Disclaimer: I do no own Mass Effect, I do not claim to own Mass Effect, I am only doing this for fun.
Author Notes: This is the wrap-up of the Noveria arc, enjoy.
Episode 22: Queen
They came out of the corridor onto a small rectangular room that had been done up as a makeshift refugee quarters. Bare metal-frame bunks with thin pillows and thinner blankets, crates of emergency supplies, kegs of emergency drinking water, and what looked like a makeshift kitchen consisting of two hot plates, a pot, and a kettle. There were two more ERCS men as well; they looked haggard and worn, leaning on the walls as if they had no energy to stand on their feet. The survivors were a majority human, but Shepard saw a salarian sleeping with his back to the door at the opposite end of the room.
The arrival of fresh faces caused many to look up, some in alarm, some simply because doing so broke the tedium. They avoided eye contact, but Shepard knew there was interest. Sitting nearby were a tall, balding middle-aged man and a red-headed woman, the latter was eating something out of an emergency ration pack; the former stared right at them.
"Are you a rescue crew?" He asked.
Shepard wished she had a rescue crew for these people, but she knew she could not let them leave, not yet. "Sorry, no. I am Commander Shepard, these are… Council Spectres. We're-"
"We're not leaving, are we?" he interrupted.
"There is still contamination in the tunnels. We need to handle the situation before it is safe for anyone to leave." Shepard argued, knowing full well that it was just a nice-sounding excuse.
"A week! We haven't had a good night of sleep in days. I want out. Those things are constantly trying… no! I want out!" the worker turned away.
The woman set aside her food and pulled him into her arms and shook her head. "Pardon him." She said. "We worked in the secure lab… and this is trying for all of us."
"I understand entirely, and we want to help, and so we want to ensure everyone's safety before you board the tram to Central Station. Right now we need to assess what is going on here. What's the situation in the secure lab?" Shepard asked.
"Ah… last we were there, the secure lab suffered no breach of containment, but those things from the hot lab probably got in there by now." The woman replied. "I'm afraid I cannot discuss the details of our work… I signed a non-disclosure agreement."
"We both did," the man added quietly.
Shepard would say they chose not to discuss the details. This was rachni, and there were two Council Spectres in the room. The lab coats would put two and two together and realize that if they incriminated Binary Helix, they would be thrown under a proverbial bus. Better plead the right to remain silent while pleading was good. They probably would not be the only ones to do so. That is if Binary Helix intended to protect any of them at all. Nothing stopped the company executives from trying to save face by declaring Noveria a rogue operation and tossing everyone under a bus.
"Who is in charge of this operation?" Nihlus asked.
"That would be Doctor Brant, but she was in the hot lab when… when it happened. She did not make it out," The woman bowed her head.
"So who is the highest clearance scientist who did make it out?" Nihlus asked.
"Doctor Cohen, project lead of the quarantine lab. He is in the medbay. There's also Doctor Palon, he worked with Doctor Cohen. He's the salarian sleeping in the back right now." The man said.
"Let Doctor Palon sleep, please! He's been having trouble sleeping, his assistant died in his arms when we tried to evacuate. I've not seen him sleep soundly in days." The woman added.
If Palon worked with Cohen, she would go straight to higher clearance first. "And Doctor Olar?" She asked.
"Oh dear…" the woman turned and peered deeper into the room behind them, seemingly seeking the doctor, but when she turned back, she smiled sheepishly. "He's here somewhere; he wanders this level and the one below. You can go down to the level below from that passage behind you. He's a volus, so you cannot miss him, but please be gentle, the poor man is suffering enough already."
How this woman ended up working for a shady research corporation, Shepard would not hazard a guess. She was either an accomplished actress, or genuinely warm and willing to embrace and cajole anyone and everyone.
"Well, thank you for your help."
"Of course, if there is anything else I can do..."
"Solve this problem, please. I want out." The man said, more pitiful than argumentative.
The three of them moved deeper into the room, and Shepard paused as far away from the pair of scientists as she could, without getting too close to the sleeping salarian in the corner. "Our best leads remain Olar and now Cohen. Now, you know how she said the secure lab suffered no breach of containment? Turn that, there's something there to contain."
"You actually believe them?" Saren asked.
"I do." Shepard argued. "Those two are definitely hiding something behind their non-disclosure agreements. But what they did tell us is all true. We know there are three labs affected, the hot lab, the secure lab, and the quarantine lab. For the sake of thoroughness we need to figure out what went on in all three." She was not going to into the details. Explaining human micro-expressions to a turian would take another week. She was perfectly aware that there was a noticeable difference in how the two species communicated nuance. Humans were visual, using visible micro-cues. Turians were auditory; their nuance came from the spectrum of cues emitted by a second larynx. So they would have to accept that she could see nuances they could not. A combination of the proper micro-expressions with due self-shielding gestures could speak louder than words. Those two were so tired that they had no energy left to lie with. The best they could muster was to cling to their right to remain silent.
"We should start with Cohen. We do not know where Olar is," Saren said.
"I was just about to suggest we start with him as well." Shepard agreed.
Finding the way down to the medbay was not difficult, a passage off the left side of the room led right down to it. The medbay was a small square room. Shepard stepped in first, and noted the elderly man working on the wounds of a young lab assistant lying unconscious, probably sedated, on one of the medbay beds. The injury looked unbelievably painful; Shepard suspected it to be a deep acid burn that needed periodic cleaning, and it took sedation to make the treatment tolerable. The other bed was occupied by an asari. She seemed even more deeply sedated, hooked up to a breathing mask and three monitors.
"Doctor Cohen, I presume?" Shepard greeted.
"Yes? What do you want?" the man looked up.
Shepard heard a sound of disapproval from behind her. "Sorry, is this a bad time?" She asked. She needed to forestall a situation due to irritability from someone clearly stressed.
"No," the doctor turned around, "I'm sorry. What can I do for you?" he looked to each of them in turn.
"I am Commander Shepard," she lapsed, and "and these are Council Spectres, we are conducting an investigation with the intent to contain this situation." She watched as the doctor clasped his hands slowly, but then let them drop to his sides. Shepard did not miss that little flicker of apprehension.
"We were told you led the project in the quarantine lab. We want to know what happened there." Nihlus cut in.
"Ah. We had a containment breach in the hot lab and the safety protocols shut down the power and our connection to Peak Fifteen's VI, Mira. This was so sudden that we had an accident in the quarantine lab." Cohen looked to the woman on the table and then turned back to them. "I have a non-disclosure agreement. I shouldn't discuss it with anyone outside the company."
Shepard could see he was dithering even as he announced he would not cooperate. "But you are inclined to. Your assistant is clearly hurt."
"Yes… I want to think that the company finds our lives more valuable than their secrets," Cohen said. "We lost connection to Mira in the middle of an experiment, and the quarantine failed. My assistant was exposed to a toxin. But that is all. You'll find I conducted my work with all safety precautions in place."
"How potent is this toxin?" Saren demanded.
Cohen flinched and looked away, Shepard glanced as Saren and tried to convey him a message, back down, let her and Nihlus handle this, before the good doctor shut down on them.
"Quite potent. It was found aboard a derelict rachni vessel drifting in the void between stars. We were still assessing it, but…" he paused. "I can tell you it's a sophisticated weapon, tailored specifically for its target. We noted the rachni react to it, but they are not the target."
A rachni ship? Well it would explain where they got the genetic material to clone rachni as well. "And it was still viable?" Shepard asked.
"As you can see, yes… it was." Cohen sighed.
"You did not report this? There is a reason the Citadel conventions forbid bioweapons." Saren demanded.
"Yes, looking back, that would have been the wiser course of action. We got overly-excited just to study it. Scientific hubris leads to few plans for things going awry." He paused and once again looked at his assistant.
Shepard could see concern for the woman, Cohen seemed like he felt the guilt deeply. "How does it work?" she asked.
"It's a neurotoxin in gaseous form." Cohen replied. "Lenora first complained of tingling in her extremities, and it progressed to muscle spasms, cramps, headaches, and finally epileptic seizures. She was in so much pain after the last fit that I had to sedate her. It's in her autonomic nervous system. She is having trouble breathing on her own, and I fear it might start interfering with her heart rate soon."
"Anything I can do to help?" Shepard asked.
"Oh, yes! I had my team create a… prototype neutralizer for it, but it is locked in the quarantine lab along with our notes and equipment. I did not think to grab it from the cooling unit when we got out. Another stupid, stupid mistake, but there were alarms, I panicked, and now Captain Ventralis won't let me back in, he does not want to risk further contamination. Still, without it, Lenora might die."
"Is this toxin still air-borne?" Shepard asked.
"No! While it is very potent, it only has a brief period of viability once exposed to environmental oxygen. After that, it breaks down into simple protein chains. We found it suspended in tanks of krypton. It attacks neurons in a very specific manner, inhibiting certain vital chemical transmitters, and hence some synapse activity."
Shepard was no expert, but she suspected the toxin's oxygen reactivity was intentional. There were nasty illegal drugs that broke down into common compounds within the body, this sounded similar, though on external terms. The gas would not linger in the environment, so even a massive release on a garden class world would poison the target population, but leave the ecology alone. Genocide with the precision of a surgical scalpel.
"Any idea of the intended target?" Nihlus asked.
Cohen looked toward his assistant as he began to wring his fingers. When he turned back, there was resignation on his face. Shepard suspected he made peace with being fired because he chose to help his assistant. Binary Helix would not be amused that he leaked this much to Spectres. Maybe the nature of the toxin itself bothered him enough that he wanted to get the information out.
"We can't know for sure," Cohen began, almost whispering. "We do not have a catalogue of all extinct and extant space-faring species, complete with DNA and tissue samples to compare. But I will tell you this; we ran tests on the tanks themselves, they're about fifty thousand years old."
"You found a fifty-thousand-year-old viable toxin? Pardon my skepticism doctor…" Shepard paused there. It would not do to tell him she found that hard to believe.
"Incredible, I know. The seals they used are like nothing we have today! They are so fine that they block the gasses on the molecular level." Cohen jumped in.
Shepard conceded that maybe, just maybe he was speaking the truth. In the end it really did not matter. The Council would want to know about this either way. The Alliance would want to know too. Fifty thousand years old or not, there might be more tanks out there. Anyone with the right know-how could replicate or alter the toxin. The asari sedated on the bed some meters away was proof that it could affect current species.
It was curious that only the asari became ill, but it was possible she was the only one fully exposed, and Cohen dodged the proverbial bullet. The toxin could still be dangerous to humans. The exact circumstances of the exposure did not matter right now. What mattered is that they could not let Binary Helix keep the research proprietary. "Well, I will get you that cure, doctor." They could not very well evacuate an asari who needed life support.
"Thank you, Commander. Spectres." He nodded his head in a sort of little bow.
They left the medbay shortly after that, but Shepard paused halfway up the number of stairs that led back up to the refuge. "We need their research data. Frankly I do not trust Binary Helix, or any company, with it. What if someone else finds more of this stuff?"
"If it is as dangerous as it seems, it cannot go unregistered," Nihlus added.
"Copy their research while we have an opportunity." Saren said with a note of finality.
Shepard smiled, "Somehow I get the feeling that Cohen expects us to do it. He painted a rather grim picture there. Why else give us all those details? He knows the writing's on the wall and he's doing what he can to ensure the toxin does not become a weapon."
"This is why the Normandy needs a science officer, Shepard. We could get a second opinion." Nihlus grumbled.
"I'll be sure to mention that to Admiral Hackett."
"Your frigate has an on-board laboratory?" Saren wondered.
"It does." That was all Shepard was going to say. She was not going to expose any more of her ship's secrets. It was atypical for Alliance frigates, but the Normandy was meant to be an experimental stealth strike and recon vessel. Certainly if she was allowed to use the Normandy as her Spectre vessel, an operational lab would be handy.
They retraced the way back to the checkpoint to talk to Captain Ventralis. The men were apparently having a meal break, seated on the floor, legs crossed, and with rifles across their laps.
"Spectres, Commander," Ventralis greeted between bites of a sandwich.
"Captain. There's a little something we need from you. We talked to Doctor Cohen. His assistant Lenora, you know her? She was exposed to something unpleasant, Doctor Cohen said you won't allow him to fetch one little thing that will help her?"
Ventralis had the decency to look mildly abashed. "I wish we could help her. I really do. But we can't risk contamination."
"For the record, we're not under your command."
"And you're also extra guns." Ventralis argued. "All right. You want to gamble with your lives, you aren't under my command. I'll have the guard let you in, but he'll lock the door behind you. He'll run a full scan before he'll let you out. If there are any anomalies, you stay in there."
Shepard knew that there was a very slim possibility that Cohen could be lying to get them into a dirty lab, knowing Ventralis would make them stay inside. But she would bet her left arm that all three of them had armors with filtration units capable of handling toxins. They could isolate themselves from the lab's environment, after that, a decontamination cycle ought to clean the exterior. She glanced back at Saren and Nihlus. The latter grinned and nodded at her.
"Those are reasonable precautions."
"I'll radio the guard to let him know. Good luck." He set aside his sandwich and pulled out the small short range radio. Shepard moved back aft of the checkpoint.
Finding the entrance to the quarantine lab proved relatively easy. It was attached to the lower level of the refuge, a relatively quick elevator ride from the end of the passage the two lab techs indicated. It was impossible to miss Doctor Olar, who was also down on the bottom level, pacing the breadth of the space, muttering to himself so quietly that his suit's auditory pickup rumbled with half-formed words and the rasp of his breather. If he noticed them, he made no indication of it, and they moved on toward the indicated entrance of the quarantine lab.
The guard at the door reiterated the threat that he would lock them in the lab if the scanner showed any contamination. Shepard listened only with one ear as she did up her helmet's void seals. They passed through an anteroom full of full-body quarantine suits into an airlock with powerful UV lamps, high pressure water nozzles, and air blowers mounted along the walls and ceiling. Mira, now that it was back online, ran them through the proper procedure.
Nihlus took over almost as soon as he was in the lab, his Spectre clearance allowed him to make Mira cooperate more fully, even if the Spectres would need to fandangle their way into the terminals. Reading the research notes was definitely 'company secrets' that Mira would not clear them for. Shepard turned to the refrigeration cases in the corner. The units were full of vials of all sorts that she could not hope to figure out. Many labeled with hand-written notes in a tiny scrawl that looked almost completely undecipherable.
After some time inspecting the materials, she spotted a small box with a caduceus mark on its side tucked in the very back. She opened the unit and reached around the other things. Once the box was in her hands she inspected the label on top. The box contained six thirty milliliter hypojet vials of a neutralizer for Kryptin-8. Cohen said that the toxin was suspended in Krypton, so this seemed like the cure, and she now knew how unoriginal the toxin's name was, but no one ever said scientists were brilliant at naming things. "I think I found the cure," she announced.
"Good, bring all of it." Nihlus replied.
Shepard moved across the lab toward where the Spectres were working on the terminals. The side counter was cluttered with materials, many of it still on paper. The handwriting was the same as the labels in the cold case, which she now suspected to be Cohen's. The doctor seemed to have a penchant for wanting things on hand without the distraction of pressing buttons and accessing files. She could see hand-drawn molecular schematics, jotted out memos listing lab equipment readouts, ideas, and other erratic notes. She booted up her omni-tool and began to scan the small pile.
"I found video logs," Nihlus announced. "Cohen was using his hazard suit helmet camera to record his work, complete with narration." Nihlus said after a while.
"Copy them all," Saren replied.
Shepard only listened with one ear; she was busy looking over the notes as she scanned them. "Cohen was not lying; everything he told us is here. And here's the tank analysis!" Shepard held up the sheet, knowing they would not be able to read English, let alone the doctor's messy scrawl, but the schematics of the tank were still universal enough. "Titanium body with iridium coating both inside and out, it's no wonder they're near indestructible and survived fifty thousand years."
"So, fifty thousand years… can it be a Prothean weapon?" Nihlus asked.
"Perhaps." Saren replied in the blandest tone possible. "There is no proof."
Shepard hummed. There was a singularly terrifying thought. Most of the galaxy saw the Protheans as geniuses of science and technology, the glorious builders of the Citadel and all the mass relays, or as statesmen who brought the races of the galaxy of their time together under a single governing structure. They occupied a certain rose-tinted mythos, like all peoples from a mythical golden age, before the purported degeneration and problems of the current age set in.
If Kryptin-8 was indeed a Prothean weapon of mass annihilation, its implications would upend that nice image. To be sure, the Protheans were gone, extinct, and no species from their age survived past about the same period. Then, very few artifacts survived from the non-Protheans of the era. As she looked down at the tank schematic, she began to wonder. Were their values so dissonant that they used chemical weapons of mass murder freely? Why? Were they tyrants instead of diplomats?
"I finished copying," Nihlus announced. "Shepard, catch." He flicked his wrist over the counter and Shepard only had a split of a second to snatch the object out of the air.
"Thanks, Nihlus." Shepard replied as she slipped the OSD into the pocket of her webbing.
"You are thinking things out already?"
"Can't help it, you know me," Shepard smiled. "If I wasn't military, I'd probably been a C-sec investigator. Probably would've given Garrus a run for his money," she chuckled at the thought.
"More likely you would have put him out of a job," Nihlus replied with a grin. "You would not have rested until you personally brought the crime rate on the Citadel down."
Shepard did not say it, but in a way she had already put Garrus out of a job.
"Do you two always talk this much?" Saren asked as he slipped an OSD into one of the small compartments in his armor.
"We do."
"Definitely." Nihlus agreed.
Saren said nothing more as he shut down the terminal. That seemed to straighten Nihlus' spine, Shepard could not help but see the connection. The former protégé was still very much in tune with his former mentor, often anticipating what he ought to do without being told. She picked up the box of medicine and followed the two of them toward the lab exit.
As expected, the guard's scans showed no contamination on them and they were let out of the lab with the box of medicine in hand. Shepard thought that the next task was given, get the medicine to Cohen and then go and talk to Olar. The volus was still on the lower level, seated in the corner now, with his back to the wall, but the glowing eyes of his suit were on them.
Then, slowly and clumsily, he got to his feet and approached them, his hands at his sides, caution evident in every movement. "You came to find out about them, didn't you?" He asked, his respirator rasping every five words. "I'm the only survivor from the hot lab, you know."
Shepard glanced at her companions and stepped forward, if talking was on the agenda, it was best left to her. "We are here to find out, yes. Can you tell us what happened?"
The volus tipped his head to the side, "They're rachni. I can tell you all about them."
"Where did they come from?" Shepard wondered.
The volus shifted his weight and began to pace. "They found it in a derelict ship. An egg. Waiting since the last battles. They brought it here."
Shepard glanced back at the Spectres.
"A single egg can definitely provide the genetic material to clone more rachni," Nihlus mused.
"They wanted to clone it, yes," the volus replied. "But then… there was no need."
Shepard blinked, surprised. No need? What did he mean by no need? Was the rachni hatched from that egg capable of reproducing? She heard them compared to ants and bees, if so; only one individual in the whole ant colony or bee hive could reproduce. The realization slammed her in the gut. "It was a queen."
"You simpletons brought back a queen?" Saren hissed, his anger manifesting in a flash.
The volus stood there, staring up at Saren like the venom in the Spectre's voice did not faze him. "We brought them back from the dead. In retrospect, a bad decision."
"Where is it?" Saren demanded.
"The queen is in the secure lab. Or… she was. Her brood could have destroyed her. We kept them separate in the hot lab. They… became vicious, killers." The volus went on. "Doctor Brant wanted to devise a method to control them. It did not work. It could not work."
Controlling the rachni? Was this doctor out of her mind? Furthermore, why was Olar telling them this? He seemed lucid enough to understand what he was saying, but PTSD was such a thing that sometimes the afflicted could see or hear things not there, and be convinced of whole other realities. Sometimes they could be so confused that they could even mistake actual people for hallucinations.
"Doctor Olar, one more question. Where is Doctor Brant's office?" If the project lead here was as rotten as Olar said, there would be evidence of her actions.
"Doctor Brant worked from the secure lab. You can access it from the maintenance area back there," Olar pointed with a disinterested flick of his wrist. "You will need a key card; a team lead would have one."
Shepard glanced up at Saren, it seemed cut and dry. They needed to get into that lab, and they knew one of the team leads. Helping Cohen should be worth the key card. The volus turned and walked back toward the corner, sat down, turned away, and the lights of his suit's optics turned off.
"I think that's all we'll get from Olar," Shepard murmured, just loud enough for the two turians to hear.
"You give everyone too much leeway." Saren replied as he turned toward the elevator to the upper level.
"Perhaps, but I think the results speak for themselves." Shepard replied as she fell in step at his side. She would not change her ways now, not in the face of commentary from someone so clearly unwilling to trust. Twenty-four years of dealing with the scum of the galaxy had jaded Saren. Then there was the fact that he was a biotic and barefaced. Shepard knew enough about turian culture, military doctrine, and history to figure out that he probably got suspicion and mistrust from everyone, and thus learned not to trust in return. She would not let his example change her methods either.
They retraced their way back to the medbay, and in the last moments Shepard stepped in front of Saren. "Doctor Cohen, we got the cure," she called.
The doctor turned around suddenly, surprised, and Shepard held out the box. By the way his whole expression changed Shepard knew that she found the right one.
"Excellent! Thank you ever so much!" he chorused, eagerly took the box and moved it to the table between the beds. An instant later he busied off to the tool cabinets. Shepard watched as he rummaged about looking for a hypojet.
"Doctor, there is something we would like your help with. We need to go into the secure lab, and Doctor Olar recommended the way through the maintenance area." Shepard spoke up.
"You will need a pass." Cohen said as he finally found a clean hypojet. He left the device on the table, and when he turned around, he unclipped the badge attached to his suit and pulled off one of the plastic cards attached to it. "Here, my card, it is the least I can do. Help yourselves to the Medi-gel if you need any."
Shepard took the card and tucked it into her pocket as she watched the doctor hurry about the room. When she glanced back, she noticed that Saren was already at the door, the look on his face was stormy. Nihlus stood with his arms crossed, which was as close impatience as he ever showed. She spared the doctor one last glance, but he was oblivious to them as he opened the medicine box and withdrew one of the vials before plugging it into the bottom of the hypojet. Shepard turned and made her way to the door.
After leaving Cohen to his work they had to return to the level below. Olar was still in his corner, sitting motionless, with the lights of his suit optics turned off. It was impossible to tell whether the volus was trying to sleep or ignore the world around him.
Saren led the group past the doctor toward the only other doorway out. Beyond it, a short passage led them to another doorway and then through a bare tunnel carved into the side of the mountain. This passage was cold, no real artificial insulation. Only the lights evenly spaced along the walls showed where to go. The bare walls were free of snow and ice, and Shepard could hear water dripping rhythmically.
At the other end of the passage the door to the maintenance area proper was locked, Shepard pulled out the card they got from Cohen and held it up to the reader, which unlocked it. She tucked the card back into her pocket. The room beyond was a typical pre-fabricated section with some worktables, machinery, and general detritus.
Beyond this room was another, smaller room. One foot in Shepard frowned as her nose encountered the unmistakable scent of decay. As she rounded some machinery, she understood where it came from. A rachni soldier lay on the floor in the corner, and by the smell, it was already rotting. Someone had killed the bug, but there was no one else here, so the person responsible might still be deeper in the lab. Shepard approached the corpse and crouched down to inspect it.
The body was riddled with bullet holes, irregularly spaced entry wounds, with no obvious exit wounds. Most of the damage clustered around the creature's head, so whoever shot it was a semi-decent marksman using a relatively powerful handgun. She looked around and spotted two thermal clips in the corner across the room, and a dark smear on the wall. The clips had been discarded after being filled to capacity, but they had long since cooled off.
"There might be someone in the secure lab." She announced. "They have a handgun and enough skill to take down this soldier, so I'd say some military training. They're injured though."
"Probably one of the Elanus Risk Control Services guards," Nihlus mused.
"No, the guards have automatics." Shepard murmured as she got to her feet. She approached the blood smear and noticed there were other minor blood stains leading away from it. "Here, look at these. Dried in with round edges, that's blood dripping from an injury. The ERCS guards have hard-suits and Medi-gel. An armor undersuit would retain the blood unless the injury is truly horrendous." She followed the drops away from where the thermal clips lay and realized the dripping formed a trail right toward the door leading into the lab. "They walked away and left us a trail."
"With an injury that bad, they are probably dead," Saren remarked.
"I would not count on it." Shepard knew better than write off someone desperate. They had to be quite desperate to get into the lab, all considering. She could also hazard a guess at the injured party's species. Only human and asari blood kept enough surface tension to dry with smooth sides, and despite the fact that asari blood was purple-hued, both dried and decayed into a black substance. Salarian blood was green and runnier; it kept more color around the edges. Fresh Turian blood was almost royal blue in color and decayed into an easily-recognizable midnight blue. A higher volume at higher pressure also meant they tended to bleed more than any other species.
The door into the lab opened for her as soon as she was close enough. Beyond lay a large single lab on two levels. The lighting was almost non-existent and the air felt impossibly cold. A walkway branched to the right, leading around a central area that supported an upper level platform. There was also a big containment tank held by a gantry arm right in the middle. Along the walkway she could see work stations, terminals, and lots of offline equipment.
As she stepped into the room, it was as if she stepped through an invisible curtain of cold water that passed down her spine, and the absolute silence of the maintenance area was broken. Something akin to whispering filled her ears, but so low that no matter which way she turned her head, she could not hone in on it.
Shepard glanced at Nihlus and Saren, could they hear it? Asking would not do well. It was very weird to think that suddenly she could hear something they could not. She wrote the sensation off as a trick of her auditory nerves and moved deeper into the room.
"Is somebody there?" a voice called.
Shepard stopped, that she heard clearly.
"Upper level." Nihlus whispered.
Shepard drew her guns and moved up the steps. The upper level was a loft platform with some machinery, a stand-alone terminal, and a rather meticulously ordered desk with data pads stacked on top of it. Her eyes landed on the asari clad in a white lab-suit seated on the floor, with her back to the platform railing. She had a long blood streak running the length of her left sleeve and a gun in her right hand.
As soon as she saw them, she scrambled to her feet. "Don't come any closer!" she warned as her whole body flickered with her biotics. "I won't let you harm her as long as I live!"
Her? Whom did the asari mean? Shepard let her eyes trail up, and froze when she realized that inside the big reinforced containment cell, surrounded by a mass effect field, was a very large, very twitchy rachni.
"Spirits," Nihlus breathed, "they really brought back a queen."
The queen was dark brown, like the soldiers, and similarly shaped, save for the crests arcing up and back from the top and sides of her head, her crown. She moved her head in twitches and jerks and quite suddenly Shepard found herself staring into her dark, saucer-sized eye. When she hissed, the high-pitched sound broke through the containment cell, and the whispering grew louder.
"Who are you?" the asari demanded as she raised her gun, aiming it at Shepard, then Nihlus, and then off to the side, where Shepard assumed Saren stood.
Shepard holstered her guns and made a half-step closer, drawing the asari's attention, and gun point. "I am Commander Shepard, Alliance Navy; these are Spectres Kryik and Arterius. And you are?"
"I am Elise T'Vasi. I work here. Don't come closer!"
"You said you will protect her?" Shepard asked.
"Yes! I don't want to fight, but the rachni queen is my friend, I will not let you kill her."
"Your friend?" Saren sneered.
"Yes, my friend!" Elise shouted as she leveled her gun on him. "She was born here a year ago. I've… I've been talking to her since; I am the only one here who cared that she is a living being!"
Shepard hummed; well the asari sure lacked no conviction in what she was saying. Certainly the fact that she was an asari said something. Their ability to meld minds allowed them to share thoughts and feelings with all sapient life forms; rachni seemingly included.
"She showed me so much. Rachni queens carry the memories and knowledge of their mothers." Elise went on. "Doctor Brant did not care, she just wanted the eggs. The children… they cannot be away from her. They do not develop correctly without guidance."
"Did you kill the soldier in the maintenance area?" Shepard asked.
"I had to. I came to set her free, but… I do not have the right codes and I can't hack through."
The asari seemed to have been here for days, the blood on her uniform was dry, and the corpse in the maintenance area had the time to develop a smell.
"You are out of your mind if you think I will allow your friendship to unleash the rachni on the galaxy." Saren said.
Elise raised her gun right at the Spectre's head and her finger slipped to the trigger. At that moment Saren drew his rifle, but the Asari did not even flinch. "One step, Spectre, and I will shoot. I am willing to kill and die for her."
This created a rather ugly impasse; Shepard would rather avoid having to kill the asari to get at the queen. Add to that, she could see what Elise meant; the queen was in fact a being, not an animal. It would be cruel to euthanize a lab animal just because it was no longer convenient, but a being with some sentience? The cruelty here was manifold. Was the queen even violent? So far everything had been soldiers, and now this asari said it was because they did not develop properly? "Elise, tell me, what do you mean the rachni do not develop correctly without the queen's guidance."
"The queen controls her hive via a method similar to a biological quantum entanglement communicator. But the connection takes time to form. Without it, their territorial drive is uncontrolled. The eggs were taken to the hot lab to hatch; Doctor Brant thought she could find a way to create an artificial connection."
The whispering in the room shifted suddenly and Shepard had to force herself not to react. It almost seemed furtive, though still out of the range where she could make out words. Were there even words? Suddenly it dawned on Shepard that perhaps this was the rachni talking. Universal translators were limited by the languages programmed into them. The rachni have not been seen in around two thousand years.
"What was the artificial connection for?" Nihlus asked.
"She wanted to control them."
Shepard could feel Saren's glare on the back of her neck again as she glanced toward Nihlus, had Olar not told them the same thing? The whispers shifted again, and Shepard looked past Elise to the queen. Her whip tendrils undulated rhythmically as she turned her head and tipped it down. Somehow in that moment she looked pitiful.
"Who ordered this work?" Nihlus asked.
Shepard broke eye contact with the rachni and turned back to the asari.
Elise's gaze seemed to wander for all of a moment. "I do not know. The doctor authorized shipments of rachni off-world. She said there was another location, another team, additional work, but… I don't know much more than that. I am just a lab assistant. I graduated from Serrice University only three years ago. This was my first major job. I am only a hundred and ten."
The asari was beginning to panic. They were dealing with a frightened, barely adult asari who happened to have a gun. Shepard glanced toward Nihlus and caught his gaze. The Spectre nodded. Shepard turned back to Elise, "I think I know where this other location is. I can confirm it from Doctor Brant's documents." If the other location was indeed Binthu then Brant had Cerberus connections.
"It seems you got what you wanted, human."
"Perhaps," Shepard replied. "This does not solve the situation on hand though."
"I will not let you harm her!" Elise repeated. "The queen is as much a victim as the scientists her children killed. No one cared for the truth, the evidence Doctor Cohen has. We owe the rachni an apology."
"An apology?" Saren sneered.
"We murdered them by the millions without fully understanding them."
"There is nothing to understand. They killed the Council envoys and attacked every settlement in their path." Saren advanced on the Asari, but her aim at him did not shift or waver.
The whispers turned louder and clearer, yet Shepard could not understand a word. Elise turned her head, looked over her shoulder at the queen, and in that moment Shepard understood that Elise could hear whatever it was too.
Saren's strike was as sudden and as quick as a bolt of lightning, he grabbed Elise' gun, and wrenched it from her grip, sending the weapon flying across the room. The Asari yelped and backed away until her back was pressed to the queen's cell even as her biotic barrier flared into existence. The queen shrieked, whipping her tendrils, and suddenly Elise's barrier exploded outwards, forming a dome around the containment cell, stopping right in front of them. All the while her pupils opened, consuming the blue of her iris, and the sclera turned black.
"This one serves as our voice." The asari spoke, her speech stilted, with pauses after each word, as if she chose them, one by one, with unfamiliar clumsiness. The whispering flanged the words, following, but apart from them. "We cannot sing. Not in these low spaces." She continued, swaying. "Your musics are… colorless."
"Do not shoot!" Shepard called as she clapped a hand over both Spectres' guns and pushed the muzzles down. "Elise… is linked with the queen. She's…" Shepard did not know how to explain it, but she knew what she saw. The rachni queen decided to speak directly through the asari.
"Human, you are overstepping your bounds." Saren growled.
"Yea? Well, I will not let you shoot an unarmed civilian!" Shepard barked. "I am not sure what is going on, but…"
The asari advanced half a step, her barrier moving with her. "Your way of communicating is strange." She announced. "Flat. It does not color the air. When we speak, one moves all."
It took a moment but Shepard understood. "I do not think the rachni can talk. Not the way you or I can. So how would they communicate with the envoys?" There, right in front of them was living evidence to that. The queen had to control the body of an asari to talk. The rachni had vocal cords of some sort, but could not produce speech. They were fiercely territorial but entirely unable to utilize the way of communication normal for the rest of the sapient species of the galaxy. The Council misunderstood them.
The queen turned her head again, her large eye focused on Shepard. "You hear the truth," Elise swayed, "Our kind sing through touchings of thought. We pluck the strings, and the other understands. The children we birthed were stolen from us before they could learn to sing. They are lost to silence. Our elders are comfortable with silence. Children know only fear if no one sings to them. Fear has shattered their minds."
"Makes sense," Nihlus murmured quietly.
Saren hummed, but said nothing more.
The queen turned in her tank, this time focused on Saren. Elise turned to him as well. "You speak of others, the envoys that came before. Their voices went unheard in the cacophony of an ancient song."
"How do you know what happened?" Nihlus wondered.
"We hear the echoing song of mother. She sang of tragedy and loss. Of our kind long silenced. Their songs were… discordant. Their strings tangled. The music they produced changed by the instrument of those who came before."
Strings? It was a curious choice of word for the mind, but Shepard was convinced that was what the queen meant. Tangled strings? Were the rachni addled, confused by something? She was hazarding wild guesses, but if she considered the queen's diction as inherently different given their difference in methods of communication, it made some sense.
"These needle-men found the instrument of the ancients. We heard its sour notes echo in cacophonous song of our stolen children." The queen went on. "Our kind found it among the ruins of those who came before. It blotted out our songs as it blotted out the harmonies of the ancients."
Shepard glanced at Saren; did he understand the implications of what the queen was saying? Considering his gun had yet to rise, and the stiffness of his posture, she wanted to think he was beginning to see something in the queen's words. Shepard thought she knew what the queen meant by 'instrument of the ancients' and their 'harmonies'. "Whose ruins were these?" she prompted, careful to avoid a leading question, lest she be accused of giving the queen the easy way out.
"Your kind calls them… Prothean."
At that Saren stiffened, and Shepard knew that he understood.
"The instrument is not of their creation." The queen went on. "Their harmony was silenced by its sour notes. We allowed the instrument to play before we understood. Your kind came while our own harmony turned to cacophony."
"The toxin Cohen's team was studying. It has to be that… instrument," Nihlus breathed.
"And it was not Prothean. It was used on the Protheans," Saren said.
Shepard crossed her arms and turned to the queen. "You're both missing a key point here. Sounds to me like the Rachni Wars were caused by that toxin too."
"You believe her?" Saren sneered.
"Cohen said the toxin affects the rachni." Were the toxin's echoes, the ones the queen heard from her children, coming from the rachni exposed to the toxin? Cohen must have exposed some to know they were affected. "We could go back and ask for more info, but this seems to corroborate that."
"If you are right then…" Nihlus stopped dead there, as if unwilling to finish his sentence.
"Elise was right. The galaxy owes the rachni an apology." If the queen was speaking the truth, then by most legal definitions, the rachni were either as much a victim as those they killed, or at the very least not guilty by reason of insanity. There was room to argue, additional studies would have to be done, but at the very least it meant that killing the queen would be murder and genocide all in one. Shepard would not do it. For all anyone might say about it, her mind was set.
"Now that you hear the truth, what will you sing? Will you release us? Are we to fade away once more? You have the power to free us, or return our people to the silence of memory."
The whispers went silent and then Elise teetered, her eyes lost their black hue as the queen severed the connection. The biotic shield dissipated and the asari raised her hands to her temples, moaning in her own voice.
Only with the absence of the quiet voice did Shepard finally understand. The whispers were the queen's "song", though only Elise and she could hear it. Why? Yes, in physiological terms a human woman was outwardly similar to an asari, but was there more to this similarity? If there was, what would that mean? There were other thoughts too. The Protheans had been the target, but rachni and asari were also affected by Kryptin-8. The former being the prime target while the latter two had a common feature. Both Rachni and Asari had unique neurological systems that allowed them to communicate in ways other than just vocalization. Was there something to that connection? They knew too little about the Protheans to say, but she filed the thought away for a later date, maybe to ask someone who knew more.
Right now Shepard knew what she ought to do. She glanced toward Saren, and the hard look in his eyes told her that in all likelihood he would not be as forgiving. She knew she would have to stand her ground; she could not let Saren Arterius condemn a whole race to extinction.
"Your kind-"
"No." Shepard cut in almost as soon as Saren spoke. He stopped and turned, the look in his eyes went from merely cold to one of pure loathing. Shepard held it without blinking or quailing. "We cannot kill her, Spectre Arterius. You heard her, there are reasons to suspect her kind were not of their right minds. At the very least we should stay our hand until the matter is investigated by outside experts."
"Know your place, Human. I indulged you so far because your methods were only wasting time and there was no urgency to our mission. Do not mistake my generosity for agreement. I will not allow humanity to make a decision that will affect the galaxy as a whole. Humans were still fighting with iron weapons and arrows while the galaxy waged war against the rachni threat. Your kind has no right to decide matters you had no party in."
Shepard raised an eyebrow; did he just use that card on her? "By that logic, Spectre Arterius, you have no right to make this decision either. To be sure the turians had begun to explore space at the time, but the Council that fought the Rachni War was asari and salarian only. They made contact with the turians only after."
Saren looked like he was contemplating whether he could murder her and get away with it. Shepard kept his gaze and waited. She would not back down.
"This will only ensure a second Rachni War."
Was that the best he had? "Perhaps. But the probability is just as high that the rachni will merely find some corner of the galaxy to call their own, and live in peace." Shepard did not need to reach deep for that rebuff. "I will not cower and make my decisions based on fear of what might be. Make no mistake, Spectre Arterius, killing her now is the action of a coward."
Saren snarled as his fingers shifted on the grip of his gun. Shepard knew she hit him personally, but she was not one to pull punches. If he wanted to have a battle of words, to try and convince her that she was wrong, he better bring the big guns, not just a half-assed excuse like what might be.
"Listen to her, Nihlus. She would sacrifice the safety of the galaxy for her own idealistic beliefs. Is this someone whom you want wielding the powers of a Spectre?"
Shepard snorted and held up her hand in the direction where she knew Nihlus stood, "Don't answer that, Nihlus."
"Shepard-"
"No, I will defend myself," Shepard explained. "Spectre Arterius doubts my ability to obey the Council's will, should it clash with my idealism. Well I ask this, is it the Council's will that their agents casually commit acts of genocide?" she paused there. Saren's expression did not waver, but his mandibles twitched, as if he restrained himself from showing their tell-tale defensive pull up and tight against his jaw. This only emboldened her to drive her point home. "By my understanding, the Council disallows weapons of genocide. So tell me Spectre Arterius, are the Council nothing more than hypocrites that break their own laws when convenient? Or maybe it is Spectres that are so above the law that they can commit such acts?"
"Shepard-" Nihlus began again.
"No, Nihlus. I want to know where the line is. Perhaps the problem is that Spectre Arterius mistakes morals for idealism… but if the line is indeed so blurry, I refuse to walk it. I will not knowingly work for such a Council. My… idealism will not let me sully my hands with the blood of innocents."
The silence that settled over the lab was so absolute that Shepard could hear every armor creak. Elise, who had recovered some of her faculties, looked absolutely gob-smacked and terrified of making a sound as she tried to melt into the tank behind her.
Nihlus sighed, "Do not shoot me, Saren… but killing the queen does seem like going a step too far, and to answer your earlier question, that is the reason I nominated her for Spectre."
Saren closed his eyes briefly, "To whom are you loyal, Nihlus?" he mused. "Fine, Shepard. Set her free, and you better pray to your gods that for once I am wrong."
Shepard refused to show any hint of triumph as she moved past him toward the console. No need for petty stomps on someone's ego, even if it was Saren Arterius' ego. There was such a thing as being an ungracious winner. She knew why he had her hack through the controls, too. This way he had much more deniability if he was proven right. Still, the fact that he stood down told her something. Yes, he was an arrogant egomaniac who did not believe he could be wrong, and he was also a bastard of magnificent proportions, but he was not beyond reasoning. Still, she was right to be very, very careful around him.
A few taps on the console in front of the tank brought up the controls. Shepard quickly discovered that right now the queen was in a temporary holding tank manipulated by a gantry arm. There was a transfer corridor she could connect the tank to, which would allow the queen to make her way up and to a tunnel used by special trams to transfer heavy cargo from Central Station to Rift Station. Fortunately the lockout was not biometric, it was a password, and those could be hacked. Her program weaseled its way into the terminal's security protocols and within a minute or so it was grinding through the vulnerabilities. It took another two minutes but then the window flashed, she was in, and seconds after that the holding tank began to move up and toward the tunnel entrance.
The whispering returned then. It made Shepard look up and follow the queen. The tank connected to the passage airlock and the connecting doors opened. The queen tipped her head once, twice, and passed through.
"She is saying her farewells, Commander." Elise spoke up for the first time in a long while. "I know her intent. She will find somewhere safe to raise new children. It has always been her earnest wish. Her kind will forever remember this act of mercy."
"Are you alright though?" Shepard wondered.
"Yes, she would never hurt me. Oh, but she did request that I show all of you what she showed me… about the toxin, about the past."
"I am not letting you near me," Saren replied automatically.
"I think… I will pass as well," Nihlus echoed.
"I understand." Elise smiled.
Shepard thought they were awful quick to say no. Still, she knew the Spectres had to keep their secrets. She had her own secrets to keep, but this information might prove useful. "I'll do it." She said.
"Are you sure, Shepard?" Nihlus asked.
"No. But someone's got to do it."
Elise approached, "I will try to be as gentle as possible. It will not take long."
Shepard glanced at Nihlus and then Saren. The former was clearly concerned; the latter stood near the desk with his arms crossed. She turned back to Elise, "Alright, let's do this." Could she keep Elise from seeing into the corners of her mind? She did have her own secrets that ought not see the light of day.
Elise raised her hand and smiled. Her fingers touched Shepard's helmet cheek-guard, "Try to relax, Commander. Take slow, deep breaths." Her voice shifted, becoming softer, her intonation lyrical and sweet. "Let go of your physical shell. Reach out to grasp the threads that bind us, one to another. Every action sends ripples across the galaxy. Every idea must touch another mind to live. Each emotion must mark another's spirit." Her other hand rose to the other side of Shepard's helmet. "We are all connected. Every living being united in a single, glorious existence. Open yourself to the universe, Commander. Embrace eternity!" her pupils dilated again and sclera turned wholly black.
Shepard flinched and closed her eyes as the images started. They flickered past like a reel of film; each a few seconds long, yet so clear the impression burned into her mind until she felt like a witness. There were images of a planet, images of hundreds, maybe thousands of rachni, and the whispers, multiple, in a number of voices, all crying. She saw the ruins, high halls, dead machinery, dark vault-like rooms, abandoned laboratories, and the tanks. The vision shifted, Shepard saw a single ship, cryostasis pods full of eggs, worker rachni tasked with the upkeep of the royal clutch, of soldiers tasked with protecting the ship. A bittersweet lament played over the ship's departure, and then the absolute silence of the void.
The images vanished, darkness settled, Shepard sought the light, was there more? Suddenly her field of vision was filled with snow and bitter cold nipped at her limbs. Elise's presence in her mind vanished all at once, with all the abruptness of being yanked out of a dream. Shepard felt herself stagger. Her eyes snapped open instinctively, only to see charcoal and burgundy. For the second time that day she felt a steadying arm around her back. "I got you, Shepard," Nihlus whispered over her ear. "You teetered."
Shepard hummed; she could feel pressure forming in her head, like a clamp pressing across her temples. Nihlus hesitated a moment too long to release her. She reached back to remove his arm, but then that was all he needed to tell him to let go. It was then that Shepard saw Elise, "Are you alright?" She asked automatically.
The Asari must have staggered back a step before slumping. She sat on the floor with her legs folded under her, clutching at her head.
"Yes… yes, I am alright. I am sorry… Commander." The asari said.
"What happened?" Nihlus asked.
"The… I've never melded with someone whose mental barriers were so powerful, yet so unfocused. I could barely keep the connection… and I may have severed it too abruptly. Everything told me to stop… it was the reason the Commander teetered."
"I saw Suen, the rachni… the ruins… and the arc ship," Shepard replied.
Elise looked up and smiled wanly, "I saw snow, mountains, a cliff… I heard Vi- … the rifle."
Shepard froze like a pole; Elise had almost said her rifle's name. No one aside from her ICT team knew her weapons had names.
"I saw what you had to do." Elise continued. "I felt the cold nipping at my limbs, the weight of the snow… an impression so strong I could have sworn I was right there. Yet all of it was nothing compared to that singular feeling of being unwelcome."
Shepard closed her eyes; she could not decide whether it was good or bad that Elise only got to see that. At least she had not seen her and Arthur; she did not know the truth.
Elise got to her feet shakily, "Commander, you have remarkable mental strength. If you ever need to, focus on that scene, that feeling… it will only amplify its potency."
Shepard nodded mutely. If she focused on the feeling of that night, she would have to be the White Death again. She never wanted to be that again. The White Death was righteous rage, a pure thirst for vengeance, a monster.
"Enough. Shepard, get into Brant's computer and get the data you need. We still have the hot lab to investigate," Saren growled.
Shepard knew that he would be in a foul mood about now. He was the big bad veteran Spectre overruled by his protégé and the human. Saren's ego would probably take a while to fully recover. Still, Shepard decided to temporarily swallow her pride in the interest of not starting an unnecessary conflict after what they had ironed out. She moved to the desk without offering much resistance to being ordered around.
Security on this terminal was tighter, but Shepard got through it with a little bit of time. After that she dug around the supplies for an OSD she could use. "I am going to batch-copy a system mirror. We can look at things later." She also did not want Elise to overhear anything. Yes, the asari had willingly divulged a lot of information, but there were still secrets to keep.
"I want a copy of it," Saren said.
"Of course, Spectre Arterius."
"I will send it myself." Nihlus replied.
"Works for me." Shepard murmured as the progress bar crawled. Halfway through she reached up and slipped her fingers under her eye-shield to rub at the bridge of her nose. The vice-like pressure across her temples was not dissipating. It was not bad, not really pain, but it throbbed uncomfortably if she moved her head too sharply.
"What's our plan for the hot lab?" Nihlus asked. "We know that the whole place has to be crawling with rachni, workers, and probably soldiers. We need something a little more thorough than simply shooting them dead."
"The hot lab is high security; they have a neutron purge system in place." Elise jumped in, eager now. "Mira can activate it. I assume you got the VI back online?"
"Yes, we did."
"Good." Elise nodded. "Though there is a small problem, Doctor Brant had the only key card on her."
"So we find her and take the card." Nihlus said.
"Great." Shepard murmured as her temples gave another painful throb. This was going to suck worse than having to deal with the queen and melding with an asari. Shepard did not say it, but that was the first time she had melded with an asari, and for the love of her she could not figure out how that experience could be considered pleasurable.
In the end, Brant's office desk yielded a bunch of key cards, none of them for the neutron purge system, but there was the master override which allowed them to leave the secure lab via its main entrance onto the Rift Station platform. Elise went ahead to the refuge, while Shepard, Nihlus, and Saren took the emergency elevator down to the hot lab with their weapons drawn.
It led onto an enclosed space above the lab proper, with windows on the sides offering an observational view below. The sight that greeted them should have turned her stomach; it was truly grizzly. Shepard figured it was a testament to just how much she had seen that she only wrinkled her nose at the truly horrible smell. A couple people, both lab workers and ERCS guards, had tried to reach the emergency elevator, but they were attacked just short. The rachni had been ruthless, tearing off limbs and impaling their victims on their whip-tentacles.
On the side of the room there were a number of grates, which seemed to have been pushed up from below. "They came up through those," Shepard whispered as the motioned to the nearest grate.
"There are more of them down there," Nihlus replied. "We have to act quickly."
"Great," Shepard was the first to move into the room, inspecting the bodies. She paid no attention to the men and approached the only dead female in the room. The woman wore a white lab suit, and the Rachni had gotten her through the stomach from the back. She did not even get to crawl far before she died of traumatic blood loss. Shepard crouched down and rolled her over to check for the name tag, but then shook her head and got back to her feet, "Not our doctor."
At the back of the room was another doorway. Shepard made her way over, and the door opened as soon as she was within range. There was another small room here; this one seemed full of computers. At the right side was a terminal for Mira, and lying practically at its feet was another woman. Her left arm had been torn off, lying on the other side of the room, along with an automatic weapon. It looked like the doctor took it from one of the ERCS men, but it served her poorly. By the trail of blood on the floor Shepard could see she had attempted to stumble over to the console, but the blood loss caused her to lose consciousness quickly, before she could arm the system.
Shepard crouched and flicked the woman's name tag back into its proper position, utterly not surprised to see 'Amelia Brant' printed on it. "I found her," she announced. Lying next to the doctor was a keycard smeared with blood. Shepard picked it up and got to her feet, "I think this is what we need."
"Unless you happen to have a reason to keep these rachni alive too, activate the purge and be done with it." Saren said.
Shepard looked over her shoulder and quirked an eyebrow, was that passive-aggressive snark she heard? She turned back to the console, mostly to conceal the irresistible urge to roll her eyes. Did he really think she would keep these rachni alive? Even their own mother knew they were too far gone. She tapped at the console, and Mira's holographic form materialized.
"Connecting." Mira announced. "I have full access to the facility, and am at your disposal."
"Facility status," Saren demanded as he approached.
"Scanning, please wait a moment… Warning: Catastrophic containment breach in Laboratory Pod Gamma. The neutron purge system is functional, but has not been armed." Mira announced.
"Saren, the vents…" Nihlus said as he cocked his assault rifle.
"I hear them."
Shepard drew her guns and slipped her fingers to the ammo selectors. There was no mistaking what that announcement meant.
"VI, activate the neutron purge." Saren went on.
"I'm sorry, but I can't do that without proper code authorization."
"Human."
Shepard glared but slipped the keycard into the reader set into Mira's terminal.
"Verify keycard." Saren ordered.
Mira shifted her weight. "Key card verified. Neutron Purge execution in one hundred and twenty seconds."
Suddenly there was a familiar shriek from the other room. "Here they come!" Nihlus called.
"Nihlus, grab your human and get to the elevator! Now!" Saren ordered.
"Hey! Not his human!" Shepard argued.
"Argue later, Shepard!" Nihlus grabbed her by the shoulder guard and began to pull. The three of them ran back out of the door, and just like that all the remaining grates in the room were pushed up from below. Five soldier rachni emerged. Nihlus opened fire on the ones on his right even as he ran for the elevator, still pulling Shepard along. Shepard decided not to protest, just this once. She leveled Sin on the rachni on the other side and fired. Saren brought up the rear, his assault rifle spraying at everything on the left side of the room.
Shepard had the free hand to slap onto the console that made the elevator door open. The soldiers advanced, shrieking and whipping their tendrils. One charged with a burst of speed, hurling its spear-like tentacles forward. Shepard used Sin's sixth shot to blast one of the bulbous tips apart, and reached for Dex just as Nihlus yanked her back. Shepard staggered. The second tentacle hit the wall on the right of where she had just been and its tip embedded into the wall. Shepard automatically snapped up Dex and fired, severing the tentacle. The Rachni shrieked and withdrew the bleeding stump.
Suddenly Saren was right in front of her, a wall of white armor, and then his whole body lit up with his biotics. He raised his left arm, palm down; fingers splayed, and then turned his wrist and closed his fist in a single quick movement. A singularity opened right in the midst of the rachni with a whomp. The bugs shrieked as it pulled them in, lifting all five clear off their feet until all they could do was flail helplessly. Saren reached for the grenades magnetically clipped to his armor on his right. A flick of his wrist sent one into the singularity. Then the Spectre turned, stepped into the elevator, and flicked his fingers across the console to close the door. The doors had just closed and the cabin began to move when there was the unmistakable thud of detonation.
"Warning: Neutron Purge System is armed. Sealing elevator shaft at hot lab terminus." Mira's voice announced over the loudspeaker. There was a thud loud enough to hear in the cabin as it ascended. "Neutron bombardment initialized."
Shepard holstered her weapons and ejected the hot clip from Sin before reaching behind her back for a fresh one. To say she was surprised would be an understatement. Saren had just displayed adept-level ability with a casual flick of his fingers. She was beginning to see how he managed to survive as a Spectre for twenty-four years. Anyone unwary to be suckered by that singularity was essentially a sitting duck for any decent marksman, to say nothing of grenades. Saren was the ruthless type who would turn things into a duck shoot.
"Guess this means mission complete," Nihlus broke the silence.
"Yes." Saren replied.
Shepard knew there was just the paperwork left. They needed to contact Port Hanshan and organize the evacuation. She reached up under her face-shield to rub at the bridge of her nose. A fresh burst of adrenaline and being turian-handled did not help her headache in the least. Suddenly the pressure was no longer just pressure. She could feel pain blossoming, arching back along the sides of her head.
Then and there Shepard swore to herself that she would never meld with an asari again, not even for a million credits. She had nothing against the asari, but it was best to keep them out of her head. She was glad that this whole mess was finally over with. Still, the drive back to Port Hanshan was going to be an absolute joy.
Author Notes: I bet you did not see that coming. Yes I decided to make this arc all about my solution to the question of the Protheans and the origin of the Rachni Wars, both of which involved the Reapers in game. Thus, with no Reapers, how would I explain the extinction of previous galactic civilizations and the Rachni aggression? Well the Protheans being whom they are, as hinted by Javik, some of their subservient races getting desperate made some sense.
General Notes:
Protheans, Rachni, and Asari – Everything in this chapter hinges on what we know. Javik admitted that the Protheans messed with the "primitives". We know the Asari were engineered. I went on a limb to say the Rachni were too, though to a far lesser degree. Then we have a common element between the three, the "extra ability". So if we suppose that the Protheans enhanced the other two races, their method of enhancing might be similar, and maybe based off their own ability, so then the Asari and Rachni being affected by the same biological weapon is not beyond the realm of possibility.
Saren's biotic power level – In ME1 we see Saren use the warp liberally. But because he is who he is, I decided to dial up his power. He has adept-level biotics, including the ability to form a singularity. He just hides the weakness of his abilities. He has a limit on how many abilities, how often, he can use.
Chapter Notes:
On Medicinal Doses – The standard unit of measurement for injected medicine is the milliliter. But there is another unit that floats around, the "cubic centimeter" or CC. [1 CC = 1 milliliter]. I plan to use the units kind of interchangeably, with the CC being more common in speech (easier to say) and the milliliter more in description as it's more formal.