If Sanctuary had ever been as beautiful as the photographs EDI had shown them on board the Kodiak, it was difficult to imagine. Whatever pristine, welcoming structures and gardens had once adorned the entryway courtyard had been completely destroyed, decimated and burned by whatever had come before Shepard and her team's arrival, leaving nothing but smouldering rubble in its wake, the last lonely remains of a proud facility. "Look at all this destruction," Liara breathed, her brow furrowing as she looked around the piazza, shaken by the blackened wreckage that littered the once-immaculate landscape. "Somebody must have been fighting here before we came."
"Yeah," Shepard agreed, frowning, wary. "But who was fighting?" Just then, a loud, electronic pop sounded from her in-ear comm, causing her to flinch at the noise before the comm returned to level radio static, buzzing noisily as it attempted to pick up Cortez's signal, and then, once that failed, the Normandy's. Reaching a hand up to her in-ear comm, she tapped it, trying to get the static to clear, but to no avail. The comm let out another garbled squeal, followed by a few sharp clicks, before returning to loud, piercing white noise. "Everyone hear that?" Shepard asked, trying not to wince at the noise as she turned down the volume on the comm, leaving it just loud enough to hear in case a signal did manage to get through.
"Yes," Javik confirmed, baring his teeth, annoyed, as he reached up to turn down the volume of his comm as well. "The radio is offline. Something is jamming our signals."
"Explains no comms leaving the facility," Shepard agreed, returning her grip to her weapon and tightening her hold on it, warily.
"Shepard, look!" Liara suddenly gasped, reaching forward to grab hold of Shepard's arm and yanking her back just in time for her to look up and see a small white shuttle spiralling out of the sky above Sanctuary. Smoke and flames billowed from its engines as it plummeted, its landing gear shrieking with effort, sputtering with useless blue energy as the shuttle careened out of control, its dizzying descent stopping only when it finally made contact with the tiered wall of the facility barely yards from where Shepard and her team stood. The facility wall crumbled under the fiery impact, forcing the shuttle to the ground, and before the shuttle team had time to react, the wall collapsed in on itself, burying the vehicle under a devastating mound of concrete. A few last flames flickered weakly out from underneath the rubble as billowing pillars of smoke rose into the sky from the crash, and when Shepard looked up towards the roof again, it was to see a satisfied-looking Harvester watching over the spectacle, inspecting its work. Its ragged wings were half-furled, its claw-like appendages hanging morbidly over the side of the building's roof as it waited to see if anything had survived the collision into the side of the building, but then, seeming satisfied that its quarry was taken care of, the massive creature spread its wings, launching itself from the roof of the building with a deep, electronic-sounding trill.
"A Harvester," Javik breathed, startled, his four eyes widening as he pulled his weapon in closer to his chest, ready to fight. The Harvester, however, seemed to have no interest in the ground party, instead passing over their heads and away from the entrance, heading towards something else more interesting on the other side of the facility.
"I saw it," Shepard confirmed, watching the massive Reaper creature grow smaller the further into the distance it flew. Just then, a yellow-hot bullet of energy whizzed past her shoulder, causing her to jump back, startled, before bringing up her weapon and ducking for the nearest cover. "Phantoms!" she called to her party, flinching as another plasma bullet hummed past her, this one further off than the last. "Near the doors!"
"We got this!" Liara assured her, peering around the edge of their cover and letting off a few sure, ringing shots. From a few feet away, Shepard could hear Javik doing the same, his frustrated grunts whenever he missed a shot just audible over the sound of the gunfire. It did not take long for the sound of return gunfire to cease, and Shepard moved warily to the edge of their cover, peering around the side to check if any more enemies were waiting for them to emerge, holding their fire until they caught a glimpse of some sign of movement. Seeing no waiting ambush, she quickly got to her feet, gripping her weapon close to her chest as she moved over towards where the Phantoms had been, her gait slowing as she reached the two white-clad corpses now strewn across the entryway near the facility doors.
"Looks like they were evacuating," Javik observed, using the toe of his boot to turn one Phantom's head, trying to see her face through her plexiglass helmet mask. A spiderweb crack had spread out from where a single plasma shot had burned a fatal hole through the agent's face, but apart from that, nothing could be seen past the tinted sheen of the Cerberus combat helmet.
"And it looks like the Reapers were pursuing them," Liara added, turning her attention back towards the adjoining rooftops to make sure the Harvester had not returned while they had been distracted fighting the Phantoms.
"About time they started killing each other," Shepard commented, darkly. Then, stepping over the second Phantom corpse, she made her way over towards the access console near the thick, marked double-door of the facility, pulling up the access control and beginning to override the code. It did not take long for the system to accept her override, and the doors of the facility slid smoothly open to allow the ground party access inside. Gripping her weapon at the ready, Shepard led the way inside the facility, taking a quick look around to make sure they were not walking into an ambush, but it seemed that whatever might have been waiting for them had already been taken care of before their arrival, leaving nothing but stark destruction in its wake. The enormous ornamental potted plants posted in every corner had been broken at the stems, trampled and burned. Every piece of furniture in the facility that was not welded to the floor had been overturned, the glass-panelled walls of the human resources enclosures smashed, their computers ripped from their stations and demolished. A small fire crackled from a blackened hole in the floor near the entryway doors, while another, larger fire burned more brightly in the middle of the parquet, seemingly fuelled by the white-yellow sparks dripping from a ragged, severed camera cable.
"Welcome to Sanctuary," a smooth electronic female voice cooed over the intercom, the forcibly gentle, reassuring tone causing the hair on the back of Shepard's neck to stand on end. She felt her hand curl subconsciously into a fist at her side as she scanned the facility, looking for any clue as to where the people who might normally have occupied this unnervingly deserted check-in point might have gone. "For your safety, communication devices are strictly forbidden. New arrivals are encouraged to aid those having trouble with registration."
"What happened here?" Javik asked, frowning, the eerie facility clearly setting him on edge despite his best attempts to appear unaffected. Shepard could only shake her head, just as confused as he was.
"I don't know," she answered, honestly. "Come on. Let's look around." She started to move forward into the facility lobby again, but the sound of shuttle engines suddenly caught her attention, causing her to stop short, looking up towards the ceiling and raising a hand to shade her eyes against the sunlight glinting across the bulletproof glass. She watched in guarded interest as two Cerberus-issue shuttles passed overhead, heading away from the facility, before turning her attention back to the entryway, making sure no Cerberus agents had entered while they had been distracted.
"More Cerberus," Liara commented, startled, gripping her gun close to her chest. Then, looking back towards Shepard again, she pointed to the next building over, barely visible through the glass-panelled ceiling. "They came from that tower," she told her, observant.
"Then that's where we're headed," Shepard confirmed.
"Upon arrival, all personal belongings must be submitted to our sorting staff for inspection," the smooth female voice continued, causing another unsettling twinge as Shepard made her way towards what appeared to be the main desk of the reception hall, a raised, glass-gated platform with a single, large computer screen facing away from the rest of the room. The station had been left oddly untouched by the rest of the carnage, but Shepard did not stop to question it, instead moving up behind the desk and tapping the console screen, turning it on and watching as it fizzled into life, the display switching from one backlogged vid file to the next in rapid succession. "They will be returned inside the compound. Be advised – communications devices will not function within Sanctuary."
"Security camera footage," Liara observed, coming to stand behind Shepard at the desk and peering over her shoulder at the computer screen, intrigued. Javik moved in around the other side of Shepard, just as interested, watching as she pressed a button on the keypad, causing it to move between the backlogged vids on command. The videos were disquieting, even in their silent, grainy greyscale, showing image after image of large groups of people being lined up, weeded out, and herded through the polished hallways like blind cattle. "That must be the place where they sorted out refugees," Liara commented, pointing to one of the video logs, causing Shepard to pause on it momentarily. "That's certainly a lot of people."
"Yeah," Shepard agreed, frowning as she turned the console off again, unsettled. "Come on. Let's keep looking."
"For faster registration, please follow the instructions of Sanctuary staff," the female voice prompted, causing Shepard to look up towards the intercom system, disconcerted. The juxtaposition between the cheerful voice and the blackened, deserted wreckage of the facility was making her almost sick to her stomach with anxiety. While the instructions the voice were giving seemed simple enough on the surface, the longer she listened to what was actually being said, the more she could not help but feel that the facility was less of a tranquil refuge and more of a secluded prison ward. Making her way around a large flight of stairs, she skirted the edge of the hallway, passing through what appeared to be a cramped setup of office desks lined up in such a way that they formed almost an enclosure of their own, leaving no part of the hall unwatched from the vantage point of at least one of the desks. Most of the computer consoles had been ripped apart or smashed, but one or two still remained standing, and she quickly approached one, curious, before turning it on and accessing the most recent data log, allowing it to play.
"Incident report 2139," a stern male voice recounted, the sound wavering a bit as a stripe of static passed down the centre of the projected screen. "Another communication device nearly made it past pre-screening. Scanner software has been adjusted. No way it could penetrate the central scrambler, but we can't chance a signal leaving the planet. Report filed."
"Central scrambler," Shepard repeated, thoughtful.
"That would explain why we aren't getting any signal inside the facility," Liara agreed, musingly, coming up to stand behind Shepard at the desk. "We just have to find a way to shut off the central scrambler. That should help us regain radio contact."
"Easier said than done," Shepard returned, glancing back across the rows of desks, looking for some other clue. "We don't even know if the scrambler is in this building."
"With your help, Sanctuary is building a better tomorrow," the female voice purred over the intercom, oblivious.
Moving past Liara again, Shepard made her way towards another desk at the far end of the setup, where another facility computer had been left unbroken by the unexplained carnage. Accessing the holoscreen, she pulled up the last data log in the computer's memory, allowing it to play as well, hoping it might reveal something more concrete about the goings-on leading up to the apparent destruction of Sanctuary. "The number of refugees has doubled in the last two weeks," a young, troubled-sounding female voice reported, causing Shepard to frown at the news, disconcerted. "I heard people are still abandoning shuttles outside the main gate. They just… don't have anywhere to go. We'll need to start setting up temporary shelters out there until they can be processed."
"What kind of operation where they running here?" Shepard asked, more to herself than her companions, closing down the computer screen again and turning away from the processing desk.
"Not a very effective one, it seems," Javik returned, frankly.
"For your safety, no communication devices are allowed inside Sanctuary," the female voice prompted over the intercom again, causing Shepard to look up at the reminder, frustrated.
"I wish that would stop," she muttered, holstering her weapon in the maglock at her back. Moving out of the desk-lined enclosure, Shepard moved instead towards a downward-heading flight of stairs, careful to watch her step as she descended into the lower level of the entry hall. A bright white light flickered distractingly from somewhere off to their right, and when Shepard looked, she noticed the word 'SANCTUARY' emblazoned in the wall in enormous neon lettering, a stark, self-congratulatory reminder to any arriving refugees that they were there by the grace of the facility's proprietors alone. To the left, what had once been a sleek, polished landing pad was now littered with the mangled, smoking remnants of several passenger shuttles, all of which seemed to have been trying to land at the same time, contesting for the same precious space, only managing to destroy one another in the process.
"Another landing area," Javik observed, astutely. "More official, perhaps."
"Those ships we saw outside must have been waiting to get in," Liara added, sounding worried, almost distressed.
"But where are all the people they brought?" Shepard asked, her frown deepening, concerned. She flinched as her boot crunched down on a pile of broken bulletproof glass, trying not to notice the streaks and puddles of drying blood spattered across the landing site. A bruised and broken arm, covered in cuts, dangled from the dented door of one of the shuttles, an unlucky, trapped survivor's last ditch attempt to get out of the wreckage before the smoke or his injuries ultimately killed him. At least two of the vessels in the tangled wreckage were painted with Alliance symbols, likely hopeful arrivals from the evacuation of Earth, and as Shepard looked closer, she noticed a number of datapads strewn around the landing site, some broken beyond repair, but some still barely functional. "Got a fragment of something here," she called back to her crewmates, starting to bend down to pick up one of the pads, but before she could reach it, she grunted, her abdominal guard snapping, rigid, against her waist, preventing her from bending down, causing her hand to hang uselessly a foot or so above the datapad on the ground. Liara hurried over, intent on picking up the pad for her, but Shepard quickly held out a hand to stop her.
"I got this," she told her, shaking her head, determined. Crouching down to her knees, she scooped up the datapad, before attempting to push herself back up, only to find that the weight of distribution was working against her. Pushing back a hot, mortified blush, she reached up a hand towards Liara, taking hold of the hand offered her and using it to pull herself back to her feet again. "Need to readjust my armour," she muttered, embarrassed, tucking a lock of hair distractedly behind her ear, trying her hardest to draw attention away from her most recent, distressing faux pas. "Abdominal guard too tight. Need to… gotta fix that. When we get back." Then, accessing the datapad's recent memory, she pulled up the first audio file on the list, setting it to play as Liara and Javik moved up behind her to listen.
"I can't call right now but I'll send this as soon as I can," a young woman on the datapad recording spoke, sounding distressed. "My little girl got sick. That's why I left. I love you, but I have to take care of her." At this, Shepard looked up at Liara, her brow furrowing, her stomach clenching with worry. There had been no sign of a woman or a young girl on board the crashed Alliance shuttle, but she knew too well that that did not necessarily mean the two had gotten out of the crash or the facility unharmed. "The clinics were closing their doors to refugees," the female voice continued, worriedly, causing Shepard to turn her attention back to the datapad again. "I couldn't borrow credits from you. I don't know where I learned about Sanctuary… around, I guess? Seemed perfect… somewhere to hide, y'know? Just until she got better… I can see the place out the window. It's huge. They already have people waiting for us…"
"Poor thing," Liara commented, her painted brows pressing together as the recording ended.
"She never stood a chance," Javik added, solemnly.
Handing the datapad over to Liara, Shepard turned away from the wreckage, making her way instead towards the room on the other side of the stairs. Multiple bodies were strewn across the floor of the adjoining room, some civilian, some Cerberus, and some Reapertech, though it seemed that most of the casualties were Cerberus agents. Peering around the corner into the next room, Shepard reached for her weapon, ready for a fight, but, finding nothing but more dead bodies ahead, she let her hand drop back to her side again, feeling her sense of apprehension rising the longer they went without finding anyone else in the facility still alive. If everyone in Sanctuary were already dead, that meant that it was also possible that whatever had killed these Cerberus agents and civilians had also killed Miranda and Oriana, and that was a prospect Shepard simply did not want to think about.
"An observation deck," Javik commented, looking around at the room, intent. "Likely a dead end."
"We need an exit," Shepard told him, turning to leave the room again. "Keep looking." Moving around the lower-level stairs, she made her way towards a doorway at the far end of the landing floor, a dimly-lit room where the only light came from a series of computer screens lining the wall. Whatever signal had previously been fed through the screens had apparently been cut, as most of them showed nothing but blank, fuzzy white noise, but one computer in the corner flickered on and off, showing momentary glimpses of images similar to the promotional slideshow EDI had shown them in the Kodiak before going back to static again. "This is a Cerb…" the computer struggled, the communication coming through garbled and clipped, the familiar female voice warping as the signal died out again, cutting the message off short. "This is a Cerberus fac… this is a Cerb…"
"Shepard—!" Liara said, her breath catching in her throat, excited, as she recognized the voice on the recording.
"That's Miranda," Shepard agreed, just as enthused, moving over to the computer in the corner of the room. Using her omni-tool, she hacked into the computer's memory, overriding the error that was causing it to short out, before taking a step back and allowing the message to play.
"This is Miranda Lawson," the message reported, Mirada's voice firm and authoritative. "If you've managed to get this far, you must be desperate or stupid." Shepard faltered, taken aback, wondering who she was addressing that she was speaking to them so harshly, but she did not have time to figure it out before the message began again, seeming more urgent the longer it went on. "Listen to me – this is not a refugee camp. This is a Cerberus facility run by my father, Henry Lawson. Turn back now. There is no help to be found here. All communication is being blocked from the central tower. Sanctuary is a lie. Stay away." As soon as the message finished playing, the computer flickered out again, returning to jumpy, faulty static, the communication becoming garbled once more as the signal blocker overrode it.
"Okay, so we've got Reapers, Cerberus, and Miranda's crazy father," Shepard sighed, turning away from the console to look back at her companions, frustrated. "Any ideas how this all fits?" Liara shook her head, but Javik did not even seem interested in the conversation anymore, instead peering through an opening at the far end of the dimly-lit room towards what looked to be a recreational area. Even from where they stood, they could detect the artificial scent of flowers being pumped in through the ventilation system, and as they got closer, the gentle sound of singing birds could be heard filtering in through the speakers hidden behind the large, flowering plants that lined every corner of the room. Shepard could tell that at least half the plants were fake, but that did not stop them from casting an almost peaceful aura over the recreational hall, with the massive, crystal-clear swimming pool sunk into the middle of the floor completing the artificial illusion of having stumbled upon a hidden jungle oasis.
Moving to the edge of the swimming pool, Shepard glanced down into its calm, mirrored surface, but quickly looked up again as an explosion reverberated from outside the facility, muted through the thick bulletproof walls, causing the surface of the water to ripple. Despite the disturbance, it did not take long for the pool to settle again, and when it finally did, she looked down again, catching a glimpse of her reflection in the surface and feeling a cold knot of panic tie itself tightly in her gut at the sight. "Oh my god," she whispered, mortified, turning to one side to get a better look at exactly how much she had grown. "I'm huge! Why did nobody tell me how big I'd gotten?!"
"I told you I would measure you if you wanted," Liara reminded her, apologetic, moving up to stand behind her at the pool. Shepard made a strangled noise of dismay as Liara's reflection lined up next to hers, the side-by-side comparison making the difference in waist size that much more obvious. "You said you preferred not to know."
"You said I'd only gotten five inches bigger, Liara!" Shepard countered, hissing through gritted teeth, barely daring to raise her voice so as not to draw Javik's censorious attention. "You said it was hardly noticeable when I had armour on!"
"I said five or six…" Liara corrected her, sucking anxiously on her lower lip.
"It is more than six," Javik corrected, bluntly, inserting himself into the conversation as he moved to stand behind the two women at the side of the pool. "It is closer to six and a half. Your minimalism is pointless, asari. Telling her that people do not see it will not keep them from seeing it. It will only make her more careless about letting them see it." Turning his attention to Shepard then, he gave her a telling once over, the edge of his lip curling faintly as his gaze moved over her stomach on the way back up, before letting out a soft snort of disapproving breath. "You are hardly doing her a kindness with your lies," he added, coldly, still speaking to Liara, though his critical gaze stayed locked on Shepard. "You are only hurting her by inflicting her with wilful ignorance."
"I'm not ignorant," Shepard informed him, frowning, frank. "I know I've gotten bigger. I just thought… maybe…" Turning back to the mirrored pool, she stared down at her reflection again, pressing one hand to the front of her stomach, the other resting against her back, as if trying to get a physical grasp on how much unexpected space now existed in the space between them. "I really thought I had more time," she admitted, giving a short, discouraged huff of breath. "Is it just some kind of sick unspoken joke at this point? Everybody knows it but nobody is willing to say anything because they're too polite?"
"I have said something," Javik reminded her, stonily. "Time and again. You have simply chosen not to listen."
"To be fair, Shepard, you've been doing a surprisingly good job of hiding it," Liara countered, reassuringly, quickly superseding Javik's discourteous input. "Between that jacket you wear around the Normandy, and the reinforced armour on missions—"
"Again, you are being generous," Javik snorted, interrupting her, causing Liara to glance back at him, annoyed. "Perhaps you are used to seeing people walking around military settings with their pants hanging open, but as for myself, I find it highly distracting. I would be surprised if other members of the crew had not noticed it as well. She does not make as notable a point of hiding that."
"Well, what do you want me to do, Javik?" Shepard returned, dropping her hands from her abdomen to look back at him again, frustrated. "I still wear a belt, but it's not like I have a pair of maternity pants conveniently lying around. And—besides, why are you looking, anyway? You already know I'm pregnant. There's no reason for you to be looking for more reasons to ridicule me."
"I am not looking, Commander," Javik corrected her, turning his gaze up towards her, deliberately. "I simply see it. You are not as subtle as you think you are." Giving another soft, critical snort, he looked away again, turning his four yellow eyes towards a decorative, flowering plant at the far end of the swimming hall, indifferent. "Either way, you will not be able to hide this for very much longer," he informed her, impassively. "Your crew may very well be unobservant, but, despite my initial convictions, they are not entirely stupid. How are you going to explain to your commanding officers that you cannot complete your mission because you cannot fit into your armour?"
"I fit into my armour just fine," Shepard told him, frowning stubbornly. "And if it comes down to it, I'll just get new armour that does fit. Bigger armour. Men's armour, even, if I have to. I have men's armour – I can just use that."
"A foolhardy plan," Javik returned, shaking his head disapprovingly. "And a nearsighted one. Do you think this war will be over so quickly? What happens when no armour fits anymore, male or otherwise? Do you think the Illusive Man will take you seriously as a threat if you come forward to face him with your ridiculous belly hanging out in front?" He turned to look at her again, harsh, no longer hiding his disapproving glare. "Of all the secrets you could possibly be trying to keep, this is by far the most stupid," he told her, bluntly. "It is a wonder no one has figured it out yet."
"And let's just hope it stays that way," Shepard returned, flatly. Then, pushing past him and Liara again, she made her way towards a sleek white console standing in a corner of the platform, hidden behind a large-leafed wax plant. Moving the plant out of the way, she pulled up a keypad on the console, inputting a catch-all override code, before looking up towards the pool again, expectantly. "That should do the trick," she said, making her way back towards the edge of the pool as the swimming room gave a low, ominous rumble, the ground starting to shake faintly under their feet.
"What's happening?" Liara asked, taking a step back, confused. Her answer came soon enough, as the massive pool began to quickly subside, the water draining steadily out through the bottom of the giant tank and disappearing underground, leaving nothing but pristine metal in its wake. Where the swimming pool had once been now stretched an immense, twisting maze of pipework, ladders, secondary rooms, and sealed, airtight doorways.
"They needed to hide something," Shepard explained, scanning the newly-revealed roomscape for some sign of their next destination, hardly able to hold back a satisfied smirk as she looked out over her handiwork. "And we have a back door into the facility now. Let's move."
Water still dripped from the massive decorative structures suspended above their heads as Shepard and her team climbed down the ladder towards the bottom of the emptied-out pool, their heavy boots splashing against the metal walkway as they made their way towards a pair of sealed doors built into the wall at the far end of the basin. As they passed a large, rounded machine built into the side of one of the structures, Liara suddenly slowed, intrigued, before turning to inspect the object with interest. "That looks like Reaper technology," she commented, frowning down at the deceptively unremarkable structure as Shepard came to stand beside her, looking over it as well. "I'm sure of it. I don't know how, but Cerberus has found a way to use it."
"The answer has to be here somewhere," Shepard returned, offering her a believing nod. "And Miranda's caught in the middle. Let's pick up the pace." Turning away from the unusual object, she started again towards the airtight doors at the far back of the basin, drawing her weapon as she pressed her omni-tool sensor to the glowing lock, overriding it, causing the doors to slide easily open. The room beyond the basin was dark, lit dimly by a few thin white strips of light running the length of the walls, the path ahead barely illuminated enough to see to the next door down the hallway. Shepard gripped her weapon closer to her chest, feeling a growing sense of unease the deeper they travelled into the heart of the evacuee station.
"No refugee ever saw this part of Sanctuary," Javik murmured, looking around the bleak hallway, tense. The door at the end of the hall opened up to reveal a much larger room beyond, this one just as dark as the last, with a single, dreary floodlight illuminating what looked to be a command console setup in the middle of the room. The console was ringed on all sides by dead, blank vid screens, and as they looked around, they noticed an enormous window of bulletproof glass stretching across the length of the far wall, looking out into a black, unlit chasm. Two unidentifiable machines hummed quietly behind a panel of plexiglass against the back wall of the room, and papers had been left strewn haphazardly across the floor, apparently abandoned by whoever had been working there before their arrival. Shepard paused over the papers, shifting one into the light with her foot to try to read what was written on it, but she could not figure out the series of tiny, almost unreadable strings of numbers printed on all the papers, none of which seemed on the first read to make any logical or binary sense.
"This has to be a command centre," Liara observed, cupping a hand against the bulletproof glass to squint out into the darkness. "No power, though."
"Hm," Shepard returned, looking away from the papers again. Moving over to the command console under the floodlight, she perused it, until finally she found a single, flashing button near the top of the console. As soon as she pressed it, the console whined to life, a hologram keyboard projecting onto its face as the ring of previously blank vid screens flickered to life, fizzling into focus one at a time. As they watched, the entire control room began to hum into functionality, the ceiling lights turning on one at a time, throwing the largeness of the room into sudden sharp focus.
"What's happening?" Liara asked, frowning up at the ring of vid screens as a video began to play on all of them in unison, a silent, flickering image of a refugee trapped inside an enormous plexiglass tube, banging in unheard terror on the glass as what looked to be a thick, greasy smoke was filtered in through a vent at the bottom of the enclosure. "Those are the refugees! They're just… killing them?!"
"Worse," Shepard answered, watching as the refugee in the tube began to painfully mutate, twisting and thrashing in horrified pain as his body began to almost rot around him. "They're being turned into Husks." A second, fully altered refugee could be seen climbing frantically up the walls of an enclosure closer to the camera, his enormous blue eyes wide, his gaping mouth screeching in silent horror as he threw himself against the back wall of the tube, trying desperately to escape his plexiglass prison. Just then, a glimpse of movement from outside the bulletproof glass caught Shepard's attention, and she looked up, frowning, before moving around the command console to move over to the glass and squint out into the dimly-lit chamber, looking for some sign of whatever it was she had seen. Typing a command into a squat, white control hub in front of the window, she looked up again as the blackened chasm outside the glass began to light up, one light at a time, revealing an enormous maze of pipework and hallways that zigzagged and twisted through the underground heart of the facility like an enormous, unnerving maze.
In the middle of the metal hall sat a small hoard of Husks, and, as Shepard and her team watched, the Husks all looked up at them in unison, startled, before letting out a horrendous snarling screech and running away into the darkness again, scattering like cockroaches from the light. "The refugees," Shepard breathed, narrowing her eyes, feeling ill at the sight of them. Just then, a loud bang caused her to jump back from the window, startled, and, looking up, she saw that a Husk had jumped out at her from the darkness, and now clung to the bulletproof glass, its fingers and toes spread like a tree frog, a hairy, slimy grey substance leaving streaks across the glass where its fingertips and toes had made contact. The Husk still wore the remnants of a service uniform, some sort of cleaning or maintenance crew, but the buttons had all been torn away, the sides of the shirt shredded almost all the way up to the sleeves, the pants ripped to above the ankles and stained with old, rotten urine and some sort of black and grey organic substance that appeared to have eaten through the inside of the knees of the uniform. The nametag on the breast of the uniform was still barely visible, though it, too had been streaked with the same unknown black substance, making it almost impossible to make out the unfortunate refugee's name.
"This makes no sense," Javik retorted, his brow furrowing deeply as his lip curled upward, baring the tips of his yellow teeth. "Going to all this trouble simply to create Husks… it is pointlessly counterproductive. What could the Illusive Man possibly be trying to gain?"
"The Reapers attacked because this place was a threat," Shepard returned, turning away from the window to face her party again, solemn. "We need to find out why." Moving past them, she headed for a door at the far end of the command centre, passing her omni-tool sensor over the greenlit lock and causing the door to slide open, allowing them inside. This room was lit a bit better than the last, though it, too was oddly abandoned, the only indicator that anyone had ever been there the still-awake computers that lined two rows of pristine, uninhabited desks. A video monitor at the back of the room flickered and fizzled, a familiar female voice coughing out of the speakers in short spurts as the console attempted to play back its recorded message.
"Shutting down the power—" it started to say, before dying out again, returning to garbled white noise. Making her way over to the console, Shepard pulled up the holo keypad, typing in a command to override the scrambler just long enough for the message to play. The screen flashed, a series of horizontal stripes streaking down its surface, before a grainy image finally came up of Miranda standing in front of a computer console, too busy to even look at the camera as she spoke. "Reaper forces have made a mess of the facility," she reported, typing frantically into a computer on the recorded message. "I'm shutting down the power to the processing plant to lock them down. It should keep them out of the entrance as well."
"Clearly, it did not," Javik commented, nonplussed.
"Look," Liara suddenly spoke up, pointing towards the vid screen again. When Shepard turned to see what she was pointing at, she realized that the security footage now showed a grainy video of Kai Leng walking in an inquisitive circle where Miranda had been standing only moments earlier, like a dog chasing after a scented trail. Seeming satisfied with his information, Leng stopped his pacing, bringing a hand up to his in-ear comm, his posture rigid and alert as he waited for the Illusive Man to pick up on the other end.
"Miranda Lawson has arrived sooner than expected," Leng reported into his comm, darkly. "Do you want me to deal with her?"
"Only if she gets in your way," the Illusive Man's response came through. "Stay focused on the research data. Find it and get out."
"Yes, sir," Leng confirmed, before the vid finally fizzled out into static again.
"Damn it," Shepard swore, gritting her teeth. "Miranda won't know he's here yet. Let's hope we're not too late already." Turning away from the console, she scanned the room, looking for some clue as to where Miranda might have gone, before heading down a flight of stairs towards a door at the bottom of the room. No sooner had she scanned her omni-tool sensor across the greenlit lock to open the door when she suddenly found herself face-to-face with a Husk, which had apparently been waiting just behind the door, listening in on them, lying in wait for them to arrive. Its neon blue eyes shot open as it opened its gaping, toothless mouth, shrieking in her face, the sound so wholly inhuman that it caused her blood to run cold. Before she had a chance to react, the Husk reached forward towards her, its sticky fingers grabbing hold of her shoulders as it clung to her, pulling her down towards the floor. Her weapon shot off blindly as she struggled to get free of the creature, its ragged black fingernails digging into her neck as the putrid smell of rotting flesh overwhelmed her senses, causing her to gag and gasp for breath.
"SHEPARD!" Liara shouted, running down the stairs towards the oncoming slew of Husks, opening fire as another pair of creatures ran shrieking out the door of the adjoining computer room towards the party. Javik was quick to follow suit, jumping over the banister of the stairs to join Liara at the bottom, moving past Shepard into the computer room and taking out the Husks as they approached, shielding Shepard from any more coming attackers. Regaining her shattered senses, Shepard gave a strangled shout of protest, ramming her elbow as hard as she could into the Husk's stomach, causing it to give a sharp, half-swallowed shriek of surprise as she grabbed hold of its rotten wrist, attempting to wrest the creature's grip free of her face. Twisting away from the Husk's grasping appendages, she grabbed hold of her Marauder, pushing herself into a sitting position as the Husk latched onto her leg, before turning and burying a bevy of plasma shots directly into the creature's face, leaving nothing but a smoking hole where its soulless eyes had once been.
The Husk gave another weak, garbled shriek, its grip on her leg slackening as a gush of black, curdled blood poured out of its mouth onto her boot, and she quickly kicked the dying creature away, before looking up towards the computer room, only to see that the entire floor was littered with lifeless Husk corpses. Pushing herself across the floor towards a corner of the room, Shepard breathed heavily, clutching her chest, her breath coming in loud, ragged wheezes as she tried in vain to steady herself, feeling a white-hot, aching, burning sensation building up just behind her ribcage, sending flaring daggers of agony up her throat and down into her stomach to her pelvic region. She felt as if she needed to vomit, but at the same time, vomiting sounded too painful to bear. Shepard coughed, dropping her gun to the floor with a loud, abandoned clatter, both hands pressing down hard against her chest and throat as she stared at a spot on the ground, her mind blank with panic, desperately wondering how she would be able to get out of Sanctuary with no communication to the Normandy. Liara was quick to settle herself in beside her, pulling Shepard in close to her shoulder and cooing her gently, helping her breathe, but Javik did not seem as eager to assist, merely standing in the middle of the corpse-strewn computer room, his gun held aimlessly at his side as he looked around at the carnage they had caused.
"This is madness, Commander," Javik suddenly spoke up, decisively, turning his exasperated attention towards Shepard and Liara, causing both women to look up at him, surprised. "You cannot keep pretending that everything is as it always has been. It is no longer debatable, it is merely a fact at this point. Everyone can see that you are unfit to perform duties as strenuous as those you insist on undertaking in your unfortunate condition."
"The only thing unfortunate here is your poor attitude," Liara countered, steeling herself not to wince as Shepard gripped her hand, silently riding out the pain. Shepard closed her eyes, gritting her teeth as she turned her head to bury it in Liara's shoulder, her boot digging into the metal flooring as she willed the burning ache in her chest to go away, practicing the breathing exercises Mordin had recommended her as best she could remember. Liara carefully pushed Shepard's sweaty bangs out of her eyes as Shepard leaned forward into her knees, pressing her free hand against her chest in the hope that the pressure might help relieve the pain. "This doesn't concern you, Javik," Liara added, turning her attention back towards the Prothean, annoyed. "Your duty is to help Shepard complete her mission. That means in whatever way is deemed necessary. If you are unwilling to perform that simple task, you should not have opted to come along."
"I opted to come along because you requested I do so, asari," Javik reminded her, stonily, causing a light purple blush to rise to Liara's embarrassed cheeks. "And as for whether or not this concerns me, I principally disagree. I have no intent or interest in dying simply because the Commander cannot participate in a single altercation without having to take an equally lengthy recovery period directly after." Turning his attention towards Shepard now, he scowled down at her, his stony expression unwavering as she looked up at him, regarding him with weary, sweaty frustration. "Whatever awaits us up ahead is hardly likely to wait around for you to catch your breath," he informed her, harshly, his lip curling faintly to show the filed tips of his yellow teeth. "Your assassin, Cerberus forces, Reaper forces… you have gotten yourself into this situation, and you refuse to accept responsibility for that fact. Now it seems we all must pay the price for your obstinacy."
"My obstinacy?" Shepard repeated, panting, incredulous, feeling the throbbing of her heartbeat pounding in her ears. "You're a real son of a bitch, Javik, you know that? You've got a damn lot of nerve telling me what I should and shouldn't be doing."
"I would not endeavour to tell you what to do, Commander," Javik informed her, coldly, lifting his chin to look down at her across the bridge of his flat nose. "My opinion clearly has no effect on you, nor does anyone else's, for that matter. You do whatever you want to do, regardless of what anyone recommends… to whatever unfortunate end it leads."
"She's keeping the baby," Liara suddenly snapped, her eyes flashing as she rose quickly to her feet again, facing off against Javik, defensive. Her hands clenched into fists at her sides as she took a deep breath, puffing herself up, taking another step forward to get right in his face, fed up with his malicious attitude. His yellow eyes widened as she came closer, guarded, but he did not move to get out of her way, continuing to stare her down, even as her face came within menacing inches of his. "She made a decision," Liara told him, firmly. "And no amount of snide commentary or rude implications on your part is going to change that. You've made your opinion on the matter quite clear, and so has she. But it's not your decision to make. It's hers. And she made her decision. So drop it."
Javik hesitated, seeming surprised by Liara's newfound, aggressive resolve. Then, giving another soft snort of disapproval, he looked up and away from her, instead returning his attention to Shepard, who was still sitting to one side of the door, taking the moment to catch her breath. "Your spiteful stubbornness has no effect on me," he informed her, matter-of-factly. "If you are doing this to prove a point, then you are only wasting your time. I have no stake in whether you decide to keep the baby or not. It makes no difference to me one way or the other."
"Then why have you been going out of your way to give her such a hard time about it?" Liara insisted, causing Javik to look down towards her again, frowning, irritated. "If you don't care whether she has it or not, why did you make such a point of telling her to get rid of it?"
"I never told her to get rid of it," Javik corrected her, flatly. "I merely told her that she was foolish for getting pregnant. I told her that I did not respect her for her indecisiveness in the matter. I told her that she was delusional and reckless for thinking she could deceive an entire military vessel into not noticing she was pregnant. I never once told her that it would benefit me if she were to get rid of the child." Looking over towards Shepard again, he regarded her with a look of flat, almost apathetic indignation. "My investment in her wellbeing is on a professional level only," he added, incisively. "Anything other than that is more concern than I care to give."
"Duly noted," Shepard answered, coldly. Then, reaching out a hand for Liara to take, she grabbed up her Marauder from where it had dropped on the floor, bracing herself against the door frame with the hand holding the gun as Liara lifted her gently up under her other arm, helping her steadily back to her feet. Coughing a few times, Shepard sniffed, offhanded, before popping the spent heat sink out of her gun and fishing a fresh sink from the pouch at her hip. "You've made it perfectly clear you don't give a damn about me, Javik," she informed him, pressing the fresh sink into the weapon with a hiss and a click before turning her attention up towards him again, stonily. "But that doesn't mean you're not still a part of this crew. And as part of the Normandy crew, it's your responsibility to help me complete this mission, whether you like it or not. After this you don't ever have to come with me on any mission again, but until we're actually back on board the Normandy, you listen to my orders, and you follow them. Is that clear?"
Javik seethed, bristling silently at her tone, his four yellow eyes unblinking and cold as he stared at her, frigidly, his mouth drawing into a hard, thin line. "Yes, Commander," he finally told her, speaking slowly, resentful, his lip curling faintly upward to show the filed tips of his teeth.
"Good," Shepard answered, frankly, turning away from him again. "Now let's get moving. We still need to figure out where Miranda and Kai Leng went, and we don't have much time."
"Understood, Commander," Liara confirmed, readying her weapon.