CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
Discovery
"Shepard, finally. I don't like mysteries at this time of day."
Kara smiled at the young blond. Officers were supposed to learn to do without sleep, a lesson which Brynja's disheveled and glowering appearance suggested had been largely ignored. "You know I wouldn't have woken you without reason," she offered. She had just left the rest of her investigative team in the cargo bay, her last-minute change of plans the only thing holding them up.
Brynja crossed her arms and frowned, slouching against the aft wall of the armory. She would probably not be pleased with her new orders, either.
Kara shrugged, and opened the locker where the spare undersuits were stored, pulling out one that fit well with Brynja's measurements. She passed it to the blond. "Put that on."
"Then you'll explain what's going on?"
"Yes."
Brynja nodded shortly, and began to unbutton her shirt. Kara met her eyes briefly, then sat facing the interior wall. She had the feeling that the blond would not be entirely comfortable stripping in front of her, and she was likely about to make it worse.
"Your company has been one of the high points of this mission, Brynja," Kara said, her eyes falling to study her gloved hands. "I'm not very good about saying it, but it is how I feel. I trust you, and I think you understand what's going on better than most. I know you sympathize with the colonists. You're the best choice, and there isn't any danger—"
She cut herself off, aware that she had starting rambling. She did worry, mostly because ExoGeni's hired guards were an unsavory lot. Jeong, if he were pressed enough, might also stoop to hostage taking. She did not like to imagine Brynja at the mercy of either one.
"You're looking more pensive than usual."
Forgetting herself, Kara turned to offer an apology, the words stalling behind her lips. The blond had just kicked off her trousers, revealing long legs and strong thighs, matching her toned abdomen. She had a more conventionally attractive body than Kara herself, athletic but not as well-muscled, her breasts larger and more shapely, but still far from the usual unhealthy feminine ideal that pervaded humanity's media.
Swallowing, Kara turned away. She realized that her relationship with Brynja had become more intimate since her breakup with Liara, but her own feelings had shifted more than she realized. They were certainly beyond friendship, but she could not risk another romance, and struggled to refocus her mind on the mission. "Brynja, I'm sending you to Feros… to Zhu's Hope. Whatever ExoGeni found, it's possible that the colonists dug it up. Ask around, and see if you can learn anything."
"Kara, this really isn't my thing," Brynja protested. "I'm a systems operator, not a detective."
Kara took a deep breath, and risked facing the blond, focusing all her attention on the woman's blue eyes. "You're smart, and quick to adapt. You can do this," she said. Smiling softly, she continued; "If it helps, Brynja, I'm not trained for this either. That's why I need you."
"I'll do it, of course," Brynja sighed.
"Good," Kara said, opening an armor tray filled with a spare medium-weight set that could be easily adjusted to the blond's size. "Let's get you suited up."
They had barely left the ship when the first shot snapped through her barriers, missing her head by half a centimeter. The second fragment came just a few seconds later, but it was time enough for her to deflect it with a biotic field. "Sniper," she snapped, ducking aside just in time for a third shot to impact the concrete platform, sending bits of stone and dust in all directions.
By the time she had gotten herself to safety, behind a broken spur of Prothean wall, the rest of her team had found cover of their own. She saw Brynja's eyes, wide with fear, peering over another broken wall, before a blue hand pulled her down; and across the room, the tell-tale shimmer of a biotic field shielded Liara as she raised her head over a pile of rubble. Needing the structural stability to support a loaded freighter, the spaceport was built low in the ruins, with a ramp laid through about fifty meters of broken buildings as a path for a cargo truck. Everything else had been left as it was, scattered with debris and close to falling over. Their position was open to the sky, and surrounded by taller buildings, providing any number of places where a sniper might hide. She wondered at their being only one.
Kara checked her comm, but the line was flooded with static. Typical. The sniper had probably left, as well, but who did she order to take the first risk? Looking over the room in which her team had scattered, she realized that she could still see the Normandy, not twenty meters away. Inside its cargo bay was a salarian armored vehicle capable of atmospheric flight. "Kaliran," she ordered, trying to keep her voice low enough that the sniper would not overhear her, "get back to the ship, and get the Ke'val in the air."
The asari shouted an acknowledgement. As Kara watched, she rolled out of cover and dropped off the edge of the platform in a single smooth motion.
"What do you think, Shepard? Cerberus or ExoGeni?" Garrus asked. He taken cover on the far side of the ramp, and was scanning the roofline through his sniper rifle's scope.
She hadn't actually considered the point. The promise of a bonus from Jeong might have temped any one of his hired mercenaries to take a shot at her from a distance, but dead spectres tended to bring down a Council investigation. A Cerberus operative would be more willing to take that risk. "No point in guessing, Garrus."
"Fifty credits says it was that creepy merc. Another fifty says he's working for Cerberus."
"You're forgetting Saren," Kara noted, risking a look at the roofline herself.
Liara's head appeared over her pile of rubble. "You think he knows we're here?"
"I do, but any agent of his would be acting alone."
Garrus laughed. "Standing orders to shoot you on sight? Isn't there a human quote about judging a person by the quality of their enemies?"
She did seem to be adding to her list, lately. And what about the quality of her allies? Kaliran had surely reached the ship. Tanan would be in the air as soon, and their best chance to catch the sniper was to provide a focus for his or her attention. "Liara, Wrex," she said, gesturing that the two biotics should join her.
"We're moving forward," she continued, once they were safely back under cover. "The three of us should be able to maintain a biotic barrier until we can reach higher ground. Garrus, you'll come along. See if you can't spot our sniper. Tali and Brynja, stay here."
Kara waited for everyone to acknowledge her orders, before signaling to Liara and Wrex. They rose out of cover together, and moved forward as quickly as they dared, taking care not stumble. Linked biotics were sensitive, and difficult to maintain. A few shots impacted, but did not penetrate, their barrier. The Ke'val passed by, on their left—the direction in which the sniper was hiding—but she did not allow it to distract her.
"Shepard, I've got a clear shot," Garrus hissed. The sniper must have moved to track the vehicle.
"Take it."
The turian fired two shots in quick succession. "He's down," he grunted.
Kara released her portion of the barrier, and watched as the Ke'val maneuvered for a spot to land, near the downed sniper. "Dead?"
"Not yet. He won't last long without medical attention."
"So what now, Shepard? There could be more of them out there," Wrex said, his deep voice eager.
"Unlikely," Kara muttered. Crossfire was a basic ambush tactic, one which any pirate would be aware of, yet they had clearly failed to take advantage of it. "Even if there are, we can't waste time worrying about it."
"Shepard?" interrupted Orlanis' voice, through Kara's earpiece.
"I hear you, Orlanis. What's your status?"
"We've secured a human male, bleeding profusely. He had a jamming device on him."
"Patch him up, and get him back to the Normandy. See if you can't find out why he attacked us."
A short-crested turian figure appeared on the roofline, nodding firmly. "I'll see to it," Orlanis said.
"Are Brynja and I still to investigate the colony, Captain?" Kaliran asked, coming up the ramp with Tali and the blond in tow.
Kara frowned. The close quarters of the ExoGeni tower made another attack on her unlikely, but the colony was more open. At least the sniper had shown no interest in killing anyone but her. "Yes."
Kara entered the tower wearing her usual neutral expression. She was still on edge from the attack, but her relationship with Jeong and his security chief was unstable, and she had to maintain the appearance of control. If either one were responsible, her arrival, outwardly unaffected, might cause them to unintentionally reveal the truth.
Michael Torres had an office separate from the security checkpoint, on the first floor, adjacent to the armory, to which he controlled access. He might know if one of his mercenaries had taken a sniper rifle, but a gang of pirate would likely have its own hidden stash, just in case their employer decided to turn them in for a public relations gain. Or, if they decided that helping themselves to their employer's assets was worth the risks. Both were known to happen.
Kara walked through the door confidently, coldly, pausing just short of Michael's desk. "Torres."
He glanced up, frowning faintly, as he ran his fingers through thinning hair. "I can't help you, Shepard, so just piss off." He met her gaze firmly, without hesitation. If he knew, he hid it well.
"Do you train your guards at all?"
He leaned back, rubbing his eyes. "Can you skip the leading questions and get to the point?"
Kara laughed. She didn't like him, but at least he was direct. "One of your mercs tried to kill me. Missed a clean shot."
"Just one? That is a surprise," he said, his smile forced. She stared at him in silence. "Look, Shepard, I don't know why the company decided to hire pirates, rather than bringing in real security, but they did. I'm sure half of them are reporting to someone else, and the rest are waiting for something worth stealing. Nothing I can do about it. Deal with him as you see fit."
That was a highly unprofessional attitude, and hardly a comfort. His employers could hardly be ignorant of it, and yet they kept him on. Why? Kara activated her comm. "Orlanis?"
"Yes, Shepard?"
"Send me Ashley and Yana," she ordered, noting Torres' concerned expression. "We're taking over the building."
"I admire your balls, Shepard, but fuck no. I won't allow—" Torres snapped, overriding Orlanis' acknowledgement.
"Stop talking," Kara said, the whispered command cutting him off in mid-sentence. "I gave you a chance to take responsibility for your command. You failed. Or do you not have the balls to admit it?" She let her eyes flicker towards his armored groin.
"What? I—" he said, flushing deeply, as though she had called into question his very man-ness. Maybe she had, but the commonality of equating testicles with positive traits was something that continued to annoy her. Their absence was not a deficiency she struggled to overcome, but a simple fact of her existence, one which she had never regretted. "My job is to—"
"Provide security for this branch of ExoGeni corporation," Garrus interjected. "I don't know what balls have to do with anything, but you not having any doesn't make you any less incompetent."
VI translators were notoriously poor at slang, leaving the turian to blunder in unprepared. Kara had learned early on to keep her language simple and precise, especially in the presence of aliens, and she struggled not to laugh. Torres, already too off-balance to recognize a translation error, turned a furious purple. Garrus stared in confusion at this unexpected reaction. "What's wrong?"
"You need to get out more, turian," Wrex laughed. "They were talking about quads."
"Spirits," Garrus groaned, mingled with an embarrassed laugh. "Sorry. Forget I said anything."
Kara sighed. Her inability to let Torres' comment pass had ruined any chance of getting her point across, even if she apologized. Perhaps one was owed; she could have called him on his misogyny in any number of less insulting ways. "I'll give you a choice, Michael. Make a commitment to control your guards, or I will."
Torres raised his chin defiantly. His expression had gone from angry and embarrassed to resolved. "I'll do it myself," he grated.
That was unexpected and, almost as surprising, Kara found that she believed him. Wounded masculine pride could be a solid enough motive, as he struggled to prove her wrong. She switched her comm on again. "Orlanis, Torres has decided to cooperate. Have Ash and Yana stand down."
Torres sighed in relief. "Next time your people get in my way, I will hold you responsible for it," Kara told him.
She shook her head. "Tali, head to the computer core, see what you can find. Wrex and Liara, you're with her. Garrus… let's go talk to Jeong." Yet another conversation which she did not look forward to, and interviews with the staff after that. She had a feeling it was going to be a long day.
"Bring the next one in, Garrus," Kara sighed, leaning back in Ethan Jeong's comfortable office chair. So far, all the 'associates' she'd spoken to had refused to cooperate. Still, they could not help but reveal clues for her to follow. The source of the creepers was not within ExoGeni's tower, nor was it a considered a threat to the facility. She suspected some sort of passive life-form, which had created or adapted the creepers to serve as slaves.
"You sure, Shepard? You look exhausted," Garrus asked, his expression worried as he crossed the room.
She probably did. It had only been two weeks since Virmire, her time occupied first with files on Saren, then on Cerberus, when she wasn't leading a squad. The last three nights, spent without Liara's comforting warmth to curl up against, had left her short of even her usual limited ration of sleep. She could hardly believe it, but she looked forward to the journey back to the Citadel, and the chance to relax on the way. "I'm fine. Let's get on with it."
The turian shrugged, and disappeared into the hall, only to return a few minutes later with a soft-featured brunette. Her name was Lizbeth Baynham, according to the file Garrus had given her. She was thirty-six years old, with a doctorate in neurochemistry, followed by some post-doc work with the Colonial Education Administration, mixing lab and field work on several different planets. ExoGeni had made her a generous offer eight months ago, and she had moved to Feros for her first corporate job. Her mother, a junior administrator for the facility's artifact assessment group, might have had something to do with the offer.
Kara stood, approaching the scientist with a calming smile. Everyone she'd talked to so far had been nervous—an understandable reaction to an inquiry, even from the innocent—but Lizbeth seemed worse. She chose to take it as a sign of internal struggle, and an opportunity. "Have a seat," she said, gesturing at the set of chairs facing the desk.
The brunette nodded, sitting hastily and placing her hands on her knees.
"I'm sure you know why I'm here," Kara began, taking the next chair for herself. "I need to know about the thorian."
"I can't tell you anything, ma'am," Lizbeth stated hesitantly.
"I know Ethan threatened you," Kara guessed. If not him directly, then someone using his name and authority, and even then something seemly mild, like taking away her job. With no way offworld, other than ExoGeni owned or hired freighters, she could find herself stuck on Feros. "I can protect you, but not if you won't help me."
The brunette lowered her head, her lips set firmly. Kara sighed. Another uncooperative scientist. "Lizbeth, I will find out what is going on, with out without your help. This might be your only chance—"
Brynja's voice in her earpiece cut her off, accompanied by the soft tone, an indication that video was also being transmitted. "Captain?"
"Go ahead, Brynja," she said, as she brought up the call on her omnitool, smiling softly when the blond's face appeared on its holographic display.
"Kaliran and I talked to about thirty colonists, including an agricultural specialist, Fai Dan, that everyone says is in charge. He says that ExoGeni carried away everything of value they've found. I believe him, but… this place isn't what I expected. There's three hundred people here, and none of them talk to each other."
"What do you mean?" Kara asked. The implications were troubling.
Brynja frowned. "Colonies like this, they don't have a vid-screen in every home, so they spend a lot of time socializing. I don't see any of that here. They don't even talk to me, except to answer questions."
"That confirms it. What we're looking for is near the colony." And could control the minds of humans, as well as creepers. So far, the Reapers were the only thing she'd encountered with that ability. "Get back to the ship, and have Karen look you over," Kara continued, shifting her gaze from the display to Lizbeth.
The brunette flinched back. "The spores aren't dangerous over the short term."
"Spores? What spores?" Brynja demanded, an uncustomary sharpness to her tone.
Lizbeth, her face pale, drew a deep breath, before speaking hesitantly. "The thorian… releases clouds of spores at regular intervals. They interface with the brain of the host, interfering with thought patterns and, ah, giving increased control as their concentration, well, increases."
Brynja held her silence for a tense moment, but her words mirrored Kara's thoughts when she spoke. "You mean… ExoGeni allowed the colonists be exposed to these spores, for the sake of some… bloody experiment?"
"Uh, yes?"
"How utterly horrific," Brynja snapped. "At least the batarians are honest about their barbarity, while you look at people as interchangeable machine parts with balance figures next to them? 'Oh, colonist 435 isn't profitable enough. Sell it to slavers, and get a new one!' 'Oh, look, this thorian creature is controlling the colonists. Let's sit by and watch! Maybe we can get them to do hazardous work without appropriate compensation!'"
While Kara considered the young blond's outburst justified, it wasn't helpful, and learning the truth had to take precedence. "Go back to the ship, Brynja," she said, more calmly than she felt. "You'll hear all the details later."
"Ma'am," Brynja muttered, cutting the channel.
"Brynja grew up on Álfheimr," Kara said quietly. "Her parents were murdered by pirates. Pirates hired by Independent Colonization Incorporated to extract payments for colonization debt."
Lizbeth nodded. ICI was a well-known frontier corporation, with a poor reputation, even if the colony itself was obscure. "I'm sorry."
"You had nothing to do with it, but that's not true of Zhu's Hope."
"Why don't you start from the beginning, Doctor," Garrus said. "What is this thorian creature?"
Lizbeth sighed, hesitating again, but she had already broken her silence. "It really defies categorization, but it shares many characteristics with fungoids, as its primary role in the ecosystem is decompositional, and it is a single entity, highly decentralized, with a weave of tendrils absorbing nutrients from across most of the planet. It appears that it integrated itself into the prothean waste disposal system, making it at least fifty thousand years old. It is capable of interacting with its environment, and might even have sophisticated intelligence. We don't know."
"Then you haven't been studying it?" Kara asked.
"Not directly," Lizbeth admitted. "I've specialized in studying the effects of non-terrestrial ecosystems on human brain chemistry. I honestly believed that ExoGeni hired me to investigate a harmful environmental effect, but when I got here, they wanted me to find a way of taking control of the process, not preventing it."
Kara frowned. That was more than seven months ago, and she had done nothing to expose ExoGeni.
"Don't look at me like that, Captain. Who could I tell? We were all under surveillance. There was no way I'd have survived long enough to report to the Bureau of Colonial Affairs. Even if I was willing to risk my life, what about my mother? It was made clear that she would suffer if I stepped out of line."
"We're not accusing you of anything," Garrus interceded. "You've told us, and we'll make sure that both you and your mother are safe."
"We'll take you with us on the Normandy," Kara said. "First, though, I want all of the data you've collected on the thorian."
The brunette nodded, her earlier anxiety replaced by a tired expression. "It's all stored on a data module. Mister Jeong will know where it is."
"Garrus, get him up here," Kara said, moving to activate her comm. If the data wasn't on the main database, there was no reason for Tali to keep searching for it. "Wrex, bring Tali and Liara up here."
"I've never actually been down here before," Lizbeth said, her quiet voice tense with fear. The thorian's central cluster was several kilometers from the colony, in an open chamber under the rubble. They had taken one of ExoGeni's shuttles for the journey.
Liara's face scrunched unhappily. "It smells terrible," she noted. "Do we know if there's any danger?"
"The thorian has never responded to the other ExoGeni teams," Lizbeth replied. "There's no reason for us to be an be an exception. I'm really not sure why we're here, though."
Kara didn't have a reason beyond curiosity, and the hope for any piece of information that might help her reach a decision. The thorian had a known age of over fifty thousand years, and it was unique, at least in that she knew of no life-form that was remotely similar to it. "You're here because you know more about this creature than us," she said. They were deep enough underground that their wrist-lights provided the only illumination, and Liara was right about an unpleasant smell drifting up from below.
"We believe that this tunnel was cleared by the creepers, after the protheans went extinct."
"How much do you know about these creepers?" Kara asked.
"Quite a bit. The thorian's control relies on high frequency radio waves, and has a range of only a few hundred meters. When they're isolated from these signals, they just shut down."
"Where do they come from?" Garrus asked, from his position at the rear. "Are they offspring, like rachni drones?"
"No," the brunette said. "Their cells contain prothean genetic material, though it's badly degraded. We think they may be actual protheans, repurposed by the thorian."
Kara stopped abruptly, and turned on the older woman. "You're saying colonists could end up like that?"
"Yes?" Lizbeth squeaked, looking pale even for the harsh light.
"If you want to, say, go vigilante on ExoGeni HQ, Shepard, I'll support you," Garrus said. His voice was cold, despite his humorous tone, his eyes tight with anger. There was no doubt that he meant it.
Kara sighed, and shook her head. "Tempting, Garrus, but what would it accomplish?"
"It would feel good?"
Lizbeth laughed nervously. "He's joking, right?" she asked, looking uncertainly at Kara. "He must be joking."
"There are three hundred colonists on Feros. ExoGeni was willing to let them die for the sake of their profit margin. Why would he be joking?"
"Excuse me," Liara interrupted, "but I don't think we should linger here."
"You're right. Let's go," Kara agreed, leading the way further down the path. She did wonder how people so easily justified their actions. It was obvious that it had only vaguely occurred to Lizbeth that her actions were wrong, in an oddly abstract way, as if three hundred people were just objects, indistinct and unimportant.
The tunnel leveled off at about twenty meters below the surface, then opened onto a round chamber, about ten meters across. In the center of the room, a featureless, grey blob, about twice the size of a human, hung from the ceiling by a mass of tendrils, some as thick as her leg.
"That's the thorian's central nervous cluster," Lizbeth said, pointing at the blob.
Liara circled the room, eying the mass with curiosity, and the enthusiasm of a fresh idea. "Lizbeth," she asked, "do the thorian's control signals go both ways? I mean, can it access the minds of its thralls?"
"We know they return sensory information, if that's what you're asking."
"Kara," the asari grinned, "those billions of protheans lived with the thorian under their foundations. It saw through their eyes… worked with their hands. It might have access to their language, their memories… their culture…"
"We don't even know that it's sentient, Doctor T'Soni," Lizbeth stated, regarding the asari archeologist with bafflement.
Liara ended her circuit in front of Kara, smiling excitedly. "I want to try and link with it."
Through the link they had already shared, Kara understood a little of Liara's passion for the protheans. This wouldn't be the first time it had overridden her good sense. "Liara—"
"Kara, I know there are risks," the asari whispered. She seemed to have drawn closer, enough so that Kara could taste her breath over the stink of the thorian. "But I want to do this. Besides, you're here to keep me safe."
Liara's smile had taken on a mournful curve, when she stepped back. "Besides, Captain, there is a chance that I might learn something that will help you. Let me do this?"
Kara nodded. She had more than enough objections to justify refusing. What if the thorian could use the link to take control of Liara? What if it regarded the connection as an attack, and became hostile? However, she didn't feel that it was her choice, even though the young asari seemed to grant it to her.
Liara took off her gloves, and carefully slid them into her hip-pocket. She approached the thorian carefully, her touch light on its surface.
She closed her eyes.
Liara stood, still and silent, as she had for almost an hour. Her arm moved with the faint, pulsing circulation of the thorian's blood, or sap, whatever they chose to call it.
Kara felt herself growing increasingly impatient, driven by fear, and she paced back and forth across the small chamber. Asari mental links were generally swift, sharing information and images as fast as they could be thought. The longer it went on, the more she imagined all the things that might have gone wrong.
"I thought this would go quickly," Lizbeth muttered at Garrus, both lingering near the tunnel to the surface.
"You haven't seen Doctor T'Soni around prothean artifacts before," Garrus shrugged. "She might be in there until she passes out from exhaustion."
Kara hissed irritably at the pair of them. The last thing she needed was their doubts, added to her own. She had no choice but to trust that Liara could handle herself, even while inside the mind of the single most alien creature she'd ever encountered. "You two can go wait on the surface, if you'd prefer," she said. From their expressions, it had come out sharper than she intended.
"No way am I leaving you alone down here, Shepard," Garrus said, folding his arms. "And I'm not leaving her—" he pointed at the brunette—"alone up there, either. So we're both staying."
Lizbeth groaned unhappily, and finally deigned to sit, muttering under her breath as the moist dirt soaked through her pants. Kara wondered if her 'field work' had all been done inside.
"I appreciate the company, Garrus."
"Maybe you should stop pacing and talk about something," the turian suggested. "Such as, what are we going to do about ExoGeni?"
That wasn't much better, but she and Garrus had never talked about much of anything beyond work. She had distracted herself from Liara's situation by contemplating how to handle the corporation, and arrived at a possible solution. "Lizbeth is going to call Colonial Affairs and inform them that Feros' atmosphere contains a hazardous compound, and that Zhu's Hope needs to be evacuated. She can claim that ExoGeni has stalled, and hopefully get them billed for the expense."
Lizbeth glared up at her. "I'm not going to lie to them."
"You're going to make it clear that the thorian is uncontrollable," Kara said sharply. As Cerberus knew about the creatures, it was a fair guess that elements of the Alliance did as well. Nothing she did would prevent either group from conducting additional experiments, unless they were convinced of its futility. "If that's a lie, you'll tell it. If it is intelligent, we've no right to exploit it. If not, it should be left alone."
The brunette sighed, but said nothing, frowning down at her boots.
"Uh, Shepard, didn't you say something about favorite turian—"
Liara took a sharp gasp of breath. If Garrus finished his sentence, Kara didn't hear it, moving to catch the asari as she swayed on her feet. She giggled. "Oh. This seems familiar," she breathed. "That was exhausting."
Kara smiled softly, wrapping the young asari in a biotic field just strong enough to make her easy to lift. "Let's get you out of here," she said, motioning for the others to follow as she started up the tunnel.
"It's ancient, Kara," Liara continued. "It was already ancient when the protheans arrived, and it tasted them. It remembers. It showed me."
Lizbeth, struggling to keep up with Kara's pace, had moved up beside her, using her lamp to illuminate the path for both of them. "So the thorian is sentient? You saw prothean culture? What was it like?"
"Lived it," Liara muttered. She was starting to lose consciousness, as her exhaustion caught up with her. "Kara," she whispered, barely awake. "I'm sorry."