"So, anyway, Mum wanted me to tell you thanks for all the extra business sent the club's way even if it does make us a target for people who hate you. Love you, Ari, take care out there!"

St. Jude made flashing circles in front of her as Shepard listened to her cousin, Micha's, audio message. She snickered, wondering what people checking out her aunt's club out of curiosity felt when they got there. Micha was the main act and gave the word 'burlesque' a whole new meaning.

Her smile faded and she made a mental note to check with her uncle to see if his people had seen anything. Her family made light of the idea of Saren sending people after them, but she knew it was a very real possibility. Unfortunately, it wasn't an uncommon one. She'd made enemies, particularly among the batarians, and the fear that someone would use her family to get to her never went away. Aunt Janine had some good connections, so did her uncle, they could take care of themselves, but Ray and Mischa...

Lucky for them their psychotic cousin is balanced out by a meddlesome father with enough money and questionable connections to look out for them.

She quit spinning her St. Jude medal and tucked it back beneath the collar of her armor. One of the few pieces of her past. It probably would have been safer if she'd quit the habit of spinning it when she was thinking; it had already cost her more chains for it than she could count.

Shepard deleted a couple messages from Ambassador Udina, who was swiftly becoming the last person in the universe she ever wanted to talk to. She'd rather get a message from Saren at this point and that was God's honest truth. A surprised smile curved her lips as she clicked the last one, listening to Denali's smooth, amused voice as she put her boots on. Another piece of her past, in this case one good piece from a period of her life she struggled to forget.

"I can't leave you alone for two seconds, can I? I'd say congratulations on the Spectre appointment except you're working for the damned Council."

Shepard snorted.

"Also, darling, I hope you appreciate exactly how crazy this Arterius character is. He's been out here several times over the past couple of years though he didn't stay long enough for anyone to really figure out what he was up to, although we certainly looked. You know how Her Highness is."

Oh, yes, she'd heard plenty.

"Just that he was talking to a lot of batarian scientists that specialize in deep space exploration. That was quite a few years ago, though."

Shepard paused, narrowing her eyes thoughtfully. Now that warranted looking into. What had Saren been after in the years leading up to the attack on Eden Prime? On Omega, of all places? She'd have to ask Denali for more details.

"Anyway, I've been in Citadel Space...not of my own choice, mind you, and no I can't tell you why...for a bit and might head to the Citadel before I leave. I'll let you know, I'd like to see you if you can tear yourself away from saving the galaxy. We can make it just like old times...well, not all of it."

That would be nice, it had been years since she'd seen the asari face to face...

Shepard started as the copy of Herman she'd installed on her console alerted her to an incoming message with a loud bray of guitars. It was Anderson. She sat down again and clicked to answer it. The captain's face appeared on screen. "Shepard."

"Sir." Shepard bit back a frown. Anderson looked tired and there was a tightness around his eyes and mouth that always signified he was angry. Arguing with Udina again?

"I heard you tracked Saren down."

"We just missed him. Pressley says he's never seen a ship vanish that fast. He disappeared off the grid yesterday and left a whole lot of geth behind to finish the job." Some of her frustration leaked into her voice despite herself.

"Not surprising, after all no one has seen a ship like his before. I take it you're not going after him, then?" Anderson leaned back into his chair.

"No, sir, seemed like a lost cause. We're coming up on Feros right now, I want to know what he was after." Shepard realized with a touch of annoyance that she was explaining herself when she was only required to do that for the Council. Ah, well, old habits died hard. Besides, this was Anderson.

"I figured. I thought you ought to know we had some surveillance on the ExoGeni Corporation."

"Surveillance?"

"As you know, corporations have a tendency to 'forget' reporting when they find important Prothean technology. With ruins like the ones on Feros, it was considered best that we keep an eye on them. There have been no reports of overly suspicious activity at Zhu's Hope, but.." Anderson trailed off, frowning. Shepard waited, her curiosity piqued. "There's been reports from agents and traders that the colonists have been acting increasingly odd. There's also been reports of some minor health problems from people after they leave. Headaches and such."

Interesting. "Thanks for the heads up, sir."

Anderson nodded and said goodbye. Shepard signed out and sat for a moment, tapping her fingers against the desktop and scowling into the darkness. The more she learned, the more uneasy she felt.

Joker's voice crackled over the intercom. "Commander, we're coming up on Zhu's Hope."

Shepard would have given a lot to know what was drove Ashley. She would have chalked up her suspicion of Wrex and Garrus to the same wariness that Pressley had except there was an edge to Ashley's that somehow made it personal. Ever since Shepard had refused to limit Wrex and Garrus's access to the ship and the incident when Liara had tried to help her figure the vision out, there had been a change in Ashley's attitude. Oh, Ashley followed orders without question and didn't cause a hint of trouble, but there was a tension between them now. That friendly ease they'd had at the start was gone and Shepard regretted that. She wished there was some way she could understand why Ashley was so defensive, as if she was waiting for the other shoe to drop. Case in point was the flash of resignation and bitterness that had crossed the soldier's face when Shepard had told her to stay with Kaidan and Liara at Zhu's Hope.

She'd had to. The unease that gnawed at her had only intensified when they landed and took stock of the situation. It wasn't the geth that made her uneasy. Between hunting for Saren, they'd been taking down geth outposts at the request of Admiral Hackett. Tali reckoned they'd seen about the extent of the forms the forces took. They'd all gotten good at figuring out the best way to take each one down.

It wasn't the colonists, either. Despite Anderson's warning, she'd seen no behavior from them that indicated anything wrong. They were just the remains of a colony that had suffered a horrific attack, pressed by geth on all sides, desperate and terrified. The geth were everywhere, swarming over the still majestic ruins like ants.

No, she couldn't put her finger on what was causing alarms to go off in the back of her head. It was pure gut instinct that made her decide to leave some of her squad to help the colonists put the outpost back together and protect them...and the Normandy.

To give her credit, Ashley had relaxed a bit when Shepard told her the colonists were shell shocked enough and having human Alliance soldiers helping them out would ease them. Leaving them with the colony and Liara with the ship eased her mind enough she was able to concentrate fully on the problem before them.

Now, Shepard glanced back at the weigh station as they made their way back to the Mako. They'd left a few survivors fortified there, including ExoGeni's only remaining representative, one Ethan Jeong, who seemed more nervous at their arrival than the geth's. Shepard didn't like the look of him, but the other woman leading them, Juliana Baynham, seemed solid. "Well, that wasn't suspicious at all."

Garrus snorted. "He's got geth crawling all over the place and he's worried about us stealing or damaging corporate property. Sure."

"Well, let's be fair, we do tend to leave the battlefield in...rather bad shape," Shepard ducked into the driver's seat and strapped herself in.

"Say that with pride, Shepard, that's the only way to leave a battlefield." It was a testimony to how surprisingly limber Wrex was that he was able to fold himself into the Mako.

Shepard grinned and steered the vehicle through tunnels, up toward the skyway that would take them to ExoGeni's headquarters, bumping over debris and dead geth. The Mako had been made to withstand much worse and she gunned it with enjoyment, racing along the corridors. She figured she might as well enjoy the drive. Once they hit the skyway, they'd be battling geth from all sides once again, just like on the way up.

"Do you really think her daughter is still alive? Juliana?" Tali asked hesitantly.

Shepard's good humor vanished and she glanced over her shoulder. When Juliana had found out where they were headed, her plea for them to look for her daughter had been too much for Shepard to say no too. The odds Lizbeth, her daughter, had survived were slim to none. But the odds meant nothing to a mother when it was her child she was talking about. "I hope so." She snapped her gaze forward again as they emerged onto one of the skyways again. "Garrus."

"On it, Commander." The turian took control of the guns.

It was, as always, an ugly fight. Geth literally swarmed them, if she hadn't been there herself she wouldn't have believed they'd killed dozens, maybe hundreds, of geth to get to this point. Not for the first time, she wondered exactly how many geth there were out there...and how many Saren had. She trusted Garrus with the guns and focused on driving, swerving the Mako back and forth to dodge fire from the bigger geth. At one point one of them made it close enough to jump onto the vehicle itself until Wrex opened the door on his side, leaned out, and almost casually grabbed its leg, throwing it off and beneath the Mako's wheels.

"I can see why you like driving this, Shepard," Tali's voice was giddy with relief as they aimed for a set of double doors that would take them into the headquarters...and cover.

"It's almost as much fun as the vehicles colony kids cobble together from old military vehicles and broken down ships out on the Traverse to race," Shepard said, slowing down as Garrus aimed a few shots into the chamber ahead to clear out any geth there. She paused, then added somewhat primly: "Not that I would know, of course."

"Of course," said Tali, matching her tone. "The same way I don't know about quarians who do the same thing with leftover parts."

Shepard made a clucking sound. "Kids today." She checked the screens in front of her, squinting. "It looks clear for the moment. Let's go."

"You know, I'm starting to see Shepard's point," Kaidan murmured, looking over at the colonists as they went about their work. Shepard had been incorrect assuming they'd be more comfortable with human soldiers helping them out. Kaidan had the impression anyone at all could have been helping them and they would have acted the exact same way. "Even that salarian is acting strange." He nodded to where the salarian merchant, Ledra, was sitting.

Ashley snorted. "He's a salarian, how can you tell?"

Everything had started out perfectly normal. He, Ashley, and Liara had spent most of the past few hours getting water and power running to the colony again. And killing off the biggest of the varren so they smaller ones could be hunted, which was a new experience for him. Varren were vicious pests, they always reminded him of some odd crossing of a snake and wolf, and they were found on many planets. This was the first time he'd ever heard of eating them, though. Ashley, however, had informed him that a lot of the colonies supplemented their regular meat rations with varren meat, especially when they were on the outskirts of Citadel space.

She broke off a piece of a protein bar from the ship's rations and popped it in her mouth. She actually didn't mind varren meat but she felt bad eating anything from the colony when they were in such a bad way. She chewed slowly, watching the colonists, and finally spoke: "You're letting that nut Newstead get to you."

She didn't sound entirely sure of that, though, Kaidan noted. They fell silent for a while, giving themselves a moment of much needed rest. Liara had gone back into the ship to continue her research on the ruins, trying to pinpoint what Saren might have been looking for. Kaidan was finding it hard to relax. Liara had worriedly told them she was picking up strange readings in the air and cautioned them to keep their helmets on. Then she'd tried to radio in to Shepard only to find the radio was being blocked somehow.

And then there had been Newstead. They'd found the man wandering around in the tunnels. Trying to talk to him had only made them even more jumpy, his speech a mixture of nonsense, screams, and laughter. He'd refused to come back with them and had found colonists oddly unconcerned with his behavior, telling him- as always -to talk to Fai Dan, their leader. Fai Dan, however, seemed even less concerned, only telling them Ian was sick and there was nothing to be done for him. He refused to speak any further, his expression tight and tense.

Since then, there was a strange tension in the colonists that had Kaidan feeling twitchy. Every time he glanced at them he thought maybe they were watching him out of the corner of his eye.

Ashley finished her protein bar and threw the wrapper in one of the few trash receptacles. She scowled. "Has Joker managed to get a hold of Shepard yet?"

"No, he tried a few minutes ago, there's still something blocking him. Probably the geth." Kaidan's gaze drifted to Fai Dan and found the man openly staring at him. Ashley noticed to and went stiff beside him. "I hope we get a hold of her soon. You're right, there's something weird going on around here."

"Too bad we don't have time to skin some of these and cut them up. Nothing like a good chunk of roast varren after a battle." Wrex kicked one of the dead beasts off to the side with a sigh of regret.

Garrus couldn't hide his disgust. "Eat them?"

"It's not that bad," Shepard said absently. She was flipping out Lizbeth Baynham's ID card, sliding it through the reader to let them in the one door they'd found that worked besides the one the geth had put a field over. Despite all the odds, the young woman had survived the geth and the varren that had taken over the complex. Shepard had never been happier to see the odds beaten. She'd been more than happy to give the card over before she'd gone into hiding again, leaving them a hell of a lot more questions than answers about what the hell Saren and the geth had been after here.

They had attached their ship to the side of the complex and currently had some kind of impenetrable field over everything that reminded her of the one Liara's ruin had activated. Lizbeth wasn't going anywhere until they dealt with it. None of them were.

Wrex started to say something and checked himself, listening closely as they mounted the stairs. They didn't have to listen very hard, whoever the speaker was, he was pissed off and not afraid to show it. "Stupid machine! Access encrypted files!"

Shepard motioned to them and made her way up the stairs. The voice grew louder and there was the distinct sound of someone smashing a fist into something. That and the pitch and tone of his voice told her he was krogan even before she glanced around the corner.

"No, I don't want to review protocol!"

It was indeed a krogan. What surprised her was the VI interface, a simple one in the shape of a human man, that glowed in front of him. "I am unable to comply. Please contact your supervisor."

The krogan growled, hitting the wall next to the punch mark where he'd obviously struck it earlier. "Damn it. Tell me what I want or I'll blast your virtual ass into actual dust!"

"Threatening a VI." Wrex closed his eyes and shook his head in despair.

The VI, of course, didn't respond in the slightest to the threat of violence. It spoke in that calm, pleasant tone recorded for all VI interfaces that dealt with the public. It had to be sending the krogan's blood pressure through the roof. "Please contact your supervisor for a level 4 security exemption or make an appointment with..."

"Stupid machine!" The krogan's roar of frustration echoed down the hall. He took a step forward as if to smash the projector and Shepard brought a pistol up, signaling to Garrus and Wrex.

Unfortunately, while the krogan hadn't registered their presence, the VI had. "If there is nothing else, please step aside. There is a queue forming for the use of this console."

The krogan froze, absorbing that, and spun to face them. He snarled. "Oh, good, I really need to kill someone!"

Shepard simply pulled back around the corner. To give him credit, the krogan put up a better fight than she'd expected but it was still four against one.

She skirted around his body and headed for the VI, not even flinching when Wrex's gun boomed one more time behind her, putting a bullet in the other krogan's brain to make sure he didn't get up again. Wrex believed in being thorough.

The VI was still running. "ExoGeni corporation reminds all staff that the discharging of weapons while on company property is strictly forbidden."

"Uh huh." Shepard scanned in Lizbeth's card.

"Welcome back, Research Assistant Baynham. What can I do for you?"

Research Assistant, huh? "What information was the last user attempting to access?"

"Fetching data." The VI flickered. "The previous user was attempting to access details on the study of Species 37, the Thorian. I was unable to provide the previous user with any relevant data. Aside from lacking proper access, there has been no new data available on Species 37."

Shepard leaned forward, eager to finally get an answer to the question that had been burning in her mind since Lizbeth mentioned it. "What is the Thorian?"

Liara frowned and ran through her data one more time. This anomaly in the air was driving her crazy. It wasn't a gas or a chemical imbalance in the atmosphere, if that were the case the entire planet would be affected. It was just this area around the Zhu's Hope where these odd readings...

She trailed off as she took a closer look at the spots that were bothering her, magnifying a sample. They almost looked like...spores?

She frowned, doing a quick comparison. Yes, that was the closest thing she could find to that matched, but she'd never seen anything like this before. Liara leaned back in her chair, tapping the arm. Was the ruins? That was a possibility. In the rare places where there were large amounts of active Prothean technology, it could have a strange impact on the environment. It was possible it could have altered or outright mutated some of the plant life. But where was it? There would have had to be significant amounts of plant life around here to account for so many spores in the air. Zhu's Hope was high up, built on one the spires of the ancient Prothean city but even if it wasn't, there was significant dust and pollution below.

Liara rubbed the spot between her eyes. She didn't have enough evidence to draw any real conclusions, but considering the amount of spores in the air and the behavior of the colonists...

She reached for her comm and contacted Kaidan. "Lieutenant, I think you'd better come back onto the ship..."

As the two soldiers disappeared back into the ship, some unseen signal passed through the colonists. They straightened up, turning from whatever task they'd been engaged in. Fai Dan went still, his face twisting into a mask of agony, his hands flexing again and again before the expression suddenly dropped from his face, leaving it expressionless again. For a long moment, the colony was still, as if listening to something. Then all eyes turned toward the Normandy.

It was almost shameful how much the problem of the geth ship was solved due to sheer, dumb luck.

The ship was attached to ExoGeni's headquarters by a series of claw like attachments that had torn through the walls and clamped on, anchoring it. From there it generated the field that was preventing them from leaving and blocking communication back to the colony and their ship.

The legs they'd come across earlier were dead ends. There was no way to create an explosion big enough to dislodge the claw without killing all of them in the process and probably bringing the building crashing down. In case killing themselves wasn't enough and they wanted to kill off Lizbeth and the people at the weigh station too.

The solution came from an irate note on the shuttle bay door controls from a supervisor worried the door was going to take someone's arm off.

Because with the right push they slammed hard enough to shear through metal...

It was very lucky the geth had decided that shuttle bay looked like a good place to park a claw. Right through the open door.

All it took was a little careful toggling and...

Shepard stumbled as the building shook. The scream of tortured metal filled the air. With the top claw free, the ship's balance was thrown off and its weight pulled the other two away from the building. She heard the crash below and the hum of the ship faded. She picked her way across the shuttle bay, glancing out the doors carefully. The ship was gone, tumbling into the thick, swirling clouds below.

She scooted away from the edge and turned. Tali was cheering. "I hope that ship was full of those geth bastards!"

Shepard was eager to get down and make sure the field around the exit had vanished but even as she made her way back over, her comm was crackling. "...yone there? Normandy to shore party. Come on, Commander, talk to me!"

Thank God, at least communications were open again. "Joker?"

"Commander! We're in lockdown here!"

"What? Why, what's happened?"

"Something happened to the colonists. They're banging on the hull, trying to claw their way inside the ship. They're freaking out!"