"Power? You wish you had as much power over three lifetimes as I have in one finger."
She'd expected the bodies.
Several dozen of them, filling every square of the formerly-impeccable halls and rooms with crimson liquid that used to reside within them. Some had obviously struggled before passing, their flailing having increased the spread of blood across each area. Whoever had killed them didn't even bother to check beyond if they had missed a shot.
She'd expected the bodies.
She hadn't expected that she would care so little about them.
There wasn't a doubt in her mind that she felt something. A twinge, perhaps, in time with each boot step over yet another lifeless corpse. To her, they merely registered as casualties. She didn't know them, nor would she ever, and so they were instinctively filed in the rapidly growing folder labeled 'losses of war'.
Much as it had before, this thought process sickened her even more than the barbarity of the killing itself. Like she had suddenly lost all empathy, but that it was somehow necessary. Maybe she hadn't lost her humanity. Not yet. She clung to the belief that as long as she was still fighting, she still had something to fight for, to die for, like a lifeline.
But she suspected that slowly, surely, it was leaking out of her like the blood from the corpses she refused to view as people.
At a full sprint, the journey to the lower levels, and the labs, was not a long one. To her chagrin, it gave her more than enough time to consider those thoughts. But, to her relief, she didn't have as much time as she thought.
The door between labs two and one opened. She saw that the second door was also open, and that there were people within, but she couldn't make out who. Only that they were moving - some barely at all. Somehow, she knew what she was seeing before her eyes physically registered seeing it. Like the presence had somehow grown so familiar during her time asleep that she could simply sense it when it was nearby. Her least favorite Reaper was in the middle of some stupid villainous speech that she only caught the latter half of.
"You have disrupted my plans, as usual. But this will continue." Whoever was making him agitated with the loss of his plans so much that he had elected to venture down there personally, Shepard wanted to give them flowers. Maybe a cake.
Harbinger must have had some time to hone their 'connection' (Shepard nearly blanched at the thought) as well, because his head turned instantly when she arrived. Deciding instantly that she might as well put up a cover of surety, she said the first thing that came to mind.
"Wrong. End of the line, Harbinger." She believed it, too. She'd beaten worse foes than he one-on-one. Well, usually three-on-one, but the collector form as she remembered it wasn't nearly strong enough to stand up to her on a good day. And while she wasn't having a particularly good day, she did have one advantage: She was furious.
Maybe that counted for something.
Harbinger's glowing four eyes locked with where her two were behind her helmet. She counted the heartbeats within which they merely stared one another down. They matched the pounding behind her ears, the throbbing of the headache she was giving herself. She recognized that she was subconsciously kicking her amps into gear, and let it release a few charges at a time. It was akin to embracing an old friends, letting the power flow through and around her, strengthening her resolve.
"Shepard." Harbinger said simply. Did he sound...amused? Shepard grimaced. If he was amused, it was only because he didn't realize exactly how horribly he was about to die.
Like so many other actions, it was all instinctual for her. Her pistol was drawn, her legs were moving in a spin, and her arm was outstretched before she realized what she was doing. She let loose a barrage of small arms fire first, to soften up whatever armor he might have, then launched her biotics.
Two orbs of pure force swung around in a pincer shape, tracing the symbol in the air with wisps of biotic energy as they crashed into the Reaper with enough force to turn the wall behind him into a smoking crater. But he had better reflexes than she assumed. The moment she began to move, so did he. He let the bite of her pistol sink into his armor, but slid to one side when she tossed her real opener. His head only barely managed to lower in time, but both blue orbs hit the wall instead of him and, just like she predicted, made a dent the size of the bomb from Virmire.
The thought of Virmire, of Ashley, brought even more venom into her actions. She projected a barrier in front of her and, rather than charge, pushed it forward. A solid wall of crackling blue energy slammed into Harbinger, sending him stumbling back. Shepard stopped her movements for one amazed moment; he should not have been able to withstand that much force.
"Amusing." Harbinger stood to his full height, and his bright orange body lacings turned to a dark shade of purple. Before Shepard knew what was going on, he thrust his arm forward, producing a shockwave that tore straight through what was left of her barrier and pinned her against the wall she'd moved in front of.
Her feet were off the ground; only Harbinger's biotic powers (where had that come from, she wondered) kept her in place. Another memory triggered a possibly insane plan, but at the moment, she wasn't thinking clearly anyways. She barely resisted the urge to shout 'what choice?' like Morinth had done so long ago, and spread all of her limbs outward. Element zero followed her commands, creating an outward blast in all directions. It works like a charm. Harbinger stumbled back, and his concentration broke.
Shepard hit the ground running. As long as she was mercilessly copying tricks off of other biotics, she decided grimly, she might as well run the gamut. She raised her fist and concentrated another burst of power into that one spot. Like a primed grenade, just waiting to go off. Harbinger may have been stunned, but he had enough sense to roll to one side. Her fist slid into the wall in which she'd made a crater like a hot knife into butter. The explosion it made afterwards ended up making a hole bigger than the crater had been.
It left her plenty of room in which to turn in anticipation of Harbinger's next attack. He was buying time now, only bringing a few smaller blasts of energy to bear against her. They bounced off of her barrier like eggshells, but they were weakening it slowly. She almost laughed. This biotic power must have been new to the Reaper, as new as the form he now possessed. Her powers were as natural to her now as breathing.
And she was ready to show this abomination how the game was played.
She moved her left and right arms simultaneously. One focused a spinning whirlwind of energy over her hand, waiting to be fired. The other gripped the most heavyset body she could find and struck Harbinger with it. To his credit, he saw it coming, and slid under the flying scientist without breaking stride. Then the singularity hit right in front of him. Suddenly, every body nearby was circling around him, closing him inside a macabre tornado of limbs and momentum.
Shepard wasn't finished, though. She was just getting started. The various theories of biotic potential swirled around in her head like the twister in front of her, guided by a single concept. Why not? She thought. Slowly at first, then with greater brevity once she began to get the hang of it, she concentrated energy into both of her hands like she'd done hundreds of times when she was ready to move something. But this time, she didn't want to move anything. She wanted to destroy it.
Two more orbs shot off, but these moved more slowly than their telekinetic brethren. Shepard crouched and brought a hand up immediately, covering her body with the strongest barrier she could muster.
Then both warp fields hit.
If her ears hadn't been covered by her helmet, Shepard might have lost her hearing permanently. The explosion caused by two of her strongest disassembling fields striking a singularity in motion at the same time caused a chain reaction like a dozen high explosive devices in close proximity. She closed her eyes against the blinding flash of light and put more energy into her protective field. It very nearly wasn't enough. She could feel her barrier starting to shut down when the aftershock finally stopped.
Hesitantly, she stood up. The lab room looked like a warzone. The explosion had left a scorch mark four meters wide where it originated. Most of the damage to the bodies was concussive - many of them had lost limbs, but the only thing that had actually disintegrated was...
"You have got to be kidding me." She stated bluntly, disbelief warping her words into a sigh of anguish rather than annoyance.
Standing in the center of Ground Zero, fully intact, was Harbinger. And for the first time in her life, she heard a Reaper laugh. It was a chilling, bass sound, like listening to a dozen tortured drums crying out for mercy. Some part of her rational mind had to remind her that he still didn't have any emotional capacity, that it was only intended to demoralize her. Well, she thought lamely, it was working.
For the first time since she'd started the fight, Shepard felt hopeless. He'd survived the best she had thrown at him and was still standing. Not only was it blatantly impossible, it was unnerving.
"Your time is ending, Shepard. The sooner you realize this..." He paused to consider his words. "Your death will last an eternity either way. Embrace it if you must. I already have what I need. But before I depart..." He held up what looks like a small, metallic spider, but with only six legs. He tossed it on the ground, where it split into another, slightly smaller spider. They continued multiplying before Shepard's eyes, and Harbinger's faux-laughter echoed around the lab again. "A gift." He said.
Then, he disappeared. A sparking metal exoskeleton fell to the ground. Some kind of...holographic interface? Shepard thought, feeling cheated. But she soon realized that she had much larger problems. The spider-like objects were skittering around the room. When they found a discarded body, they would latch on to the back of its neck. Within moments, every corpse that still had a torso was twitching and groaning. With rising terror, Shepard recognized the sounds they were making.
She was standing in a room full of husks.
Vega didn't really know what was going on, but he knew that it was pissing him off.
For some reason, none of them could open the door between labs one and two after Harbinger closed it, even with advanced hacking tools or a running start (in fact, all that latter had done was jeopardize the integrity of his shoulder). Dr. Cole went on some spiel about her theories like 'advanced biotic reinforcement' or 'long-ranged assimilation of their grids'. All he really cared about was that they were stuck, the mission was going downhill (if it wasn't already six feet under), and their friendly neighborhood Reaper was having a tussle with a Shepard who was apparently a spectre in both senses of the word.
That hit him the worst. Not having enough time, enough of a good look to figure if Harbs was telling the truth before the door closed. If he was...she could be getting beat down while they were just standing there.
Vega slammed his fist into the wall. That just made his knuckles hurt. He didn't expect the wall to go all the way punch him back, though. It expanded forward right in front of him, like two baseballs being thrown into the bottom of one of those old-fashioned metal needle 3-D displays. Except this one didn't spring back, it just hung there like a flat-top mountain, inches from his helmet.
"Hell of a fight." He noted calmly.
"Could be they'll break through any minute." Jacob said through clenched teeth. "Brynn, you got any medi-gel?"
Dr. Cole shook her head. "Not on my person. I think there might be some in the equipment, though." She motioned around the ruined lab at the discarded bits of machinery and wrecked stations.
"Right." Jacob set his head back down on the ground. "Brynn, Liam, Vega, get looking. Try and find some extras - last thing I want is for them to come in while our safeties are on. Michelle, I need you to pick a corner and hide the best you can."
The girl didn't look particularly happy about that, but she gave her father a quick hug and dove behind a fairly light exam table that had been turned on its side. Vega was the first one to find an unopened medi-gel container, hidden beneath some processing supplies that looked as though they belonged to a genome-sequencing experiment standby unit. He had no idea what that meant, but that's what it said on the box.
The mountain that had come out of the wall rumbled slightly, and they began to hear more acutely the battle going on behind it. But without visual contact, it was impossible to tell who was winning. Vega paced back to the center of the lab and plugged some of the gel into Jacob's suit. Sweet science did the rest, and soon the security chief was back on his feet, if stiffly.
"Think you can still work that gun, lobo?" Vega asked.
"Maybe not the shotgun, but I've got a backup for a reason." Jacob drew a Paladin and grabbed the side of an overturned console. He planted it in front of and to the right of the main entrance and adopted a crouch. "...And stop calling me 'wolf'."
"You'd prefer 'loco', maybe?"
"What I really want you to do is keep quiet..." Jacob muttered.
An explosion, audible even through the several inches of metal that composed the door, cut them both off. It sounded as though someone had detonated a bomb. Or several.
"What. The. Hell." It was phrased as more of a statement on Vega's part, as befitted his disbelief. "Are they playing catch with nukes?"
Jacob sighed. "I don't know anymore."
The door opened. But not the one they were all paying attention to.
The entrance to Lab 3 was already closing by the time they turned around, and Vega caught a glimpse of an array of panels and operating systems behind it. It looked less like a lab and more like some kind of control center, which didn't make sense to him. Then it struck that it must have been a database. And Harbinger had just walked out of it.
Aside from the intense vertigo it caused all of them, Vega noticed right away that no matter what just happened, it was very bad for them.
The Reaper wasted no time; particle beam (wherever he'd gotten it from) already in hand, he blasted a hole clean through Jacob's good shoulder. The security chief groaned and slid down his bit of cover, his sidearm falling loosely out of his grip.
"Symmetry." Harbinger remarked.
Dr. Cole leveled her omni-tool and Vega went to fire, but he had to dodge away from the next particle stream and she stopped moving entirely, suddenly encased by a shimmering field of biotic energy.
The door between labs 1 and 2 was summarily blown off of its hinges and clear across the room. It struck Harbinger, stunning him for a brief moment, but not managing to knock him down.
Standing where the door used to be was a woman in red and black N7 armor, pistol in one hand and a biotic orb in the other. In fact, her whole body was glowing, constantly shedding off some the excess blue energy like a very angry sun. Her armor was covered in what looked like gibs, and the suit itself looked like it had taken a beating. The helmet's visor slid up, followed by the rest of it as a mechanism caused it to retract into the neckpiece.
Shepard was giving Harbinger a death glare worthy of a mother bear, and her whole body was shaking. If Vega had to guess, he'd say that part was a lot more from rage than adrenaline. Then again, he couldn't process very much right then. He was too busy being utterly dumbstruck.
"I'm not finished with you, Reaper." She snarled.
The husks weren't the problem.
A swarm of glorified bodies, most of them lacking at least one limb, was not something for Shepard to be afraid of under normal circumstances. The spontaneity - and the shock that came with it - was responsible for most of the terror, not the danger. They didn't even have shields. A distraction at best.
The door wasn't the problem.
While locked down, the security systems clearly didn't account for a biotic punch's fifty-seventh wonderful application. All it took was a solid blow.
In the heat of that moment, her only problem was right in front of her. And if she had any say, it was about to be solved.
The second round wasn't like the first in that it lacked as much volatile spontaneity. Perhaps because this might have been Harbinger's real body, he was more cautious, calculating. Didn't stop him from throwing a desk at her, though.
Shepard took a step forward, flinging it to the side with her left hand, then followed the momentum of her upper body into a spin, pushing a field at Harbinger with her right. The Reaper moved more quickly than she could technically follow, although she could vaguely trace the outlines of his movements before he made them. He ducked his head down and propelled himself forward to a corner of the room outside her line of sight, moving on the metal floor like it was ice.
Shepard rolled past, aiming in the opposite direction. She caught sight of Vega (no one else she knew had that much muscle mass) just before what looked like a civilian in stasis crashed into him and knocked him into the ground. She caught a glimpse of another civilian, a man, cowering in a far corner. That just left Jacob, still leaning against makeshift cover close to the center of the lab. One of his arms looked wounded, but functional. The other...she saw it twitch, but that was all.
Doubt wormed its way into her mind. She liked her chances fighting Harbinger one-on-one, but with allies in the crossfire? Before anything else, she needed to make sure the others were out of the line of fire.
This thought was considered and processed during the seconds in which she mechanically dodged and blocked alternating blasts of biotics and lances of energy. Fortunately, Vega was on the case almost immediately. Hefting the stunned civilian onto her feet, he took up a standing position and began firing bursts into Harbinger's barrier. Each individual shot didn't do very much, but at the distances involved, it was nearly impossible to miss.
Harbinger took a moment to launch a biotic projectile in Vega's direction contemptuously, and that distraction was exactly what Shepard needed. Lowering herself down into a crouch, she lifted Jacob up by the good arm and tossed him as gently as she could into the same section of the room as the cowering scientist. Not particularly comfortable, but it got him out of the fight.
Meanwhile, Vega was having a difficult time of staying on equal grounds with the Reaper. His armor had already been torn through in several places, demonstrating the power that Harbinger's particle beam (Shepard suspected that it was an upgraded design) brought to bear. He was attempting to fire and roll at the same time, but wasn't entirely successful. When he finally wound up in the disadvantageous position of the floor, on his back, with no breathing room, he kicked a nearby canister as hard as he could.
The square receptacle slid the intervening distance at blinding speed, the force nearly knocking Harbinger's legs out from under him. He wound up in a sort of half crouch - one leg bent, knee touching the ground, the other trying to stay at full height - and Shepard took the opportunity to hit him upside the head with some spare biotic energy.
The ball hit him in the face and sent him careening into lab two's side of the crater she'd made earlier. Since it was a protrusion, it stopped him short, but it was too blunt to puncture skin. Chitin. Whatever the hell this thing had. It only took her a few moments to realize where she'd gone wrong; rather than keep the exit secure, she had opted for a better area to maneuver and engage in. It had left the hall between labs two and one wide open.
From what he'd already told her, Harbinger somehow managed to procure whatever data he'd been searching for, so all he needed was an escape route. Sure enough, he immediately bolted down the hall and across the apocalyptic scene that was lab one.
Shepard's strength was already starting to wane, but she took off after him at a full sprint, ignoring Vega's shouts for her to stay back. She couldn't allow him to escape. Not again.
"Garrus, Kaidan!" She shouted into her comm unit midstride. "Harbinger is en route, I repeat: Harbinger is en route! Prepare for his exit, over!"
Some of the spider devices must have crept upstairs while she wasn't looking, because husks barred her path even as she tried to follow Harbinger across the upper levels. She knew from experience that trying to aim a singularity while backpedaling was hard enough, but at a run it would be borderline impossible.
It didn't stop her from trying. The orb was expanding before it left her hand, hitting the center of the room and opening wide to draw all of the nearby husks into it. Meanwhile, she was gaining. Harbinger was only ten meters away. Seven...four...
Suddenly, she was on the ground, gasping for air. Desperately, she threw biotic bursts around the room she was in, to buy herself time, while she tried to figure out what just happened. She caught a glimpse of one of the husk's outstretched arms before it was hit by a blast, and realized that she'd been clotheslined by a mechanical zombie. The thought was...insulting.
She heard footsteps as she tried to get to her feet. Rapid paces, but shuffling gaits. Damn it all, why hadn't she made sure to cover her flanks? Halfway up, a heavy fist collided with the side of her head and sent her careening across the floor. Her vision was blurred, and she couldn't tell how many of them were in front of her. She tried to gather up some of her strength for another blast, but her throbbing skull slammed against a wall.
She did her best to remain conscious, well aware of the horde of husks already pursuing her at a run. Or a crawl, for some. From the vaguely-defined positions of their mouths, Shepard could tell visually that they were howling, but she couldn't hear any sounds aside from a ringing in her ears. As she drew her pistol and opened fire, she wondered if she'd managed to get a concussion. That would have been just perfect.
She fired, and saw, to her dismay, the round leave a small dent in the wall across from her. Then the husk she'd been aiming for fell. She blinked. That had certainly been a miss, or so she thought. Was her spatial recognition suddenly that severely impaired?
She saw a huge white shape slam into a section of the group. She couldn't tell how many of them were left; most of them might have just been rationalizations of flashing movements. Some of them even looked like stars. A bony arm grasped her shoulder. On instinct, she tossed it off with a biotic wave and opened a hole in its skull. Better aim when I'm not actually aiming. She thought ruefully.
She tried to get back up to a standing position, but the room spun violently and she slid back down the wall. After a painfully long silence, she started to hear the sounds of gunfire again, even as it was already starting to fade naturally. She looked up; someone had put a meaty hand in front of her face. It took her a moment to process that the owner of the hand was trying to help her up.
"Still rushing in, huh Lola?"
She smiled despite herself and took Vega's hand. His firm grip and strong arm put her on her feet almost immediately. While she struggled to maintain her balance, it was easier on both legs. She nodded, though that didn't exactly help her equilibrium. "Not my best plan, I'll admit."
"Hey, it looked good on my end." Vega still looked like he was trying to decide whether or not he was hallucinating but appeared to be cheering by the moment. "My best is still ramming that shuttle, remember?"
She wanted to laugh at that memory so far off even to her, but she was still on the battlefield. She had to keep a cool head. If not a working head, at least a cool one. She tried to tap her communicator, but poked herself in the temple instead. Rolling her eyes, she made a second attempt, and missed again. Garrus' voice came in on the other end anyway, leaving her to thrown up her arms in exasperation and resume trying to keep the room from spinning.
"Shepard!" He sounded worried sick, bless him. "Shepard, come in, are you there?!"
"I'm here, Garrus." Her voice sounded slurred to her, but hopefully not overly-
"...Did you inhale a few pints while you were down there?" He sounded relieved, but slightly irritated.
"Concussion. I think. Minor." She shook her head. "Did Harbinger get past you? What happened?"
"It's fair to say he got past us." Kaidan was the one who responded, but he sounded short on breath, like someone had punched him in the gut a minute or two prior. "He threw me into a building and flew away."
"Run that by me again." Shepard said. "He flew away?"
"Collectors have wings, remember?" Garrus told her.
Vega tapped his comm and joined in on the conversation. "Oh, hey, Scars." He said casually. "Remind me to kick your ass later."
"Vega? What are you..." Shepard could hear his mind starting at confusion, then turning to suspicion, and then dawning horror when he realized what was going on. "Ah." And then sheepishness. "I...never got around to telling you that Shepard was with us, did I?"
"Yeah, well, that's right up there with 'oh by the way, our collision course includes a sun'." Now Shepard recognized Vega's tone. It sounded exactly akin to their occasional bouts aboard the Normandy, and she wondered whether Garrus recognized that he was being razzed. "And I should know, that one's actually happened."
"Sorry, I was a little busy saving your ass. ...Again." Yep. "Oh, and trying to liberate the facility!"
"Did I become a document when I wasn't looking?" Shepard asked. Both men quieted down. "Good. Hello, James, I'm back. Long story, and I can tell you later. In the meantime, there's the Reaper we still need to catch."
"Last we saw, he went Northwest, Commander." Kaidan supplied. "Not sure where he was-"
With a crackle of static, a new voice chimed in over their channel. "-Repeat, this is Lance Corporal Blerinca, does anyone from Alpha or Bravo copy, over?"
Vega jumped in place visibly and nearly tripped over himself responding. "Ben, this is Vega, where the hell are you two?"
"We're at some kind of AA tower a metric long-ass way from your position." A new voice replied. Vega mouthed 'Louis' at Shepard as though that should explain something. "That Vaya chick put us as outside the killzone, but I guess no one told these guys."
"'That Vaya chick' is on this frequency." Vaya responded irritably. There was an awkward silence from Louis' end.
"Maybe Jacob can get us the location." Vega mused. "Meantime, can you two hold out for a few minutes?"
"We've been holding out 'for a few minutes'." Ben remarked. "It's been going delightfully." There was an audible sound of a grenade detonating close to whatever cover they were behind.
"Well, we'll give our ETA wings." Vega assured him, motioned Shepard back down toward the labs. At that point, her head had begun to clear slightly, but she didn't trust her body to keep itself clear in a fight so soon after that physical trauma.
"So, Private Densfield." Vaya began. "When exactly did you begin to consider me an infant?"
Vega chuckled and turned off his end of the comm. Shepard followed suit. "Not the first time Louis's started off badly with a señorita."
"I'm guessing you know him personally."
"Yeah, Ben and Lou, they're on my team. Been in a few scuffles together. You know how it is." Vega took his first good look at the surroundings of the area since he came back to the upper levels. Shepard could see his muscles tense beneath his armor, his fists clench tightly into an iron grip. "You know, there used to be a lot less bodies up here." He explained. "Me and Taylor did a sweep and clear, not one friendly casualty if we could help it. Now they're just...gone. Why would Harbinger even do that?"
"Maybe that's the part we're not supposed to comprehend." Shepard said. At the very least, it helped her view of her own remaining humanity that she couldn't grasp exactly why it had been done. If she couldn't come to terms with what looked like needless slaughter, maybe she'd never be alright with the possibility of it occurring. That was the hope she clung to, at least.
"Still can't believe he's back." Vega exhaled. "Thought we...you...took them all down?"
"The Crucible worked, but..." Shepard hesitated. Was it her place to tell him? Granted, he almost certainly needed to know, especially now. And he was still a compatriot, even after so long. Mind made up, she continued. "They have some kind of shield world. There are more out there, in Dark Space. We have to bring them down before he brings them back."
Vega whistled. "Shit. Sounds like...well, actually, that sounds kind of like Tuesday. 'Least it'll give you the shot to get the band back together. Then again, from the looks of things, you already got a start on that."
"It was mostly Kaidan's initiative." Shepard admitted. "I wasn't...awake...for most of it."
"Hang on a sec, though." Vega sounded suspicious. "If they stuck around because of a shield world, why is Harbinger back alone? If he was with them, wouldn't he have brought the rest?"
Shepard's heart fell slightly. It was coming. "Harbinger...wasn't there when the Crucible activated."
"What?" Vega asked. "Where was he?"
Shepard felt trace amounts of bile creeping up her throat. She still hadn't come to terms with the situation, how could she admit that it had happened? It felt like something had crept around inside of her, against her will, violating her for its own purposes. How did you explain that to someone? In the end, she picked the easiest option at that moment. "It's classified."
"Oh come on, Shepard. You go-"
"It's classified." She flinched involuntarily. Her words had been volatile, so much more...hostile than she intended, she had no idea where they even came from. "I'm Sorry, James, but...just...just don't. Not right now."
She could tell that his curiosity was still burning, but his respect apparently outweighed his need for answers. "You got it, Lola. Let's get it done."