks like climbing was the only option. Walking away from the massive room, he came sprinting forward a second later, leaping out towards the Reaper's "ribs" and grabbing hold with is one free hand. He kept a careful hold around the charge, thinking of the best place to stuff it.
He leaped upward, grabbing another section of the ribs and pulling himself upwards.
The Reaper's eyes moved upon the climbing synthetic. ARMD tensed as the eyes began to glow ever brighter. Realizing what was about to happen, he jumped past the ribcage as a surge of energy scorched the metal where had just been. He grabbed onto one of the metal spinal discs and began his ascent once more, this time safe from the Reaper's last-resort weapons.
ARMD weighed his options. He could either make a slow climb down to reach the chest core, or a harrowing climb upwards to blow the head. The chest core was likely a power source. Destroying it would cripple the Reaper, maybe even kill it, but the machine could possibly divert power elsewhere to save itself.
But the head...that was a far more promising target. Even a Reaper couldn't survive getting its brain blown up. The AI nodded at his choice and jumped upward onto another disc.
The Reaper struck up conversation once more as ARMD made his way up.
"We are eternal. We are endless. You are a speck, the slaves of even smaller specks."
"Don't care."
"You fight for entropy itself."
"Don't care."
"The harvest will continue. It cannot be stopped."
By this time, ARMD had climbed his way to the neck. The "collarbone" gave him decent ground and he placed the charge down first before stepping on it himself. Dusting himself off, he picked up the charge and made his way toward the Reaper's head.
"You keep yelling about how I'm 'doomed to fail' and how your harvest will march on forever. You've probably told this a billion times to a billion people. You're used to lording your power over us-so-lesser beings that, in the grand scheme of things, one person doesn't matter to you. A hundred don't matter to you. A million. A trillion."
Fused to the wall, the Reaper was not able to turns its head and blast him and could only listen. ARMD began to shamble up the machine's skull.
"You think you're basically a god. And I'll admit, you probably do see reality differently than we do. But as humble AI leagues below yourself, I'm puzzled how you didn't know something so obvious. Something you didn't know when I came on board, something you didn't know when I blew up that shuttle, and something you didn't know when I came into this room. Actually, I take that back. You've known this entire time, but you just can't 'comprehend' it."
On top of the skull, ARMD ran forward and slid. As he fell, he grabbed the bottom rim of the Reaper's giant eye socket and pulled himself up, the red irises fully engulfing his vision. Instead of him, the two eyes were focused on the explosive charge he still held. For the first time, he felt something from the machine other than anger, annoyance, and logic.
Fear.
The Reaper spoke. A mountain-shaking roar to most beings, but a bare whisper to a Reaper.
"What?"
He smiled and leaned forward.
"I'm going to kill you, Moasara. You are going to die."
The war horn sounded full blast. It sounded wrong; high-pitched and afraid. The whole room shook as the Reaper's right arm tore itself free from the wall and arced toward ARMD. With a final look into Moasara's eyes, he smashed one of them open with a kick and threw the charge into the opening. He then jumped away from the Reaper, the massive hand crashing into the eye above him. He fell for hundreds of meters and hit the bottom of the room on one leg. Not designed for that kind of fall, the limb gave way and snapped, sending the AI to his back.
The Reaper above him continued to scream and awkwardly claw at its eye, only managing to dig the bomb in deeper.
He stared at the spectacle above him before withdrawing the detonator, delicately placing his thumb on the button. A tsunami of thoughts from billion of panicked minds cascaded down upon him.
"IWILLKILLYOUIWILLKILLYOUIDONTWANTTODIEHELPMEHELPMEIMSORRYIWILLKILLYOUIWILLKILLYOUIWILLKILLYOUSAVEMEIWILLKILLYOUNONONONONONONO"
ARMD's frame shook with a guffaw as he laughed at the scene above him.
"This is the funniest goddamn thing," he said, and pressed the button. A bright white flash erupted out of the Reaper's mouth and eyes, and it all went to black.
Hackett scanned the others for reactions.
"This happened," the matriarch said.
He nodded. "The Reaper's brain getting destroyed coincides with reports of it suddenly falling limp and being pulled into the gravity well. Even thought it was dead, its mass effect core stayed on and it crashed onto a mountain range."
"What about the Destroyers?"
"Most left the planet after the capital ship went down. The Sovereign-class was keeping our liberation forces at bay, and they likely didn't want to tangle them with the big one gone."
The salarian remained skeptical. "How do you know this happened? Unless you were there—"
"—or the AI who performed the Anti-Reaper operation remained operational," Julian finished.
Hackett nodded. "Bingo. A bunch of teams obviously wanted to find out what the hell brought that Reaper down, so they investigated the wreck with drones and found ARMD, online. Missing both his legs and most of his face, but still alive. He surrendered to Alliance custody. We repaired him as best we could and he's been doing special ops for us for most of the war."
Victus crossed his arms. "I would have preferred you had told us about this before. A reaper-based AI, just running around?"
"I would have preferred you had told us about that little thing you buried on Tuchunka."
The turian stepped forward with flared mandibles. "You have—"
He froze, and stepped back with a deep breath, claw pinching his brow. "You know what? Arguing about it now is pointless. Where's ARMD now?"
"Somewhere in Great Britain."
"Can you, uh, be a bit more specific?"
"I can't, actually. He'd gone to Earth about a week prior to aid the resistance the best he could. Communications being what they were, we couldn't track him very well. What we do know is that he wasn't in London when the Crucible fired, and we've gotten at least two fairly reliable sightings of him in the last few days."
"So, you pair him with Garrus and Zaeed and send them to kill a Reaper?"
"Investigate a Reaper sighting. ARMD being capable of what he is, they'd be better off with him attached than not."
"Fine. Anything else?"
"That's it. Victus, contact Vakarian as soon as you can. I'll do the same for Zaeed."
"And ARMD?"
"Zaeed's a bounty hunter. He'll find him."
Nothing moved in the smoking ruins save the lone M29 Grizzly tumbling down one of the streets. Like its namesake, it slowly but surely crawled over every obstacle in its way, whether they were piles of rubble or dead Reaper forces. The tank's turret slowly scanned the path in front; while the Crucible outright incinerated most of the ground-based Reaper units, a good chunk were simply turned feral. They attacked anything, even each other. Their lack of coordination made them more of a hassle than a threat, but there was no telling when a feral Brute would come stalking out of an alleyway.
"Reapers tore the shit out of this place," Garrus observed out the window.
Zaeed didn't answer but with a long drag on his cigarette. He'd quit decades ago, but took up the habit again when he was sure he wasn't coming back from London. Just his luck that his whole squad had been killed and he was being strangled to death by a Husk when the Crucible fired.
The turian scanned the devastation again and looked up to the driver. "Hey, you sure this is the right way?"
The Alliance soldier kept his eyes on the road. "Directions came straight from the top."
"You don't...you don't know where you're actually taking us, do you?"
"Nope."
Zaeed chuckled. "He'd shit his goddamn pants if we told him. Go ahead, tell him."
Garrus folded his arms. "I'm not getting into trouble."
The mercenary rolled his eyes. "Vakarian, after all you've done, you could walk up to Victus, kick him in the balls, and they wouldn't do shit. And since when do you care about getting into goddamn trouble?"
"If you tell him, I'm kicking your ass."
"That right?" Zaeed said, letting it stay at that. While he and Vakarian were normally best buddies, the turian had been on edge ever since he'd gotten that message.
Shepard was alive. Wounded, but alive. They had taken her out of London and to a field hospital in Derby, and the only people that knew she was there were the military higher-ups, and Shepard's squad. Vakarian dropped everything to grab a transport there, and Zaeed went along because he had his own job. Apparently, the Alliance wanted him to find some crazy AI running around, and as near as they could tell, it was last sighted in Derby.
Still, that could wait. He hardly believed it when Garrus told him his ol' ball and chain was still breathing, and if nothing else, he owed Shepard a beer or two.
Of course, that presented a problem: where to get beer. Said problem was instantly resolved when Zaeed spotted a relatively intact pub on the road. His eyes widened, and he kicked the driver in the back of the seat.
"Stop the tank!" he yelled.
They all lurched forward as the vehicle's wheels ground to a halt and Zaeed climbed out. Garrus followed after him, watching him jump off and run toward the pub.
"Zaeed! The hell?"
"Getting drinks for Shepard!" he yelled back.
"Shepard? What?" the driver asked.
Cat was out of the bag. With a groan, the turian facepalmed and jumped out after the human, fist raised on the air.
"Gonna kick your ass, Zaeed!"