Garrus awoke, to his surprise, to find his body pressed tightly against Shepard's, his arms wrapped around her, her back pressed into his chest, their legs entwined together. For a moment, he was struck by how comfortable it felt to lay like that, but just as quickly he was horrified that he'd been spooning with the commander. He respected her far too much to have her think he was…was what? He let go of her and sat up before he could think about it too long.
However they had ended up sleeping, he was still grateful for Shepard's body heat through the night, and moving away from her it was immediately noticeable how cold it was without that heat. He decided a hot shower might help, though he knew he'd only be colder as soon as he stepped out. The momentary reprieve from the cold seemed worth it for the time being.
He climbed out of bed and crossed the room, past Liara and Tali sleeping with their heads meeting at the corner of the sectional sofa, and stepped into the bathroom. It took him a few minutes, and a blast of cold water, to figure out the shower controls, but then he was greeted by a welcome stream of steaming hot water to warm his body.
He could have stayed there all day, letting the hot water scald his skin, but they had places to be. As he'd suspected, when he exited the shower, the wave of cold that hit him was more intense than anything he'd felt yesterday. He hurried to pull his clothes back on, then stepped back into the main room to pull on his armor, hoping it would help warm him up.
By then, Shepard and the others were awake, and pulling on their own armor in preparation for the journey ahead of them.
"How's the eye, Shepard?" he asked her.
She looked up from lacing her boots, "It feels great," she said, voice dripping with sarcasm.
The skin around her left eye was a deep purple, mottled and spreading as far as her nose. Still, it wasn't swollen shut anymore, and that was the difference between life and death in a shootout.
"As long as you can see," Garrus shrugged and pulled his armor off the floor, sealing it into place around him.
"Let's head out. The sooner we get to Peak 15, the better," Shepard said when everyone seemed prepared.
Garrus chanced a look out the window before they exited the hotel room. The snow was still falling pretty heavily, but it wasn't white-out conditions anymore. He'd be grateful for the close quarters of the mako on the drive out to the research facility, something he never thought he'd enjoy.
It was still early, and when they reached the main chamber of the port, it was far emptier than it had been the day before. They made their way down the winding steps and platforms that made up the main chamber, across the room and down a hallway, where a turian guard stood blocking entrance to the garage.
"Restricted access only," the turian growled.
Shepard flashed the garage pass and the guard stepped aside, though he didn't seem happy to do so. Garrus supposed standing around holding a gun and never firing it would make for a very boring life.
The mako was waiting for them in the garage, unloaded while they slept, on Shepard's orders. Liara eyed the vehicle unsurely as they approached. She had been down to the cargo bay once on the way back from Therum, and had commented then that it seemed too small and old to comfortably and safely transport their squad. She hadn't been wrong, but Garrus had at least made some upgrades that made it marginally safer.
Shepard climbed deftly up the side of the vehicle and opened the hatch to allow them entrance. Garrus leaped up into the front passenger seat and began readying the turret and boosters.
"You're sure this is safe? These sorts of vehicles haven't been used by asari in…some time…" Liara asked as Shepard helped her into the cabin.
Tali climbed in after them and shut the hatch. "The vehicle has strong shields," she told Liara. "But it definitely needs some improvements. Still, we're with Shepard, so I think we'll be okay."
"I finally got that new heat sink installed," Garrus told Shepard as she joined him at the front of the mako. She started up the engine and the massive vehicle cranked to life.
"Good. Who knows what we'll run into out in that storm?"
She guided the mako slowly out of the colossal garage, winding around other parked vehicles, including some expensive sky cars that could have easily been crushed under the mako's weight if Shepard wasn't careful.
Outside, it was a sea of blinding white. Shepard adjusted the white point on the windshield to make the road easier to see, though visibility was always low looking out the front of a mako. A narrow, unpaved path led around twists and turns, up the mountain and ostensibly to the research facility. As they had been promised, no guard rail stood to prevent their untimely demise down the side of the cliff. Garrus wasn't entirely sure the road was wide enough to accommodate the mako, but as Shepard moved the vehicle forward, it proved to fit, if barely.
Tali hovered behind them, watching the radar with interest, but Liara sat pressed to her seat with a seatbelt strapping her into it.
"Are you going to stand the whole time, Tali?" she asked.
"Yes. I want to be ready if geth show up. We weren't prepared on Therum."
"Radar's clear so far," Garrus noted. "Let's hope the geth don't jam it."
Shepard steered the mako slowly and cautiously along the winding mountain path. Garrus kept moving his view from the radar to her, watching her bite her lip around a particularly narrow curve, never breaking a sweat, brown eyes glowing in the light from the radar screen. For a moment, he forgot to watch the radar.
"I can't believe we haven't seen any geth yet," Tali said after some time.
Garrus' eyes flitted quickly away from Shepard to the radar. It was still silent, warning of nothing in their immediate vicinity.
"I'm sure they'll be plenty of them waiting for us at the research facility. If Benezia is really working with Saren, the geth are likely helping her as well."
"I didn't think I'd say this," Liara spoke up, "But I kind of wish we had Wrex with us."
"He is a brick shithouse in battle," Shepard agreed. "Tali's skills will be more useful against the geth than Wrex's brute strength, though. And you're a powerful biotic, Liara."
"All asari have biotic ability. I haven't particularly honed my skills…I hope what I can do will be sufficient. My mother is very powerful, though. Far more powerful than I could ever hope to be."
"Visuals ahead," Garrus interrupted them.
Through the narrow windshield, a burning vehicle was slowly coming into view. As they drew closer, he could see that the vehicle had exploded, rammed into the door of the Peak 15 garage. A manual entrance to the side was luckily unscathed.
Shepard drew the mako to a halt a safe distance from the fire and opened up the side hatch. Garrus had been enjoying the relatively warm interior of the vehicle, but the gust of frigid air that blew in at them when she opened the hatch quickly ruined any happiness he'd been feeling.
It was a mercifully quick walk to the manual garage entrance, and inside the temperature was at least as bearable as it had been at Port Hanshan, which wasn't saying a lot.
The squad moved in formation without direction from Shepard, like a well-oiled machine despite their limited experience fighting together. Garrus took Shepard's six, while Tali and Liara flanked her at her three and nine. They passed through a small antechamber and into the main garage.
Garrus had his back to Shepard now, scanning the room. A few sky cars and shuttles were parked, but otherwise the room offered little protection. Garrus checked the radar on his omni-tool and saw the red dots moving in at the same time Shepard yelled,
"Geth incoming!"
She ducked behind one of the sky cars and Garrus moved for cover across the room. Liara followed him, leaping quickly behind a sky car and moving into action without hesitation. She peered around the side of the car and threw two geth across the room with a mass effect field before drawing her gun and firing. She wasn't the best shot, but she managed a few hits on their shields between misses.
Garrus lined up a shot in his scope and blew a bullet through the chest of an approaching geth trooper. It fell in a heap and he moved on to the next target. Tali was overloading as many geth as she could before her omni-tool required a cooldown, and Shepard was matching Garrus shot for shot from the other side of the room.
"Liara," Garrus said, ducking back behind the car and reloading a thermal clip. "Remind me to give you a shooting lesson next time we've got some down time."
"What are you trying to say, Garrus?" Liara tossed a geth that was approaching too quickly for comfort. "You think I'm not a good shot?"
Garrus fired at a massive geth juggernaut making its way down the middle of the room. "I'm saying you shouldn't quit your day job."
Liara laughed and fired off a series of shots from her handgun. Three of them clipped the juggernaut, two of them missed.
The juggernaut retaliated, clipping both of their shields, but thankfully not knocking them out. Garrus was about to fire off another shot when the juggernaut simply exploded in the center of the room, taking out the only two other remaining geth with it. A celebratory cheer could be heard from Tali across the room.
Garrus double checked his radar before he stepped out of cover. "All clear, Shepard."
"Well, we were bound to run into the geth eventually. Great work, guys."
Tali went about scavenging the dead geth for parts as they moved through the garage to a set of stairs on the other side.
"User alert," a female voice sounded over the facility's speaker system. "All Peak 15 facilities have suffered a great deal of damage. Biohazard materials present through facility. Virtual intelligence user interface offline."
"And we thought all we had to deal with were the geth and Benezia," Garrus sighed.
"What sort of biohazard, I wonder?" Shepard thought out loud.
"Well, if it's the kind that can kill you, I hope it's only toxic to levos. No offense," he bared his teeth in a grin.
"If it's dextro-exclusive, I'm not reviving you," Shepard retorted.
"Radar's showing clean air, for now," Tali told them. "Of course, I'll be fine either way, thanks to my suit."
Liara stepped forward. "We should try to find the building's reactors. That should get the power back up and running, and the VI interface with it. If we can get that up, the VI might be able to help us figure out what happened."
Another door led into a narrow hallway with two deactivated turrets facing away from them. Liara inspected them with a frown.
"Why are they facing the wrong way?"
"Whoever was using them wanted to keep something in more than it wanted to keep others out," Shepard said. "Better keep a close eye out."
They passed through several more halls, into an elevator and up one floor where they were greeted to another long hallway packed with snow. A window had busted open, only a crack, but it was enough to let the snow in. It had to have been broken for a considerable amount of time to allow in the amount that covered the floor. The end of the passageway opened into a room with high ceilings, a set of stairs to the right leading up to a covered walkway.
Geth were strewn about the room, already dead. Garrus' pulse sped up; it was never a good sign that they might be facing an enemy that had taken out an entire room of geth.
Shepard knelt down beside one of the geth troopers and turned it over. Something had clawed through the AI's steel frame, ripping out its internal components and rendering it useless.
"What could have done that?" Tali asked.
"A few things," Shepard replied. "None of which I particularly want to have a run-in with."
A creaking noise issued from the walkway above and Shepard held out a hand to keep the squad quiet. A prolonged silence followed.
"What was that?" the commander asked.
The creaking sounded again, followed by a high-pitched animalistic screech.
"It sounds like whatever did this to the geth is waiting for us on the walkway," Liara noted.
"Better face it now, while we might have the upper hand," Garrus suggested.
The four of them inched slowly up the stairs, coming to a halt at the top where they intersected with the walkway.
Nothing could have prepared Garrus for what was waiting for them. Two bug-like creatures, the size of full-grown krogan, stood tapping their four pointed feet and waving around tentacle-like appendages with sharp bulb-shaped claws on the ends. Their necks craned, a scalloped carapace providing a natural shielding for their bodies. Their multitude of beady black eyes watched the group of soldiers, and one of them let out an ear-piercing wail, its razor-sharp beak splitting into five parts as it opened. These were rachni, that much Garrus knew only from history lessons during his military training. They had, theoretically, been extinct for thousands of years.
Clearly not. The thought flashed in his mind. Then the rachni charged and he didn't have time to think anymore.
They were too close to snipe already, so he drew his assault rifle and began firing. Liara hit them with a mass effect field, which pushed them back for a moment, but they were heavy and strong, though still nowhere near fully grown. It took gunfire from all of four them to take down the first one, and the second one managed to get through Liara's shields and pin her down to the ground. It was about to take a chunk out of her flesh with its tentacle claw until Shepard leaped onto its back and wrapped her arms around its neck, wrestling it away from the asari.
The rachni soldier flailed, whipping its tentacles around, smacking them against Shepard's back as she held on and fought with it. The tentacles broke her shields and began to smack into her armor, whipping into her clothing and flesh where the armor didn't cover her, but still she held on tenaciously. Garrus was trying to line up a shot, but it proved impossible to aim without risk of hitting Shepard.
He shouldn't have been surprised when Shepard managed to slam the rachni into the wall; she had carried a krogan before after all. She wasn't spared from the impact however. Her shoulder made contact with the concrete wall with a sharp snap. The only sign she had been hurt, however, was a quick wince, then she was up on her feet and firing at the rachni, holding her injured arm against her side. Garrus let loose with his assault rifle now that Shepard was out of harm's way, and eventually the rachni fell still.
Once Shepard was sure it was dead, she fell to her knees, squeezing her injured shoulder, her teeth clenched. Garrus rushed to her side and dropped down on his knees next to her.
"Is Liara all right?" Shepard asked.
Garrus turned and saw Tali and Liara running to meet them. Liara looked a little shaken up, with a small scratch on her cheek, but otherwise unharmed.
"She's okay," he told Shepard. "What about your shoulder?"
She let go of it and he could see that it had come loose from the socket, hanging lower than it ought to. He ran his omni-tool over it to scan it quickly.
"No fractures. I'm going to pop it back into place, okay?"
"Just do it fast," she demanded.
He grabbed her arm with one hand and placed the other gently on her neck. "On three, all right? One…two…" He snapped her arm up before he got to three, worried that she would brace herself too much if he made it that far. The joint popped back into place and Shepard let out a howl of pain that echoed through the walkway. She promptly punched Garrus in the face.
He reeled backward and landed on his back, his head spinning.
"I'm sorry," she said, pushing herself to her feet. "But that hurt like a bitch and I just had an instinctive reaction to hurt you for it. Especially since you didn't wait until three!"
Garrus rubbed his jaw. "It's fine. I've had worse sparring with the trainees on Palaven."
"If my shoulder wasn't aching, I'd kick your ass for that," she offered her hand to help him.
"Turn around and let me put some medi-gel on your back. I saw it whip you."
She didn't argue. The gashes were deep where her armor ended on her neck. He applied the medi-gel, but he was fairly certain the wounds would scar.
"What were those things?" Tali asked, examining the dead rachni with fear and curiosity.
"Rachni," Liara answered. "But they're supposed to be extinct."
"Tell that to my shoulder," Shepard spat. She kicked the dead creature's body. "Guess we found our biohazard."
"We should get moving. There must be someone here who can explain what's going on," Liara said.
"Let's hope so. Come on," Shepard motioned for them to follow.
They headed down the walkway into another elevator, watching as the doors closed and the rachni disappeared from view. Garrus suddenly found himself wishing they were fighting geth again.
More of the rachni soldiers were lying in wait when the elevator doors opened onto a round central chamber with jammed doors barring exit from every side. Shepard's shoulder was still throbbing, but she fought through the pain to take down the rachni with her team. Now that they had faced two of them, the next ones went down faster, though it still wasn't an easy fight, and Liara's leg got whipped by one of the tentacles when her shields fell. Thank God for a hefty medi-gel supply.
Shepard sure as hell wanted to know what they were doing fighting a bunch of extinct bugs, but the answer would have to come after they rebooted the power for the facility and figured out if anyone was even still alive. So far, they hadn't come across anyone, living or otherwise. The only bodies they'd encountered were dead geth, ripped apart by the rachni.
The central chamber they were in now housed the backup generator, a small rectangular bit of metal sticking up out of the floor on the left-hand side of the room. Liara was the one to recognize it for what it is, but when Shepard tried to activate it, it gave her an error about needing to manually reboot the VI system. Luckily, the VI core seemed to be the only room that didn't have a jammed door blocking access, so that's where they headed next.
A round computer core in the center of the room had a hollow opening in the back with a platform in the center. An attempt to manually reactivate the core gave yet another error saying that the core required repair before it could be reactivated.
"I'm on it, Shepard," Tali said, stepping forward and going to work with her omni-tool.
Tali was quickly proving to be one of the most valuable members of the squad. Until her, Shepard had been the most tech-savvy soldier on the Normandy, and her skills were limited at best.
"How's that shoulder holding up?" Garrus asked her, shivering where he stood.
"It hurts, but I'll live," she rubbed the aching joint. The cold was certainly not helping the pain. "How's the cold treating you?"
"I just want to know why we can't go somewhere nice," he replied.
"You really should have purchased a thermo-suit," Liara chided him.
"When we get back to the Normandy, I'm going to put on ten layers of clothes, grab every blanket I can find, and sleep inside the mako," Garrus ignored her, his teeth chattering.
"I'll have the mess sergeant make us something warm when we get back," Shepard promised.
"Fixed it!" Tali cried.
The VI interface flickered to life: a glowing red hologram of a woman in a plain white dress.
"It looks like you're trying to restore this facility. Would you like help?" The woman asked. Her voice was the one that had been issuing warnings about critical failures and biohazards since they'd entered the facility.
"Yes. What are you called?" Shepard responded.
"This system is programmed to respond to the name 'Mira'. What may I call you?"
"Commander Shepard. Here on authority from the Citadel Special Tactics and Reconnaissance branch."
The VI whirred as it computed. "Council authority confirmed. You are entitled to secure access of all systems." Another perk of being a Spectre, it seemed. Shepard found herself thinking she could really get used to this gig. Before she could ask for anything, though, the VI continued. "Please note that all queries relating to corporate secrets require privileged access. Privileged access is only available to Binary Helix executives. This system is ready to process queries from any interface at Peak 15."
"We tried to repair the generator and couldn't. Do you know what's going on?" Shepard asked.
"One moment please. Diagnostics in progress," Mira said, the whirring noise issuing from its interface once again. "Critical failure. Main reactor shut down in accordance with emergency containment procedures. Manual restart required."
"Emergency containment procedures," Garrus huffed. "I guess an outbreak of formerly extinct bug soldiers would warrant that."
"Landline connections are disabled," Mira continued, "Passenger tram systems are offline. Report complete. Do you have any additional status queries, commander Shepard?"
"How can we get the systems back online?"
"Access is available to reactors on the roof. Activating the reactors will restore landline and tram connections. Access is available to the generator. Now that VI interface is up and running, the generator can be reactivated," Mira replied.
"What about Benezia?" Liara stepped forward. "Has an asari Matriarch been through here?"
"Lady Benezia departed on the passenger tramway to the Rift Station subsidiary labs."
"So we need to get those landlines up and running to take the tram to the Rift Station," Shepard said. "Mira, how do we get to the roof?"
"Access to the roof is available directly behind the VI core."
"Perfect. Logging off."
"Goodbye, commander." The interface shut off and Mira disappeared.
Shepard led them through the door behind the VI core, which opened to an elevator that could take them up to the roof. They held their guns at the ready, not sure what to expect up on the roof, and anticipating more rachni.
As the doors opened, the cold hit them hard and fast. It turned out they were only half-right in anticipating rachni. The geth were waiting for them as well. Some of them were fighting with the rachni, but if Shepard didn't know better, she would have thought they were attempting to tame the creatures. In fact, some of the rachni seemed to be listening to the geth's chirping robotic orders, though others preferred to rip into the throats of the AIs instead.
The squad started firing before the geth could realize they were there, ducking behind cover of pillars and ducting jutting up from the rooftop. With help from the combative rachni, the geth were quickly disposed of, but that left a lot of snarling, blood-thirsty bugs to take care of next. Tali and Liara climbed up a duct to keep out of range of the rachni and their long, sharp tentacles; working together, Liara would throw one into the air while Tali fired on it.
This left Shepard and Garrus on the ground. The rachni were moving in quickly, circling around them, so they pressed their backs to each other and began firing on the circle of approaching insectoids. Their firing was perfectly timed so that when one of them needed to reload a thermal clip, the other one already had and could keep firing in the interim. Using this system, they managed to take out four rachni more or less at once.
The roof cleared, Tali led them to the reactor and began typing away at its interface to get it back online. Confirmation of their success came when Mira's voice sounded over the speakers.
"Landlines back online. Passenger trams offline. Generator restart required."
"Let's head back down," Shepard said, kicking one of the dead rachni. "The sooner we get to the Rift Station the better."
Back down in the central chamber, Tali went to work restarting the generator, with input from Mira that the quarian clearly didn't find necessary or helpful.
"As if I need a VI to tell me how to restart a generator…" she muttered.
"I wonder how many of these rachni there are," Garrus said as they waited. "They practically wiped out the galaxy once. Messing around with genetic engineering on this level seems pretty foolish."
Liara knelt down and examined one of the dead rachni on the floor. "What if this is what Binary Helix was manufacturing for Saren?"
The four of them exchanged a look.
"An army of rachni would be hard to beat. The Protheans did it once, before it backfired on them," Garrus said.
Shepard exhaled slowly. "Rachni and Reapers. Could this mission get any more complicated?"
"Please don't tempt the Spirits, Shepard."
"The generator's fixed," Tali said, right before Mira reported the same thing.
"Great work. Let's get on one of those trams and get out of here," Shepard beckoned them after her.
If Liara was right, and Binary Helix had somehow resurrected the rachni for Saren's disposal, they were in for a much harder fight than she had bargained for. One turian rogue, an asari Matriarch, and an army of geth already seemed like a pretty unfair match, but throwing an extinct race of war-mongering killer bugs into the mix was giving Saren quite the edge.
They would have to put an end to it there on Noveria before the rachni could leave the planet and really cause some damage. Shepard just didn't know how they were going to manage that yet.
A/N: Will post another chapter tomorrow as well, which will close out the Noveria plot line. I'm thinking of upping this story to an M rating based on later content (no spoilers, but I mean...if nothing else, Jack will be in the story later and she curses like a sailor so...) Anyway, hope everyone is enjoying it!