A/N: I always had an issue with Garrus' loyalty mission in ME1. Garrus capitulated too easily. It demonstrated his need to see justice delivered, but the crux of the issue: what's vengeance, what's vigilantism, and why the means must justify the end. In part, this is because the actual mission is not the focus of the side-plot - it's over in minutes, Saleon dead and everything. It's the conversation, which was way too short.

I've kept pretty close to canon thus far, but things will begin to diverge more clearly from this chapter on. I will be moving away from the outline format, as I will be needing to fill in more of the story.

Also, this chapter is long. Sorry about that.

Don't forget to review and comment!

"What was the point of that Shepard? It would have ended that way had we asked nicely or gone in hot!" Garrus slammed a gauntleted fist against the Mako, causing the suspension to rock slightly with the force. "You were specifically elevated by the council to be above pointless rules and regulations! He nearly escaped!" Shepard stood calmly, his face indecipherable.
"Why are you angry Garrus?" The question was calm. Garrus's mandibles twitched, and he poked a finger at Shepard.
"Because I didn't give up my career in C-Sec to run into the same pointless procedural posturing that pushed me from it in the first place!" Shepard seemed unmoved.
"And yet the end was the same. Saleon can't hurt anyone else, and you got to put the bullet in his brain yourself." Shepard tilted his head slightly, an infuriating expression of patient confusion on his face. Garrus curled his hands into fists
"You were going to take him in." Let him live while a series of over-educated self-absorbed politicians decide whether or not the demonstrable psychopath is a candidate for therapy!"
"What were the victim's names?" Shepard said. His eyes were suddenly shrewd. Garrus looked to the side, then, back.
"There were 59, three entire human families, 21 salarians and 16 turians, two elcor, a volus and 6 asari."
"and their names?"
"I don't have time to list-"
"You waited two years to find the bastard, you have time to list his known victims."
"There were the Adamsen's, a human family, and two of the asari were from the southern continent of Thessia- they were stranded after someone stole their credit chit -" Shepard waited patiently, and Garrus frowned, mandibles twitching, and quieted.
"You weren't after justice, Garrus. You wanted vengeance." Shepard eyed him coldly. "And I'm not even sure it was for Saleon's victims."
"What spirit made you arbiter?" Garrus snarled. Garrus was an extremely skilled hand-to-hand combatant, and so he managed two swings before he was flat on his back. He had already made to roll backwards and up, when Shepard's boot suddenly ground itself into the plates on the right side of his face, causing the visor to dig in.
"You're out of line, Detective." Shepard said. "While you're down there, I want you to consider two things. Firstly, Every single batarian on the cruiser that helped destroy Mindoir is dead. That fact has never helped me sleep at night, nor has it erased the memory of my mother's dying screams. Vengeance turns good men into its tools, and consumes everything that makes life worth living. Secondly," Shepard lifted his foot off of Garrus' face. The turian sat up slowly, eyes narrow.
"Justice is impartial. Justice is impersonal. Justice is an immense burden. If you are to carry it, you must carry it every damn step of the way. There are no shortcuts. Sometimes people and situations will force you down the bloodier path. But if you are to be just, that should always be their choice, always a consequence of their actions, not your own. In short," Shepard leaned down, and offered a hand to Garrus, who took it, and pulled himself up. "You can't control how people will act, Garrus. But you can control how you'll respond. In the end, that's the only way to be just."

Garrus gave the enigmatic human a hard look, staring at him for a thoughtful second. He gave a half-laugh. "You sound like my father." He rubbed the spot underneath his visor ruefully. "Argue like him too." Shepard laughed, clapped the turian on the back, and began the process of stripping off his hardsuit.

"Pressly, did we receive any tips on Saren's activities while we were out?" Shepard asked, the ship's VI connecting him to Pressly's station.
"I'm afraid not, Commander. Tali'Zorah is working on the geth comm-buoy we found in the system, but her preliminary reports have not been optimistic." Shepard sighed quietly. He'd sent out a request for all alliance fleets to log their interactions with all comm buoys. Tali informed them that the Geth had a backup system that restored their programs after their platforms were damaged, so by tracking all known comm-buoys they might be able to find anomalies when comparing the data. It was a long shot, but it might be the method to cutting Saren off from his synthetic army.

Shepard had just released the catches on his gauntlets, when Joker radioed down again.
"Uhh, Commander, you might want to put back on whatever gear you've just taken off. We're receiving a Sigma-5 distress call. It's being routed through the systems on the Fedele. The message came online just a minute ago." Shepard sighed, and began putting his gauntlets back on. He motioned to Garrus, who did the same, then put his helmet back on and sent a message via comms.
"Ground team, report to the hangar in 5. We're receiving a distress call from the planet below." Suit up for full contamination protocols. Appears to be a Class 5 bio-hazard threat."
"Joker, forward the distress call to my suit. I want to hear what they have to say." Sigma-5 was System's Alliance hailing codes that indicated a highly specific threat, and often came with recorded video or audio.
The audio file came through to his HUD, and he motioned with his omni-tool to play the recording. He noticed the mnemonic seemed a little sluggish - and frowned as a crackling, breathless voice came on over the speakers in his helmet.
"Alliance ship, this is Dr. Arik Alverson, Consider this my confession. There's a... Thing, that we've been cultivating on the planet. Feeding. Feeding people, prisoners, lowlifes. I.." There was a deep intake of breath. "I don't ask." A pause. "My conscience can no longer allow these atrocities to continue - Land at the coordinates indicated. Bring weapons, and fully sealed decontamination suits. My colleagues will not come quietly, and they have a significant security force. I will likely be dead by the time you receive this message. May God have mercy on my soul." There was a crackle of static, then the message ended." Shepard mused that the origin must have been in a deeply buried base to generate that much interference. He frowned to himself as his ground team rushed into the hangar and began suiting up, checking out and clearing weapons. All save Tali, who carefully removed and folded her veil, snapped some custom-made armor on over over environmental suit, and then began going over her Shotgun.
"Tali, looks like we'll be bunker-busting." She gave him a blank look, and he quickly explained the idiom. "Make sure and be ready to hack hardened and shielded networks. I expect we'll need all the evidence we can get." the quarian nodded, looked hesitant for a second, then nodded again.
"Can do, Shepard."

The Commander quickly briefed his team, explaining the vital points of the distress signal, and the suspected routes of attack.
"Williams, you'll land with squad one east of the landing zone." Shepard indicated roughly one half of the Normandy's small marine detachment. "Take out their defenses as you approach. You'll rendezvous with Alenko and squad two, who will approach form the west. Once you've secured the LZ, the auxilliaries and I will drop in and clear the bunker proper. Dig in and hold until we return, or an hour has passed. Send in half of squads one and two in that eventuality. Are you tracking?" Kaidan and Ashley saluted, and began issuing orders to their men.
"Commander, if they are taking the Makos, how will we get groundside?" Liara asked. Her breathing was even, and she asked with a sort of empty curiosity. Shepard listened slightly, and realized her breathing was slightly too even. He smiled slightly, in his helmet. Asari meditation techniques. He thought he recognized the pattern.
"We'll be taking the drop pods." He said, purposely keeping his voice blank. Liara cocked her head to one side, confused. Garrus let out a low bark of laughter.
"They're basically metal boxes with small eezo cores in them. The ship jettisons them, and then, 5 seconds to impact, the cores kick in and neutralize the velocity, and the impact forces them open." Ashley, who was walking by to take a grenade launcher from the armory, chipped in.
"Element Zero High Speed High Impact Transport System." She gave Liara an evil grin. "0H SHITS" For short."
"Gave General Orinia a hell of a time during the relay 314 incident." Garrus said. "Human insanity, launching yourself at the ground from orbit." Shepard grinned, and gave Garrus a slap on the back.
"And now you'll get to experience the thrill first hand!"
"Goddess." Liara said. Her breathing had hitched. Shepard put a hand on her shoulder.
"Peace Liara. Focus. Evelaius ven moreth iradus." She looked sharply at Shepard, an intensely curious look in her eyes.
"That was not in your file." She said, then covered her mouth. And then dropped her hands, resigned to her slip-up. Shepard waggled his eyebrows.
"Drop point A in 30 Commander." Joker's voice echoed through the hangar.

The marines took the perimeter with practiced ease, cutting through the AA guns with practiced motions. They had begun entrenching and repurposing the defenses for a close-quarters assault from the outside, when 5 drop pods screamed out of the sky, the wind whistling around them strangely off-put by the blue corona that surrounded them. They landed with a bone-jarring thud, the walls unfolding with a graceless clank. Garrus, Liara and Tali staggered out. Garrus swore.
"Spirits above and below." Shepard didn't have the grace to look staggered, and jaunted out of his capsule, meeting Ashley and Kaidan at the drop point.
"Commander, There was a shuttle already here when we landed. Looks like the occupants took out most of the resistance. We just cleaned up after them." She motioned to the now-defunct GARDIAN turrets on either side of the circular bunker.
"I took the liberty of forming the defenses to face either way, Commander." Kaidan said, motioning to a short berm and barrier the marines had dug into the loose soil of the world.
"Good thinking Lieutenant. Hold here. I'll keep in radio contact as long as I can." Shepard saluted, and then jogged off to meet his insertion team, who were finished finding their balance again.
"Tali, can you get us in?" The quarian was bent over the entrance console of the bunker, her omni-tool out.
"Negative Commander. There's no emergency override I can get to." Shepard could hear the frown in her voice. "Which seems unnecessarily dangerous. What if the power fails?"
"Right, stand back. Wrex, Liara, lets go." The krogan and the asari fell in line next to him, as Tali rushed back behind barrier Kaidan's marines had built. One by one, blue coronas began to appear, first around Liara, then around Wrex, then Shepard, leaving a trio of mismatched silhouettes against the thunderheads on the horizon. Wrex moved first, thrusting a hand out. Blue fire slammed into the reinforced blast doors. Terrible groans came from the still-resisting metal, as gravity itself worked against the door. Shepard moved next, thrusting his own hand out. The screeching sound doubled, the gravitational forces swimming and shifting. The air-conditioners in Shepard's SpecTRe armor worked overtime as sweat began coalescing on him. Liara took one deep breath, then gave a terse step forward. A massive wall of biotic force, ten feet high, sprang from her splayed fingertips, and traveled forward, shearing off a layer of topsoil, in impacting against both Wrex's and Shepard's fields. Gravity spun for an instant. Tali and Garrus looked at each other in awe as they became momentarily weightless, then there was a massive explosion as the fields collapsed on each other. The door shattered inward, spraying fragments of white-hot, over-stressed metal down the long hallway on the other side.

"And that's why we don't antagonize the aliens, Johnson." Kaidan said to the marine next to him, who was gazing wide-eyed down the dark corridor that had suddenly opened in the bunker. Johnson nodded, still staring.

Shepard's strike team moved quickly down the corridor, carefully stepping around the bigger shards of metal. The light attachments to their guns shone, illuminating a bare corridor. They moved deeper in the base, carefully swinging around crew lockers and server banks. Tali waved her omni-tool over the latter, but shook her head. VI banks for the ancillary systems, apparently.

They found the first bodies in the next room. Men and women in lab clothes lay spread-eagled, faces mangled by gunshot wounds and what looked like slash-marks. there were four bodies. One lay in the middle of the room, a massive pool of blood beneath him, and frenzied slash marks up and down his back. Three were off to the side, bullet wounds in their head.
"These three were killed later." Garrus said, scanning the room. "and this one," Garrus squatted down by the most prominent corpse. "Is that acid scarring?"
"Shepard." Wrex rumbled, from his place by the door.
"Wrex?" Shepard moved towards him, keeping his movements quiet. Wrex motioned to the pulpy mess in front of him, and Shepard swore to himself, a curious mix of asari and english profanity.
"Wrex just found the remains of a Thorian Creeper." he announced over their comm channel. The team shifted nervously, and Garrus switched to his assault rifle.
"That would explain him." Garrus gestured at the dead scientist, taking the time to ID him. He motioned with his other hand to the exectued scientists. "But not them."
"Treachery?" Tali asked, morbidly drawn to the scene.
"Perhaps the people who came in the shuttle Chief Williams found were not friendly to the researchers here." Liara said, her voice surprisingly even.
"A liquidation team." Shepard said, an ominous feeling beginning to fill his gut. "Lets move. We need to figure out what's going on here, before the other team erases the data."

They moved down the next hallway, travelling as quickly as they could without leaving themselves exposed. Long splashes of acid scarring began appearing on the walls and furniture, unrecognizably pulped plant-matter often accompanying them. Shepard's mismatched strike team moved fluidly past the living quarters, a single omni-tool scan confirming neither life nor tech rested within. There were long, dragging blood trails from the doorway that they, as a whole, decided not to comment on. The mess-hall, their next stop further into the bunker, showed similar signs. The tables had all been overturned, with blood pooling behind two, and acid and bullet holes reducing two more into so much mangled slag. The flashlights waved over the gruesome scene and then moved on, further down the empty hallway, every step amplified by the metal floors and once-sterile atmosphere.

"Intersection ahead Commander." Garrus said, moving his rifle to better see their choices. Shepard stared at the darkness, when there came a flash from the left - gunfire. Shepard motioned to his team, and they hurried down the hallway, covering for them. The sterile corridor opened up into a massive chamber, as they passed through the remains of what appeared to be an air-lock, into a natural cavern. Liara took a sharp breath.
"Shepard! This stonework..."
"Take a scan and tell me later." Shepard said, staring into the gloom. A very sick feeling had settled in the pit of his stomach. They fanned out, and noticed that the Thorian Creepers had been particularly dense here. Each step crunched into the shattered and pulpy plant matter that made the copies animate. Shepard, now taking point, swept his gun across his field of view, and stopped when the light highlighted against bright armor.
"Contact!" His team crouched into defensive positions. Shepard kept his light on the soldier in front of him. The man, who was in a white hardsuit with black and gold trim, turned slowly to face them. His helmet was off, and a large gash ran down one side of his armor, what must have initially exposed him to the air. In the stark light of the omni-light on Shepard's gun, the tinted green that had suffused the blood vessels in his eyes took on a black hue. The man stumbled forward, his short blond hair flashing silver. He moaned, a long, tortured sound, then picked up speed. A voice, from everywhere and no where, responded to the cues of his mouth, shaking the world with invisible force.
"treachery and destruction, oath-breakers and murderers! elder-killers and invaders!" Shepard and Liara recoiled in horror, as a vast, alien force attempted to intrude on their minds, the weight of its rage and mere presence staggering. Wrex and Garrus coolly fired into the staggering human, and he went down, with a spurt of entirely too brackish blood. Shepard righted himself from the unintentional cower he was in, and grunted.
"There's another Thorian here." Liara gulped and nodded. Tali and Garrus looked at each other, worry reflected in each's eyes. Wrex gave an uneasy grunt, and unshipped his shotgun.
"Let's move." Shepard said, and they proceeded deeper into the subterranean ruin.

They moved tightly, all their nerves jangling with every moving shadow, the possibility of a single suit breach a horror none wanted to face. The liquidation team ahead of them seemed to have torn through several waves of the creepers, all human in appearance. Shepard grimly wondered where the Thorian had gotten it's models, thought back to the cryptic message Dr. Alverson had left, and grimaced.
"Contact!" Tali yelled, and the team responded quickly, a hail of fire taking out the creepers that jumped out of the shadows. They moved on cautiously, as the cavern they were in began to open up, stalactites hardened and covered in a sickly green substance now reaching down from the ceiling towards them. They came to a precipice. Half-illuminated in the darkness before them was a massive, pulsating form, saliva or some such plant analogue dripping from the massive opening near the bottom, thick, cottony green-yellow spores floating on unseen and unfelt currents of air in the massive cylindrical cavern. The slavering intensified. Recognizing the signs, Shepard's team tightened their aim on the mouth. A naked female form dropped out of the mouth, immodesty removed by the smooth green plant matter that merely mocked its form. It was bald. Shepard suspected human hair was considered a waste to mimic. He kept his rifle trained on the figure as it approached.
"you have been touched by one of my kind." the clone said, pointing to Liara and Shepard with two fingers from one upraised hand. Shepard stepped forward warily, keeping his gun steady.
"Yes."
"the pangs of his passing reached me."the clone spoke quietly, for a voice that seemed to bypass volume. Shepard said nothing.
"invaders have come." the Thorian in front of them illuminated itself with an eerie bioluminescence, showing the leaking marks that crisscrossed its body, and the neural nodes attached to the walls that were held by a mere threads.
"Kill." the clone spoke, its voice even. "and you will be rewarded."
"Rewarded how?" Shepard asked. The green clone finally put down its hand, and turned to face the Thorian, its hands behind its back - a very human gesture.
"we see the cycles. the rise and fall of technologies." the clone turned back to the fireteam. "we fed on them all, and more" the clone took a step closer. "we know what they know, technology of the protheans, the innusannon, and even our own secrets. we offer a shortcut for your cycle."
"And in return?"
"Feed us. Give us meat, your secrets. Fill us and clean us, and you will triumph over the cycles."
"A shortcut." Shepard said. It wasn't a question.
"you fumble in ignorance. I can guide you. You know the threat you face already. You have seen the fesh'arish" It wasn't a question. Shepard intuited the word, one with much more complexity than the prothean "reaper"
"We will guide you." The clone smiled triumphantly, its green teeth bared in a ghastly imitation of the real thing. "A shorter path than all others have followed."
Shepard was silent for a long moment, staring not at the human copy before him, but at the ghastly plant behind it. His hands tightened on his rifle, and he spat,
"There are no shortcuts." He signaled to Wrex and Liara. They moved fluidly, signing their mnemonics. A massive, three-headed wave of blue sprung from their position tearing into the stonework of the cavern, and throwing the green human copy into the pulsating body of the Thorian. It screamed as the wave of biotic energy collided into it, and the fields interacted, detonating with extreme force, causing the suspended column of plant matter to sway, straining. There was a snap, and one of the neural nodes on the wall sagged. A thunderous report, as two more followed suit. The Thorian remained suspended by a thread. Creepers began filing in from the many shadows of the cave, moaning and creaking.

"DIE" the word reverberated around the cavern, taken up on the gruesome lips of every creeper, every human mimic. A final, earsplitting snap, and the already damaged Thorian lost all hold on the walls, plummeting into the cavern below, exploding great yellow juices across the walls as its own weight crushed it.
"MOVE!" Shepard yelled, and their team beat a hasty retreat from the cavern lip, the enraged and now mindless creepers tearing after them. Acid vomit splattered at their heels as they moved deeper into the complex, passing the remains of another airlock, into a wide room with massive server banks. Shepard and Liara quickly shoved the lockers and furniture in the narrow doorway, creating a makeshift barricade.

Shepard saw a light quickly extinguish, and the quick flash of white armor exiting the room. He swore.
"Garrus, Wrex, Liara, can you hold the horde here? Our competition is headed toward the command center, and we need to head them off."
"Not for long!" Garrus said, throwing down a crate, and setting his assault rifle atop it. Shepard hesitated, but then handed him his entire bandolier of grenades. Garrus grunted his thanks, and then set about having Liara fortify their barricade. Tali looked to Shepard, who motioned, and they took off after the unknown soldier. They sprinted up a curved ramp, Shepard charging his own biotic barrier as they did. They entered a doorway, and slid under the first bank of controls they saw, two shots pinging over their heads. Shepard gave a terse series of hand signals to Tali, who nodded and primed her omnitool. Shepard stood and fired his pistol, the shots blocked by the liquidation team's barriers. But it caught their attention, as Tali rolled from underneath the console to the main interface, her hands flying as the hard-light of her omni-tool carved brilliant patterns in the darkness.
There was another gunshot and a recoiling gasp of horror from the other side of the room.
"Stop." A calm female voice said. Shepard glanced around the computer bank he'd hidden behind, and saw a scientist slumped to the floor, a neat bullet-hole in his forehead.
"Order your quarian to stop, or I'll move to the next." Tali looked to Shepard, her eyes wide. He nodded, and she slowly closed her omni-tool and shipped her shotgun.
"Shepard! We're stuck in a crossfire!" Garrus' voice pinged in his helmet. "The soldiers came out of nowhere. They've got us pinned!" Shepard sent a quick notification to Wrex. Garrus' voice came back over the comms.
"We've lost Wrex! He's gone charging off somewhere. We can't hold Shepard!" Shepard slowly turned to stare at the woman across the room. She was tall, with her white and gold armor fitting neatly to a perfectly proportioned form. She held a gun to the next scientist's head. Shepard's HUD pinged the scientist as Alverson. He holstered his gun.
"As your fireteam has no doubt told you, we've got you pinned. You have two choices." Her voice seemed almost manicured, cut and polished so the slight accent gave color to the words, rather than obscuring them. "You order your quarian to continue with that data download, and probably kill us. I'll order my men to fire on the scientists, and your men downstairs will most certainly perish under the wave of Creepers and fire from my own squad."
"Or?" Shepard ground out, fists clenched. The remaining scientists were staring at him piteously, shock and horror etched on their faces. He couldn't see the woman's face, but he could hear the smirk on it.
"Or we effect a small truce. You allow me to access and wipe the data on those servers, and get custody of these gibbering fools." She motioned her pistol at the unshielded and unprotected scientists. "and my men downstairs help propel the wave of Thorian Creepers."
A voice came over comms. Liara, sounding desperate, hurt. "Shepard! Do you read me Shepard?!" Shepard looked up. Tali was staring at him, her eyes still wide. She shook her head slightly. Shepard wasn't sure what that meant, but he stared hard at the woman across the room.
"Truce." He said hoarsely. The woman nodded, and shipped her pistol. She put her hand to her ear, and said something into her helmet. Shepard did the same.
"Garrus, Liara, do not fire on the" he glanced up at his opponents. "Soldiers. The should momentarily back you up. A.." Shepard hated the sound of his voice as he said the next words. "Truce has been effected. Standby for further instruction." There was a long pause before Garrus replied, sounding uneasy.
"Copy that." Shepard typed another quick message into his omni-tool.
"There, that wasn't hard, was it?" The woman in white armor stalked up to the main computer, and Tali hesitantly moved aside, moving uncertainly to Shepard's side.
"Shepard! Do you read me?" Ashley's voice sounded suddenly over their comms.
"What's your status, Chief?" He asked.
"That shuttle is warming its engines. It's in some kind of auto-pilot! Permission to slag it?" Shepard gritted his teeth.
"Denied. Let it go, Chief."
"Commander?" Kaidan's voice sounded over the same channel, inquisitive.
"I'll fill you in later."
A smooth, VI voice echoed over the dimly screen-lit command center. "Data purge initiated." Tali started, and Shepard put a hand on her shoulder. Their opposition rounded up the hostages, and the infuriating woman smoothly walked over.
"Follow me, an I'll release the hostages into your custody once my transport arrives." The white-armored soldiers prodded the scientists with their Mattock Rifles, herding them down a small hallway that led to another set of blast doors. The woman waved her wrist over a pad, and the light turned green. There was a rush as the system tried to work as an airlock, then the blast doors opened into the dusk light. They were on a broad platform on what had to be the other side of the mountain. A white and black shuttle winked into view, thrusters firing as it leveled itself and then landed gracelessly on the platform. The woman motioned to the soldiers, and they jogged to the shuttle, the gull wing door opening. They moved inside.
"That's the last of them Shepard." Garrus said over comms.
"Head my way, with the.. Support." Shepard ordered.
"... Affirmative." Garrus said.
"Bosh'tets" Tali muttered next to him, glaring at the woman who was staring at the pair of them.
"So you're Commander Shepard." The woman finally said. Shepard gave her a look, then his face slid into a mask of politeness.
"You have me at a disadvantage, Miss...?" There was a half-second's silence, then she said,
"Solheim. Alexis Solheim" Shepard was about to go through the formalities, when the rest of Solheim's troops entered the fading sunlight on the shuttle platform, marching in good order, their guns shipped. Liara and Garrus followed behind, looking ragged and spattered with plant gore.

The soldiers filed into the shuttle. Solheim stood on the doorway and turned back.
"It was nice doing business with you, Commander." She said, that infuriating smirk in her voice. There was a sudden roar, and Wrex charged out onto the platform, shotgun flailing, appearing for all the world to be in an incoherent blood-rage.
"Krogan! Get back!" Shepard roared, putting a biotic barrier between himself, his team and the scientists, as Wrex charged the shuttle. As it was taking off, he leveled his shotgun and fired wildly, his shots clipping off of the armor of the shuttle. The Kinetic barriers came online, and flickered as the shotgun blasts peppered it. It zoomed off into the sunset, otherwise unscathed. Shepard dropped his barrier.
"What the hell was that Wrex?" Garrus had a wild look in his eye, and was leaned forward aggressively, his mandibles trembling in rage. Wrex grunted.
"Theater."
"What did you manage to get?" Shepard asked, approaching the krogan. He turned to face the SpecTRe, his red eye showing a the shadow of mirth.
"Put one of the Shadow Broker's toys on their shuttle. We'll know where it ends up." Shepard sighed, and turned to Tali.
"Did you manage to save anything from their computers?" Tali looked down, and began wringing her hands.
"No. They were too quick, and the data purge would have cleared anything left." She looked up at him. "I'm sorry Shepard." Shepard put a hand on her shoulder again, staring directly into the silver points of her eyes.
"Don't be. You did great." He walked over to Liara and Garrus, and thanked them both, Garrus grunted, and gave him a strange look, before sitting. Shepard recalled Ashely and Kaidan's teams, having them send a pick-up to their coordinates. As he did so, one of the scientists collapsed onto the platform, exhaustion and exposure to the Thorian spores overwhelming his system.

The next hour passed in a blur, rushing the scientists to the med-bay, which had to set up quarantine procedures to deal with the scientists. Their prognosis wasn't great. A good chance of severe brain damage, and all would likely face impairment in immune and motor functions. He debriefed the team on the full situation, how they'd managed to get caught by Solheim's team, and the resulting carnage. The additional Thorian, and hints that there might be others. How their only lead was a shadow-broker tracker that Wrex had put on their shuttle, and the strange, hexagonal symbol painted in the Command room.

Then he had to debrief the council, who were furious that humans had managed to get themselves tangled in amoral testing with not one, but two ancient carnivorous plants. Shepard maintained his unfailingly polite facade, though he seethed with ever snide insinuation Sparatus made, and the indirect manipulation Tevos was trying on him. Valern had remained surprisingly quiet, though Shepard was too tired to speculate much on why. He made his recommendations, then severed the comm link. He sat in the chair in front of the holo-pad, head in his hands. He had failed. He sighed, and stood.
"Connect me to SAIS-1, command code Sol sylarannus evoris. The asari phrase was nonsense, but that was one more level of security. A tone droned for 5 seconds, then a bright VI appeared, doubly distorted due to distance and transmission.
"Please state your business." It said.
"Connect me to Major Daniels please. Transmission code Barbarus viatori patuit.
"Connecting."
A rich voice, thick with a southern accent carried over the link. "Alexander Shepard! How the hell are you?" the holo-stand fuzzed for a second, and then clarified, showing a huge black man sitting behind a desk, dressed in full regalia. "Not forgetting us little guys as you move on to bigger ponds, are ya?" Shepard grinned at his former mentor, the man's irrepressible cheerfulness managing to reach him even in his foul mood.
"I don't think you're small-time by even your own skewed scale, Clive." Shepard said.
"Bah. They couldn't find anyone else crazy enough for the job." The major leaned back in his chair, and grinned cheekily at Shepard.
"What can I do ya for?" He asked easily.
"500 credits and a spot in the Thessia Embassy." Shepard answered, grinning.
"Shit, Shepard, your price has gone down. Council running you that ragged?" Shepard shook his head in admiration, seeing the touch of a master at work. Clive Daniels had been one of the System Alliance's most effective intelligence officers, his easygoing manner and sense of humor making him seem instinctually trustworthy, to aliens and humans alike.
"SpecTRe business, Clive. You know I can't talk about that." Shepard said. The major grinned shamelessly, and leaned forward expectantly. Shepard shook his head in mock disgust, and then came around to why he'd called.
"I wanted you to run a name, and tell me anything you know about the organization behind this symbol." Shepard pulled up one of the scans on his files, displaying a large, hexagonal symbol with two flanges, white and black and gold. The smile on Major Daniels' face froze for a second, as he saw that symbol. He swore, and then asked,
"Where did you find that?"
"In a colonial research base holding a 50,000 year old sentient carnivorous plant." Shepard grimaced. "The second one I've run into, actually. The other was experimented on by ExoGeni." The major had turned grim, and pulled up his own omni-tool, and began taking notes. Shepard fed him all the information that he was allowed, relating the story of the distress signal, the base, and feeding him Solheim's name. There was several seconds of silence, as the Major input things into the Alliance database. Finally, he sighed, running a hand over his face, and looked at Shepard.
"That symbol and base you found belonged to Cerberus. They were an Alliance black-ops group founded around the time of the First Contact War. They were a vengeance protocol, in short. Meant to be self-sufficient and self-sustaining, they would rain down guerrilla hell on alien installations should we be subjugated to the Turians. After the Shanxi Accords, they were told to disband. Instead, all the operatives went dark, disappeared. We've been chasing them for decades, but they've been acting more like a hydra than a three-headed dog. I'll send you the history." Major Daniels' omni-tool pinged as the file was sent over secure channels to the Normandy. Shepard didn't ask how the man knew the ships secure transceiver frequency.
"As for Solheim, She's dead. Was an attaché for Admiral Lindholm for awhile, and is noted for having improved the organization of the Rapid Response Units, and securing funding for a fueling station in the Traverse. She received posthumous commendations for fending off a Batarian suicide squad that attempted to crash a cruiser into Arcturus." Major Daniels frowned as he connected the dots. "Senate voted for increasing the number of destroyers and cruisers in the fleet soon after. If she is or was connected to Cerberus, that raises some disturbing questions."
Shepard sighed again. "It's never good news, is it?" Daniels laughed.
"Still young and idealistic I see." he said, smile returning.
"Wide-eyed and bushy-tailed, sir." Shepard gave a mock salute. Daniels acknowledged it lightly, smiled, and steepled his fingers.
"I'm not sure if I should be thanking you for all the new work you've given me, but I have a suggestion on your own hunt." He opened his omni-tool, and sent another file.
"Matriarch Benezia has discreetly been buying controlling shares in several human companies for the last decade. At least three of the ones traceable to her are based on Noveria." he held up one long finger. "Now, Noveria is having a planet-wide conference for the shareholders in Port Hanshan in a week's time. Typical ass-kissing corporate event. But-"
"Asari matriarchs do like having their asses kissed." Shepard finished for him, shaking his head. Daniels just gave him another crooked grin, and then gave some more advice.
"You know how corporate types get around known government agents. Best go undercover. I reckon you won't find Benezia herself, but you might just find a trail to her." Daniels opened his omni-tool one more time. "I can send you and two others cover stories and credentials from one of my contacts at Binary Helix."
"Thanks Clive, I owe you one." the Major shook his head, a bit of fatigue now showing.
"No need, Alex. You've given me more on Cerberus in an hour than we've managed in the past 5 years. I'm starting to see why Udina pushed so hard for a SpecTRe candidate." He shook his head, then gave a light salute to Shepard. "Good luck and Godspeed, son."
"Godspeed, Clive." Shepard answer, raising his hand into a salute. The connection ended, and the VI's ethereal voice floated from the port.
"Logging you off, Commander." Shepard put his head in his hands, enjoying the little minute of silence he had. He sighed, and then stood.
"Joker, set course for Noveria."
"Aye aye, Commander."