Alright, the rewrite's done, on with the show! Game? Show? Story? Whatever, on with it!
Liara's POV
Hollow? What did he mean by hollow? I frowned as I looked at Dazac while he quickly rubbed his eyes. I was about to keep questioning him when the Commander's voice echoed in my ear.
"Dazac, Liara, the route to the colony is clear. You'd better get up here."
I frowned at those last words and looked to Dazac, wondering if he knew what the Commander meant. He looked just as confused as I felt, that is, until he apparently realized something. What it was I didn't know, but it couldn't be good. Not when he replied sarcastically, "That sound's promising..."
We made our way to the colony with the colonist that had come out to meet us. The colonist was walking in front of us and muttering to himself. It was actually quite disturbing. I stepped a bit closer to Dazac and leaned over to whisper, "Are all the colonists like this?"
"I don't know," he said, apparently as confused as I was. "The behaved odd, but not like this. The only one who should be talking to himself is the guy down in that 'sewer' area, but even he wasn't so quiet like this."
I decided not to ask anything else for fear of losing my composure. Something was obviously wrong with what Dazac told us. That notion was only reinforced when he quietly muttered that we should have reached the colony by now.
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Shepard's POV
"I don't know what's wrong sir," Kaiden told me. "It's been ten minutes since you contacted them, they should be here by now, but I can't find their comm signals anywhere."
This wasn't good, first the colony and now this. I decided to contact Joker, "Joker."
"Yeah, Commander?"
"See if you can contact Dazac or Liara. We can't reach them. Let them know we need them up here before we can continue. This colony is very different from what Dazac described."
"You got it, Commander. I'll let you know when I reach them."
"Thanks," I replied before turning to the others. "Alright, so obviously the colony is a lot bigger than what Dazac told us. That still doesn't change our objective, we're just going to have to improvise when it comes to subduing all the colonists. For now we're going to do some reconnaissance of the area. We'll split into three teams of two. Ashley and Garrus, I want you two to find the tallest structure you can and get a look at the layout of this place. Kaiden and Wrex, I want you two to cover the South half of the colony here. Tali and I will head to the North end and look around there. Don't let each other out of sight, and keep in radio contact at all times. Let's move out people."
After receiving a round of affirmations that everyone knew their task, we started to head out. Tali and I headed for the North side of the colony, something that wasn't exactly easy to do, considering the layout of this place. There didn't seem to be any rhyme or reason to where buildings were placed.
"Shepard?" Tali said, getting my attention. I turned to look at her using her Omni-tool.
"What is it?" I asked.
She glanced at me and then back to whatever she was doing. "I'm picking up some odd signals," she explained, "The whole colony is saturated with them."
That didn't sound good. "What do these signals do?" I asked.
Tali shook her head, "I can't be sure, but I think I've seen something similar before. Back on the Flotilla, space is scarce so space to grow food is even scarcer. In order to grow enough crops to feed everyone we've had to accelerate their growth. Because all our resources are so limited, we try to use as few chemicals as possible, in order to save them for when we may have to use them for other things. One of the things we've experimented with was sound waves."
"And these signals are similar to the sound waves your people use?" I asked, seeing where she was heading with this.
She nodded, "Yes. These seem much more complex and refined than what we use though. It's as if they're using a very specific frequency and pattern."
"Something that's fine tuned to a particular type of plant..." I said, dreading where this was going.
"Yes," Tali replied. Tali looked around nervously, "Shepard? Can you hear anything?"
I frowned and then looked around. I couldn't hear anything. It was silent as a grave. "Let's keep moving," I suggested.
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Something was definitely wrong and I was done walking through the maze of corridors. I caught up to our guide and grabbed his shoulder. "Hey, you're supposed to be taking us to the colony." The man had stopped, but he didn't respond. "Hey!" I said, spinning him around to face me. I let out a yell and leaped backwards away from him, running straight into Liara who stopped my backpedaling as she looked over my shoulder.
"Goddess!" She gasped.
I grabbed my pistol and aimed it straight at the colonist's head. This was NOT what was in the game! The colonist's eyes were covered in some sort of yellow crust that made the eyelids bulge out oddly. The fact that he had what looked like vines coming out of his mouth sticking to his skin as it went down his chin to his neck and then disappeared under his shirt.
"How? When?" Liara asked.
"I don't know," I replied quietly before addressing this...thing. "What the hell is going on here? What are you?!"
It opened it's mouth and spoke in what has to be the creepiest voice I've ever heard. A drawn out, rasping, gravely, rotten sound that echoed in the corridor.
"F~L~E~S~H!"
"Dazac?!" Liara said, gripping my shoulder and trying to stay behind me. "What do we do?"
I activated my comm, "Shepard? Shepard are you there? Anyone? Joker? Garrus? Kaiden? Hello? Answer dammit!"
I navigated through the HUD in my helmet with my eye movements and tried to find out what was going on. Then I found the problem. "Son of a bitch!" I cursed, "Comms are being jammed!"
"How?" Liara asked, keeping her eyes on the thing in front of us that had yet to move.
"Most likely," I surmised, "The geth are gearing up for another attack on the colony."
The colonist groaned and took a step towards us and I refocused on it, "Don't move!"
It kept coming. Two steps. Three steps. Four steps. I fired and its head jerked back and then slowly tilted its head back down and looked at us. There was a tiny hole in its forehead that was oozing a green slime. Instead of acting like I thought it would and clotting or something it started flowing out faster and faster. Then I saw something bulge under its skin.
"Liara, get back," I said, starting to take some steps away from the thing.
The colonist started to convulse slightly and its head began jerking around wildly before a tendril of something tore out of the hole in its head and literally ripped its face in two. I felt like I was going to be sick. Two halves of a head dropped to the ground with a sickening wet sound while the tendril that had broken it grew larger right in front of us before starting to split itself. A blob of the green ooze pushed the sides apart and then suddenly burst.
Liara and I both jumped back to avoid the slime. When we looked back up at the colonist its head had been replaced by something I did recognize. "That's a Thorian Creeper," I stated flatly.
The Creepers whole body seemed to start oozing that slime and it began eating away at the clothing, revealing that sickly gray skin. The Creeper shrieked loudly and started running at us. Fired until my pistol overheated and then threw a biotic blast at it. It's wounds seemed to heal and close up almost instantly and the biotic blast only made it stagger. I didn't know what to do.
Liara stepped past me, glowing blue and threw her hand out at the Creeper, launching a ball of biotics at it. The ball stopped and expanded, drawing the Creeper into the air. A singularity! I smirked and readied another blast of my own, trying to focus it into a warp before throwing it at the Creeper. As soon as it made contact with the field of the singularity the biotics exploded in a flash of blue, blowing the Creeper apart.
I turned, not wanting to look at the mess and grabbed Liara's wrist, dragging her with me back the way we'd come, letting go and starting into a fast jog as she fell into step next to me.
"That was a Throian Creeper?" she asked, incredulously.
"I think so," I said, still trying to calm my nerves.
"You think so?" she replied, disbelief at my apparent lack of knowledge evident in her voice.
I kept running and glanced at her, "I think it's safe to say, some things are obviously different from what I know."
She shook her head and turned to looked forward as she replied, "I'm not sure if that's a good things or a bad thing."
I laughed, "Heh!"
