Chapter 17 – Everyone Dies

January 24th, 2211, 0651 hours – Aboard the SSV Hippocrates, Deck 7, Bridge

13 hours and 51 minutes after Outbreak.

"Thank you for that," Cade sighed. He had survived the encounter with nothing more than a wicked headache. Rentea had cleaned off the blood and checked Cade for a concussion afterwards. She had offered him a couple of turian aspirin analogues but my friend had respectfully declined with a slow shake of his head.

It would only help with the physical pain.

I glanced at the turian sergeant seated numbly in a chair on the other side of the bridge. In contrast to the rapid, purposeful movements of the rest of the survivors as they completed last-minute preparations to leave, Sergeant Vidanor Mardinus was as still as death itself. He was currently seated with his hands were clenched together, his eyes fixed on a singular point on the floor.

"I told him the truth," I replied.

The rest of the survivors gave him a wide berth, but not out of fear or nervousness. The seven-foot tall armored turian looked three times smaller than he did less than ten minutes ago. And ten times as fragile.

Camilla tucked a strand of hair behind an ear and gently rubbed Cade's upper arm. "I still don't understand what you did, why he acted like that. What exactly did you do during the Rebellions?."

Cade and I shared a glance. Not everyone was as well-versed in the recent histories of the galaxies various species as we were. Every turian alive was probably familiar with the events of the Palaven Rebellions and the role Cade played by heart but chances are the rest of the galaxy wasn't unless you went out of your way to learn.

"It's a story for another time. I'll tell you every last bit one day, I promise," Cade told the engineer.

That was some promise. Anyone with access to the extranet could find out what Cade did that day. Only two people knew what Cade had felt or what had been going through his mind as he pulled the trigger on the Seccessionist saboteur, his commanding officer, his father.

Standing alongside us was Galen, who'd been silent the entire time. Judging by the frequent glances he was shooting at the turian sergeant and the way his mandibles would flare briefly for a few centimeters before he quickly retracted them to his face, the sight of the older turian was troubling the young marine. He was likely wracking his mind, wondering if there was anything he could say to his sergeant to make things better.

"Should one of us go talk to him?" Galen asked us. The sergeant had been his rock ever since he'd been assigned to his team. To see him like this must have been disorienting and painful for the young marine.

"Some things can't be fixed," sighed Cade. "His scars aren't the kind of scars that anyone can do anything about."

The young turian cocked his head at the veteran Spectre. "Meaning?"

"It means that whoever told you that time heals all wounds was dead wrong, and sometimes that goes double for words," I finished.

"So we're just going to leave him like that?"

The turian sergeant was still seated on his chair, eyes dead and staring. I've known men like Mardinus, strong, unflappable – a backbone like steel. I knew that honor, duty, and commitment to the cause would eventually bring him back from whatever dark place his interactions with Cade had taken him, but as for fixing him?

He lost his family during the Reaper War, he lost his friends during the Rebellions, and he probably feels betrayed and abandoned by his government. Likely the only thing that allowed him to remain a sane, functional being was the legendary stoicism that his species was famed for.

But no matter how strong you are and how well you think you've coped with it, no matter how much therapy or help or medication you've gotten, I am not sure that anyone can ever truly heal from all of that. I wish that I was wrong or that I was simply a pessimist, but in my experience there were some things you could never come back from.

The truth was, I think the Sergeant was running on borrowed time.

"I'll talk to him," I promised Galen. "The sergeant's a tough son-of-a-bitch, I think he knows Cade didn't do anything wrong, at least not to him. The last fourteen hours have just been fucked up. For everyone."

Galen nodded, satisfied. Camilla looked at the turian sergeant with a sad look in her eyes. She wasn't angry at him, not for beating Cade almost half-to-death. She wasn't well-versed in turian history and how it might have influenced the dynamics between Cade and Vidanor, but she could tell from the anguish in the older turian's eyes that he had not been in his right state of mind when he attacked my friend.

"I hope he's okay," she said.

Cade looked at her and gave her hand a gentle squeeze. He then looked back at me.

"Cloud, seriously, thank you. I don't know if I would have stopped him…"

"You did nothing wrong, Cade. In fact, you did everything right," I replied.

I turned to the engineer, eager to diverge from this line of conversation. "Camilla, is the route plotted and the thrusters ready?"

The engineer nodded. "Yeah, managed to get it all done before that puta went loco." Farragut had finally pushed his luck too far with me. Sometimes one doesn't have the inclination and the energy to play nice when someone is threatening the safety of the galaxy, especially if one has spent the last fourteen hours fighting and evading homicidal space zombies.

"Great. I'm going to touch base with Percival, Murgen and Barthilus, then I'm going to arrange the evac with the SSV that's done you hit the switch, six-second burn with ten minute intermissions, right?"

"Yeah."

Satisfied, I gave her a thumbs-up and turned around. I walked over to where Percival and the two Systems Alliance officers were currently coordinating the rest of the evacuation.

"Percival, what's the deal?"

My friend turned and ran a hand through his blond hair. "We're good to go, everyone's basically packed and Jaelen's samples are secured. Camilla's burn specs means that we have a little over 120 minutes right?"

"126 at the most I'd say. After that we're trapped in the gravity well and our chances of escape are effectively in the single-digits," Barthilus chimed in.

"Great, so once that first burn hits, we set our timers for 126 minutes and hopefully we'll be in one of the hangar bays before it's too late," Percival finished.

Murgen opened up a schematic of the ship on his omni-tool and highlighted one of the many hangar bays roughly halfway down the ship. "How about hangar bay 3-D on deck five? It's only about halfway down the ship and it's almost a straight shot from the main central passageway. We wouldn't have to shove fifty-odd survivors down a mess of cramped corridors."

I immediately shook my head and highlighted a hangar bay a bit further down the ship, closer to the Prometheus labs.

"Negative. Hangar bay 1-D is a better option. There's a retrofitted M-88 Tiger-class Corvette that the geology department aboard this ship uses for asteroid mining operations. It can fit all of the survivors inside, and it has much stronger thrusters than your standard UT-47 Kodiak."

I pulled up a schematic of the Saber and sent it to the officers, then I pulled up a schematic of your standard UT-47 Kodiak dropship and brought it up beside the Tiger. Both were designed to house roughly twelve individuals, but the Saber had a massive cargo compartment that we could use to house the rest of the survivors.

"The SSV Excalibur only has two Kodiaks aboard, so unless we grabbed a pair from another hangar bay and can outfly the speed the emergency thrusters would push the Hippocrates to, we wouldn't be able to get everyone off in a single wave. The Tiger is a better choice."

Murgen and Barthilus both studied the schematics and carefully considered the option. Hangar bay 1-D was some ways further down the ship, and would require traversing down some tight corridors. There were pros and cons to both routes. The main central passageway was exposed whereas the pedestrian corridors lacked room to maneuver.

"The M-88 Tiger requires specialized pilot training, I'm not sure any of the survivors left aboard are rated to fly that thing," Murgen pointed out. Good, it seemed like the Jaeger Captain was buying it.

"I can fly it," I assured him. "Spectres Percival and Kitiarian can fly it as well, albeit to a lesser degree of proficiency."

Percival gave me a weird look. Maybe he was on to me.

"We've run simulations but the only one with actual experience piloting a Tiger is Spectre Cloud. We'll do fine as back-ups, but if we're in Theodore's gravity well then he's going to be the only one who can get us out," my friend told his fellow officers.

Barthilus and Murgen finally conceded to my suggestion. "Okay, we'll head to hangar bay 1-D, board the corvette, open the doors and rendezvous with your ship," the turian Lieutenant-Commander agreed.

"Then it's settled," I nodded, "hangar bay 1-D."

We all nodded to each other and moved to make some last minute preparations. Murgen and Barthilus went to check on the Jaegers and the survivors respectively, while Percival followed behind me as I attempted to raise Val aboard the SSV Excalibur.

"So, hangar bay 1-D, huh?" Percival asked. One of his eyebrows was cocked upwards and his blue eyes gazed steadily at mine.

"Yeah, the SSV Hippocrates is going to be travelling at speeds of thousands of kilometers per hour. The only one here who could fly a UT-47 Kodiak out of another hangar bay and into another is probably just me. We don't have the time to make two or three trips. We need the Tiger."

"Mhmm," agreed Percival, "plus by the time we get everyone down to the hangar bay and get everything warmed up, we'll already probably only have maybe ten minutes left before we're firmly in the well."

I walked up to the holo-display and took one last look at the route and the adjustments that Camilla had programmed. To distract myself, I began to commit the minute details of the route to memory, specifically the point in which we'd be firmly entrapped in Theodore's gravity well and escape would no longer be an option.

"Too many walking wounded, and we still don't know how many more of these things are onboard."

My fellow Spectre crossed his arms and nodded. "It's a good plan. How'd you know that there was still a Tiger on board?"

I pulled up an inventory list on my omni-tool and sent it to my friend. He opened it and flipped down to the equipment list for the Geology division aboard the SSV Hippocrates. I then sent him a maintenance log dated three hours before the outbreak had occurred. It showed that the Tiger had just undergone maintenance and was ready for its next run, which was originally slated to be two days from now.

"I perused the inventory lists sometime after Murgen told us we couldn't enable the self-destruct. Cameras went down after the outbreak started a while back so I haven't actually eyeballed it, but I think it's still there," I told him.

I opened up a channel and hailed the SSV Excalibur. "Flight Lieutenant Fyordinarova, come in."

"Cloud, it's Val. You ready to come home?"

I smiled and rubbed my eyes tiredly. "Just about. Have to tidy up the place first, we're going to use the ship's emergency thrusters to push it into the star. It'll take roughly two hours."

I sent Val the plans and the navigational data Camilla had prepared, along with a waypoint somewhere just outside the line. "Can you arrive and hold at this location within the next two hours?"

"I can be there in half that. You want me to prep the Kodiaks?"

"Negative, we'll be taking an M-88 Tiger, but do have triage on standby, we've got walking wounded."

"Roger that Cloud. Two hours, don't keep a girl waiting."

I smiled once more. The helmsman of the SSV Excalibur would have our backs to hell and back. "Wouldn't dare, thanks Val."

"So that's what a girl's gotta do, huh? Val out."

I signed off and turned to Percival. The big man had a broad, knowing smile on his face. A Neanderthal could probably write a paper on what was going on in his mind right now.

"Technically you're not Systems Alliance…" he pointed out.

I scoffed. "And technically you're not my mother, either. But it sure doesn't stop you from being an overbearing pain in the ass."

"You smiled twice in a row, you never smile twice in a row."

"Uh, the asari twins back on Thessia?"

Percival sighed and shook his head dramatically. "Just when I was about to give up hope for Cade, in walked Camilla. I tell you buddy, I'm a born-again believer. I believe one day that the both of you will have what Gwen and I have."

I shook my head. "You'll have a long time to wait, friend."

The big Spectre chuckled and crossed his arms. "No offence Cloud, but between you and Cade? I would have bet my balls that it would have been you first. There's hope yet."

There was a lot of water under that bridge, to the point where I sometimes forgot that a bridge was even there. The problem was I didn't know how much of it I could get help for, how much of it was fixable, and how much of it was keeping me in a state of perpetual drowning. Being a Spectre didn't really give you the luxury of time to find out. Percival was one of the rare ones who had managed to make it work—with a civilian no less.

Over the years I'd told my friends almost everything there was to know about me. Everything that I could remember I chose to divulge to my two friends rather than some doctor or bartender or dancer. I'd like to believe that somehow the fault didn't lie within myself but rather in the line of profession that I'd chosen to give myself to.

The former N7-turned-Spectre clapped a hand on my shoulder.

"Listen… I know how things went down for you in the past… and I also know how things with Sarah didn't work out the way you wanted them to…"

I cocked an eyebrow. "I knew Dr. Messner for less than a day, Perc—"

"—Don't bullshit me, I'm not an idiot," he said brusquely. "Look, Cloud. Don't stop looking for things in this galaxy to cherish just because you're afraid that someone somewhere is going to take it away from you, because eventually you're going to run out of things in this galaxy worth fighting for."

I stared pensively at the display. The information on it was long memorized. Truth be told, I just needed an excuse not to look my friend in the eye.

"I let her down, Lancelot. Back at the data archives I could have saved her. One of the saboteurs blew open a hole in the ceiling and her husband found his way inside..."

I chewed my lip, every word was a struggle the likes of which I wanted to run from, so badly. Percival didn't say a word. It wasn't often that I addressed him by his first name. He'd learn long ago that whatever came afterwards was usually not something to dismiss lightly.

"… Except it wasn't him anymore. He was one of those things – a Changer. She saw him and froze up, Perc."

My armor's temperature regulators must have taken a hit during that last fight because the cold was becoming more and more noticeable. I crossed my arms against my chest and continued on.

"One of the saboteurs had the data. They were trying to escape. I had a choice, save her or save the data. I made the wrong call. The saboteurs got away and she died because I chose wrong."

The ambient noise of the bridge, the talking, the sounds that the survivors were making as they prepared to leave seemed to fade all at once, like someone had turned down a giant dial. Suddenly I felt as if I was the only person left aboard this ship.

Once again I could see her as clearly as if she were right there in front of me. She was on her back, the front of her labcoat was mangled and stained with her blood. A pair of massive claw marks had mortally wounded her – the first one had gone through her throat, the second one through her chest. It was all so vivid that I could see her right there, right in front of me. If I reached out I could almost touch her.

She was there, but something was different. Her eyes were different, her expression was different.

Gone was the expression of pain, of fear, of terror at being so close to the void and the unending silence thereafter.

Instead she looked at me softly, gently. There was something else in her gaze. What was it?

I blinked in confusion. Her wounds began to disappear before my very eyes. The blood vanished, her throat repaired itself, and she slowly got to her feet. She lifted her hand and gave me a small, sad little wave. She smiled and looked at me.

Beside her I could see her husband. No longer a monster, now a man once again. He gave me a nod and looked pointedly at one of my utility pouches.

I reached down and opened it. Inside I felt the smooth surface of an old photo. Who still used paper photos in this day and age? I withdrew my hand and re-sealed the pouch.

I watched as ghost-Sarah entwined her fingers with her husbands' and smiled at him. He smiled back at her, and together they looked at me one last time. Both of their eyes were now filled with what had just a short while ago been only in ghost-Sarah's eyes. Together they smiled, and together they turned and walked towards a tear of bright, white light that suddenly appeared behind them.

They stepped through and vanished. I strained my eyes and squinted, trying to look past the white light and see where they'd gone, but it was too bright. I brought a hand up to shield my face but it wasn't enough. Annoyed, I took a step forward, intent on following them.

A hand grabbed my shoulder and pulled me back, pulling me out of reverie and back onto this godforsaken ship.

"Cloud? Cloud! What are you doing?"

I whipped my head around. Percival was standing behind me, a look of utter confusion on his face. His eyes were clouded with worry and he kept looking past me, trying to see what had drawn my attention. I turned back around. I was still standing infront of the console and the holo-projection displaying the route.

Damn those drugs. Fucking Minagen.

"Nothing, thought I spotted something weird with the route, but it all checks out. Did you say something?" I told him.

Percival held his gaze for a few more seconds, a gaze that I returned innocently and unflinchingly. After a few moments he seemed to be satisfied, because he nodded and took his hand off my shoulder.

"I said it wasn't your fault. Going after the data was the right call, and the harder one. What was on that drive had immeasurable value – could potentially save millions of lives, help us stop what's happening on Earth and Thessia and stop what's happening here from happening on every other planet which has those Reaper cores. I'm sure Sarah would have understood."

I smiled even though deep down, I didn't feel as if I'd made the right call. I smiled nonetheless to reassure my friend, who I knew only had my best interests and my well-being at heart. Percival was the closest thing I had to an older brother or a father figure.

I smiled to try and convince myself that my decision had been the correct one, and that I could move past failing to save Sarah and focus on trying to save the millions of lives that needed me now.

"So… the Flight Lieutenant, huh? Easy on the eyes…"

My fellow Spectre smiled back, except his smile was colored with relief and happiness.

"Yeah, easy on the eyes. And don't tell Gwen I said that."

"Wouldn't dream of it."

January 24th, 2211, 0709 hours – Aboard the SSV Hippocrates, Deck 7, Bridge

14 hours and 9 minutes after Outbreak, 126 minutes before contact with the gravity well of Theodore 108

"Initiating the first pulse! Everyone brace for maneuver!" Camilla called out.

The strength of the sudden acceleration caught me off guard. The force generated by the emergency thrusters overwhelmed the artificial gravity generators and the inertia negators and cause the whole deck to shake and seize.

I could feel the Hippocrates violently speed up and steer towards the right. I fell onto the ground, the g-forces generated by the acceleration keeping me pinned to the deck. Almost three-quarters of the survivors had fallen as well, unprepared at the force of the maneuver. Percival, Cade, Captain Murgen and a couple of the Jaegers remained upright, all of them having found hand holds before Camilla had started up the thrusters.

After six seconds the g-force and the speed faded as the inertia negators finally caught up and kicked in. I booted up the clock function on my omni-tool and immediately set a countdown for ten minutes. Those burn phases were problematic. They were stronger than I'd anticipated and would make it much harder to make it to my objective and return to the hangar bay.

A gloved, taloned hand appeared in the corner of my eye. My eyes followed it upwards to see a tall, grey-armored turian with a bent mandible and red facepaint standing above me.

I accepted Sergeant Vidanor Mardinus' offer of assistance and pulled myself to my feet.

"Hell of a ride, huh?"

"No worse than the ship evacuation training they give you in the Hierarchy. Most modules assume that your drive core is irreparably damaged and your inertia negators are offline," Mardinus rasped.

Around us the rest of the survivors were all getting back to their feet. Lieutenant-Commander Barthilus and Captain Murgen were rallying the rest of the armed defenders and making immediate preparations to move out. Doctors Rentea T'lana and Jaelen Veers were helping the more seriously wounded get to their feet and make ready to leave.

I looked at the turian sergeant. His gaze was fixed on a certain other turian who was helping a female engineer to her feet.

"I'm not good at this, sergeant," I began.

Mardinus looked at me and gave a light, forced laugh. "Me neither, Spectre… me neither."

"For what it's worth, he's not angry. He sympathizes. Everyone has their share of scars, and anyone with those scars won't take it personally when those scars sometimes make us do stupid, irrational things."

The veteran sergeant's mandibles twitched in amusement and he turned to me for a brief moment. "As long as those stupid, irrational things are within reason, right?"

"Yeah," I admitted. "But honestly, punching the crap out of Cade is something that many, many people struggle to refrain from."

Mardinus gave a laugh – a real one this time. His flanged two-tone voice meant that his laugh was felt more than it was heard, like a strong bass.

"Your friend is quite the turian. His prowess in battle and his skill is second to none, and he is still quite young. He fights with a cunning that few turians possess and it makes him a dangerous opponent. He could have killed me at any moment during my attack but he chose not to."

"He is loyal to his friends, dedicated to the cause of good, and by all measures the absolute paragon of what a turian should strive to be. He did not deserve my treatment of him."

The turian dropped his gaze to the floor and sighed. It wasn't the sigh of a fit, turian marine in his late forties or early fifties. It was the sigh of a broken old soldier.

"I just miss my family. I miss my friends, I miss my wife, my child. Spirits, the pain of their loss has not diminished even after all these years, and it has made me act shamefully."

I frowned and placed a hand reassuringly on his shoulder. "No one can fault you for acting as you did. Not many of us served during the Reaper Wars. We didn't experience the horrors of it and many of us weren't old enough to understand the effects that it left on the galaxy."

"Cade understands. He lost his sister too during the Rebellions and he had to kill his own father to save his people. He knows what that kind of loss can drive a man to do."

Mardinus raised his eyes and looked back at my friend, currently helping young Galen check his armor, Camilla close beside him.

Cade looked up and saw the sergeant looking back at him. He nodded at the marine.

Mardinus nodded back and turned to me once more. "Thank you, Cloud, for showing compassion to an old man. You could have killed me too, could have easily shot me for trying to kill your friend and fellow Spectre."

I grinned. "Truth be told, I was kind of living vicariously through you at the time."

We both laughed.

January 24th, 2211, 0749 hours – Aboard the SSV Hippocrates, Deck 1, Pedestrian Corridor 14F

14 hours and 49 minutes after Outbreak, 86 minutes before contact with the gravity well of Theodore 108

I shot a pair of Corpsers with my Snakebite just as they were about to pounce on a group of surviving bridge officers. Thanks to the exceptional efforts of the surviving Jaegers and security personnel, we had not lost a single soul on our way to the hangar bay.

Progress had been slow and the creatures seemed to be crawling out of every nook, cranny and air vent hell-bent on turning us into more of the mindless abominations. We had endured three more additional pulses, and each time they had occurred we'd been forced to defend ourselves from a wave of Corpsers who seemed to understand that we were at our most vulnerable during those six-second burn phases.

Teewin moped up the Crawlers that had begun to rip their way out of the Corpser's I had just shot. The last one burst in a shower of sparks and metal bits just in time for the next burn phase to begin.

"We've got a burn phase coming up. Everyone, hold onto something!" Camilla called out on our radios.

The ship lurched again and half of us were thrown to our feet. I grabbed the lip of a shattered air vent and used it to steady myself throughout the duration of the six-second burn.

I reset the timer on my omni-tool just as the phase ended. People began to climb to their feet and a fresh new wave of howls seemed to erupt around us.

A series of light scratching noises and red and blue lights came from the depths of the vent that I was currently holding on to. I turned towards it just in time to see the face of a former human-now-Corpser appear and try to pull itself over the lip of the vent, snarling and drooling and howling.

I wreathed my fist in bright blue flames and punched it squarely in the face. It lost its grip and fell back into the vent, where more and more snarling could be heard. I triggered my last sticky grenade and dropped it into the vent behind it.

Murgen and Jaeger Team One had taken point, while Accer and Team Two were the rearguard. Cade and I each had a flank, with the rest of the remaining security personnel divided between us. We all stopped to defend against a fresh new wave of horrors trying to capitalize on the unsteadiness that the burn phase had precipitated.

After about four minutes of hard fighting, we had killed the last of the creatures and could now again move on.

We reached an intersection. The right path would take us all the way down the hangar bay 1-D. We'd need to take it and travel for maybe another twenty minutes at our pace to reach the hangar bay and the corvette. The left path would take us to a couple of storage rooms and the middle one would only lead us to the southern parts of the ship, such as the Prometheus labs.

I opened up a group-wide channel. "Hey Percival, Murgen, take the right fork."

"We know, don't worry," Percival replied.

"Okay, I'm going to cover one of the other two branches, make sure nothing can hit us while we're herding the survivors through. Cade, can you cover the other one?"

"Roger that, which one do you want?" my friend asked.

"Doesn't matter. How about I take the middle one and you take the left?"

"Sounds good."

"Great. Let's move up and get in position and have the survivors double-time it. I don't fancy being caught in another burn phase while we're stuck in that intersection, with three ways of being attacked."

"Agreed," Percival said. "Move up and I'll signal for us to hurry."

I nodded and immediately began pushing my way past the throng of survivors, Cade doing the same on the opposite side. Our pace was hindered by the fact that we were only as fast as our slowest member. There were about a score of survivors who required assistance to walk, and even then they couldn't move all that fast.

We pushed our way past and headed for the intersection ahead of the group. As I passed through the front, I made eye contact with Jaelen. The intelligent salarian had heard our brief discussion over the radio. If anyone had figured things out it would be him. He nodded at me and I nodded back. Like me, he knew that in order for us to ensure that no one died in vain, we would need to gather as much intel as possible before we left.

"Cade, head about twenty meters down your way and I'll head twenty down mine. We'll stay 'til the survivors are through and then rejoin the rearguard with Accer."

"Sounds good."

I slung my Snakebite onto my back and pulled out my Predator pistol instead. It would be more useful if a wave of the creatures decided to swarm me, I'd be able to use my biotics more effectively with my free hand to contain and destroy them. I turned back and watched as the mess of survivors moved down the right path.

Accer, Teewin and the marines from the Excalibur were at the rear. Like I'd hoped, they'd demonstrated that they could work seamlessly together. They seemed to have accepted the young biotic Jaeger as their new commanding officer despite his relative youth. Rake, Soph, Jay and Fly had all been with me since the start of this fiasco and I was glad to see them in capable hands. I couldn't have asked for better marines.

As their party moved on, Accer lingered to give me one last look. He saluted with the stump of his arm and grinned, a gesture that I returned in full. Men like him gave me hope for the future. Hope that should those such as Cade, Percival or I join the ranks of Bradford in the pursuit of galactic safety, there'd be others to take up the torch.

The last of the survivors moved down.

"Hey Cade, let's actually hold position until the next burn phase, make sure nothing hits them from the rear," I said.

"Sounds like a plan, should have brought a magazine."

I chuckled and shook my head. I then doubled-checked my armor systems – tactical cloak, kinetic shields, temperature regulators, trauma diagnostics and biofeeds – to ensure that everything was operational, then I ensured that all my weapons and both of my Talon combat knives were in working order.

Then I muted my radio. The indicator lights would tell me if I was receiving calls and I'd still be able to receive texts, but I wouldn't hear or see them unless I chose to. That should buy me some time.

I activated my Tactical Cloak and left.

January 24rd, 2211. 0756 hours – Aboard the SSV Hippocrates, Deck 1, Containment Airlock 1

14 hours and 56 minutes after Outbreak, 79 minutes before contact with the gravity well of Theodore 108

Had it only been fifteen hours?

I stared at the massive set of doors that lead into the Prometheus Lab. Beyond the doors lay darkness. Not absolute darkness, I could see some semblance of emergency lighting within the labs themselves, but a different kind of darkness – the darkness that chilled the very soul, the darkness beneath the bed, the darkness that wasn't the absence of light but the incomprehensibility of the unnatural.

It was hard to believe it had only been fifteen hours ago that this whole mess started. It had felt like a lifetime since then.

I looked around me. The giant, ragged hole where the Chimera had crawled out of was still there. The flares that the marines and I had thrown around the room were now cold and no longer gave out any light.

The Containment Airlock was littered with bodies. Most of them belonged to Corpsers – dead, tattered, half-metallic monsters. Many of them lay wreathed in a halo of black and blue fluid from the bullet wounds that we'd inflicted to put them down, and several had been completely torn apart, courtesy of my biotic explosions.

I made my way over to where the turian security guard with the gaping hole in his chest still lay. He lay in exactly the same spot and in exactly the same way as he had when we had come across him so long ago. The only difference was that his skin was starting to take a greyer, chalky color and his plates seemed more dull and stone-like. The stench of decay was much more pervasive now, he was likely in the early stages of decomposition.

It was weird coming back here. Like going back to your bedroom after a long semester abroad – everything was as you left it, but none of it seemed familiar.

I moved on and hovered outside the threshold of the Prometheus Labs. The darkness beyond stared back at me like a living, breathing creature, wordlessly communicating with me. Something kept me rooted in place. Fear, anxiety, maybe a dozen different things that a trained shrink could name but I could only shrug at. No matter, whatever it was it was impeding my progress and starting to piss me off.

My alarm hit zero and I felt the sudden lurch of acceleration as the emergency thrusters fired for the sixth time.

I was unprepared, with nothing to brace myself. The resulting movement threw me to my feet, I landed on all fours and drove the palms of my hands into the deck, fighting against the acceleration. The G-forces threatened to lay me out on the deck but I resisted.

Eventually it passed and I clambered to my feet. I sighed in relief and reset the timer once again. As I did I noticed that Percival and Cade and even Camilla had left no less than a dozen messages in the last five minutes. I didn't have any more time to waste. I needed to retrieve that CPU.

Fear, anxiety, whatever – it could all wait. I shoved it all deep down and readied my Predator Pistol. With one last deep breath I moved over the threshold of the doors and into the Prometheus Lab itself.

The Labs were an absolute mess. The main hall was littered with bodies so torn up that even they couldn't be repurposed by the Crawlers into more of the synthetic-organic killing machines.

In the wake of the outbreak, everyone had tried desperately to escape. Many of the scientists had chosen the main hall and that had made them easy prey for the monsters within.

I panned my Pistol from side to side, my eyes darting back and forth, mindful of any and all possible vectors of ambush. The emergency lighting wasn't particularly bright, but it did a good enough job of illuminating the hall for me. It also did a good job of throwing every single body, severed limb and pool of blood in dark shadows.

The main hall would take me straight to the activation chamber, the Core, the CPU and presumably Olivia. Back at engine room she had given me the data drive and had asked me to find her. The drive had contained a video partially describing an anomaly in a certain subset Reaper Cores and was meant to act as a clue to her location. I had surmised that she currently awaited me in the activation chamber down in the Labs, waiting beside the Reaper Core and the CPU that she was likely banking on me trying to retrieve.

Which meant that I could be walking into a trap.

She had had the opportunity to leave. The rest of her saboteurs had departed some time ago, aboard a massive cruiser called the Exitus. Thanks to my efforts, not many of them would be returning home. I'd denied them the data drive, wounded the turian, thrown a wrench in the plans of whoever Mordred was, and hopefully killed the insane, twisted salarian.

And now I was going to make it two for two.

The emergency lighting didn't quite extend to the halls that branched off from the main hall, leaving them bathed in darkness. Any number of creatures could be lurking in them, ready to tear me to pieces, but I didn't have the luxury to go and check each one.

The activation chamber was ahead, I could see the doors. They lay ripped open, likely the work of one of the Changers that the Core had created upon activation. Just a couple dozen more meters and I'd be inside.

The hall widened up at this location. Bodies and blood were the dominating feature for this part of the hall, but enough fixtures remained for me to see that it had once been a large vestibule that acted as a sort of hub for the entire lab. Many hallways fed into the area, offices studded the sides and more than a few security booths were present around its perimeter.

I was halfway through when an intense wave of pressure brought me to my knees and a cacophony of voices welled up in my head. I went down with a gasp of pain and fought desperately to stand back up, to keep moving.

The chittering seemed to come from every direction at once. I looked around with, my eyes watering in pain, trying to see where the Chimera was approaching from but failing to do so. With a supreme show of will I pushed myself to my feet with a yell and stumbled a few more steps towards the activation chamber.

A wave of pressure knocked me down again. The chittering intensified and washed over me like a wave of static. I dropped my pistol and my fingers immediately began to scrabble for the M-920 Cain hooked to my back. I'd carried it with me all the way from the armory in preparation for this encounter. One shot, one 25 gram slug at a speed of five kilometers an hour.

As if it recognized my intentions, the voices in my head grew even louder and angrier. I gave a loud, pained cry and collapsed onto the deck. The pressure was so intense – so painful – that I'd abandoned my attempt to grab the Cain and instead grabbed desperately at my head. I writhed on the deck and screamed. Eventually the pain, the voices, the pressure, all of it became too much to bear and everything went black.

The alarm of my omni-tool pulled me back, indicating that the seventh phase had passed. I flipped onto my stomach and wearily raised my head.

Down the way I came stalked the Chimera. The pressure and pain were still there, but had receded into levels more manageable and much less debilitating. I struggled to my knees and spat out a bit of blood that had appeared in my mouth.

The creature was massive, forty feet of twisted flesh, metal plating, and jagged metal spikes and nearly eight feet tall at the shoulder. Its large red headplate was pitted and scorched from where my sticky grenade had detonated back during our first encounter and wounded it, tearing off one of its pincers.

It silently padded towards me. Strangely, I didn't get the sense I was in danger – no. Its fingers barely left a sound on the cold, metal deck. Unlike its smaller brethren the Chimera's eyes had a highly-developed sentience to them that chilled me to my core.

It stopped maybe twenty feet away from me and sat back on its massive hind-legs. Every cell in my body screamed at me to get up, to run away from this twisted, metallic horror, but curiosity and confusion kept me rooted in place. It wasn't trying to rip me limb from limb. Its long, sinuous tail with its jagged barb at the end wasn't actively trying to impale me like it had countless other victims. Instead it was coiled around it like how a cat might sit.

The voices and the whispers in my head intensified for a brief moment before they began to form recognizable, distinct words.

Save… us…

I froze. It could speak. Either it could speak or I was growing mad. Maybe my brain had finally succumbed to all the pain and pressure and loss and I had finally and utterly lost it.

Save us, Tar'elessar…

"What are you? What do you want?" I whispered.

The Chimera flexed in place and then slowly rose to stand on all fours. Its barbed tail swept back and forth as its six eyes bore into me. The chittering ceased and silence took to the air on swift, rotted wings.

Instead of words came a series of images and emotions, tearing through my head like a hurricane. Hundreds of images flashed through my eyes in seconds. A planet, then two, then hundreds. Beings whose features I couldn't make out. Voices speaking in a language I could not recognize. Laughter, happiness, joy. The birth of a child, two individuals embracing.

Then fire. Fire and blood and darkness. The sunset on a dozen worlds. Screaming, shouting, pain, and fear. Long, majestic spires set aflame, knocked down. Large, metallic claws of some sort. Red, red eyes, red light, the shouting of a mother for her child, a figure cradling a broken body. Above it all, a loud, piercing horn.

And finally Earth and Thessia and Rannoch and Tuchanka and Sur'kesh. Human, quarian, krogan—hundreds of thousands of faces began to blur and distort, their features slowly twisting. Blue light and red eyes. Howling, snarling, hunger… a desire, a supreme desire to live.

And like a summer storm the barrage of images and emotions ceased, leaving me drained and tired and feeling as if I could sleep for a decade.

I gasped and stared at the creature in horror. The images I hadn't recognized except for the last few, but the emotions? Those were unmistakable – as timeless and as universal as death itself. Whatever these creatures were, whatever this thing was, the galaxy and its inhabitants were its food. It wanted to consume, to feed. It was hungry.

Will you… save us… Tar'elessar?

Its fingers curled against the deck. Though they lacked talons or claws and were about the size of my own, the sheer weight of the creature caused them to form a series of gouges in the polysteel metal. Its long, sinuous tail was still now, its lone pincer absolutely motionless. Only its six eyes showed any signs of movement. They peered expectantly at me, blinking one at a time as it awaited my response.

I'd seen what that tail can do. In the blink of an eye that tail could shoot directly at me. My armor wouldn't stand a chance against its barbed, jagged edge. If it didn't decide to kill me that way, it could simply pick me up and tear me in half like a wishbone. It could pounce on me and break my spine, or it could shatter my ribcage with a swipe of its muscled forelimb.

It also wanted off this ship. It wanted me to save it. It wanted to be let loose in my galaxy so that it could eat, consume, destroy.

I got up onto one knee and spat on the deck in front of it. "Fuck you," I snarled.

And like a summer storm its fury came back in full force. The pressure and the voices in my head resumed with punishing intensity and the cacophony of chittering reached a crescendo. It lifted its head and its human-like mouth let out a terrifyingly human-sounding wail.

I cried out in pain and fell down again. I screwed my eyes shut and awaited the end. I wanted so badly to die on my feet but the pressure and the pain was simply too much.

Images and pictures flashed through my mind once more, except this time they were my own memories. Images of Cade, of Percival, of Accer and Val and Camilla. A mischievous smile, dark-brown hair and hazel-colored eyes. Sarah and her husband, the photo of her child.

A part of me wished that I'd been able to apologize to my friends for leaving without a word, wished that I'd gotten another chance to see Cade and Camilla bicker over something trivial, for Percival to lecture me on something incredibly stupid that I'd done, to sit in that dingy old bar back at the Citadel after a particularly rough mission and drink myself half-blind one last time.

I remembered a technician who'd been too scared to let her friends in, who'd locked them out and who'd died alone.

Get up…

I opened my eyes. Maybe it was the residual drugs in my system, or a stress-induced hallucination, or some side effect of the abnormal amount of dopamine my brain was likely releasing in anticipation of death, but I could see my mother standing above me, one hand extended, reaching out to me.

She looked just like the last time I'd seen her. As far as pre-death auditory and visual hallucinations went, this was a much nicer way to go. Sure, maybe I didn't die on my feet, but this was the next best thing.

Your friends need you…

"I'm so tired, mom," I gasped.

I know, baby. But your friends need you, your family needs you…

I couldn't die here, not now, not like this. I was going to get that Reaper CPU and destroy these fucking creatures and leave this fucking ship and stop the saboteurs from carrying out their messed-up plan.

Get up

I snarled and pulled myself to my feet, fighting back against the pain and the pressure. My amp crackled on as a torrent of biotic blue energy began to encase me in a fiery vortex. I could feel it coursing through my veins like fire, every cell in my being tingling with biotic power. Every hair on my body rose up from the static electrical discharge generated by my powerful mass effect fields. Dozens of fiery-blue tendrils encased me in a massive corona of biotic energy.

The Chimera's chittering intensified and it began to run towards me. With a scream I brought my hands together and ripped them apart. The blue corona around me detonated violently and a whirlwind of biotic forces shot around the hall.

The bulk of it slammed into the Chimera and threw it back nearly two dozen meters. It scurried to its feet and shook its head, then tilted his headplate towards me and began to charge.

I grabbed the M-920 Cain from my back and activated it. In half a second it had extended into its full length and shape. I jammed the stock into my shoulder and aimed it towards the creature. I pressed down on the trigger and the weapon began to charge.

The creature was less than a dozen meters away from me now. I gritted my teeth and held my ground. The meter on the side of my weapon filled up and an indicator light went from red to green, indicating that it was ready to fire. I released the trigger.

A bright flash of light seared into my coronas, followed by what sounded like a thunderbolt. A ball of white energy slammed into the Chimera, right where its right shoulder was. The detonation sheared off its right foreleg and parts of its chest. The foreleg that had once been Tago Veers disintegrated in a fiery ball of light and heat.

The resulting explosion knocked me at least five meters back. My ass hit the deck with a clatter and my shields whined as they depleted instantly. The front of my armor was singed and my biofeedback meters indicated that I had suffered serious contusions on my upper chest and arms. My ears rang, I felt something wet trickle down my face and when I moved my hand to touch it my fingers came away covered in blood.

I coughed and struggled to my feet, I discarded the empty M-920 Cain and scurried over to where my pistol lay on the deck and grabbed it.

I blinked a few times to get rid of the after-images that the detonations had left in my eyes. The smell of charred flesh and smoke lingered like a blanket over the hall. I looked around. My mother was nowhere to be seen. Once my vision had fully returned, I looked to where the Chimera had fallen.

It was weakly trying to pull itself up onto its remaining limbs. I aimed at it and emptied my pistol at the creature, but it hid itself behind its metal-plated tail. Jagged metal edges and torn cables marked the spot where its right arm used to be and it had a series of scorch marks running up its right flank and neck. A large chunk of its headplate was missing as well, and it was heavily bleeding a blue, oily fluid from its various wounds.

My predator overheated and I fumbled for a heatsink. My fingers scratched dumbly at my combat webbing that housed it as I struggled to recover from the effects of the M-920 Cain.

I was finally forced to look down and eyeball it. Eventually I managed to take it out and slide it into my Predator pistol, but by the time I looked back up the Chimera was long gone.

A trail of oily blue blood marked the path it had taken. I considered going after it, but I was in no condition to fight it. My amp was burned out, I'd need to replace it with a spare once I'd gotten back onto the Excalibur.

The Cain was now nothing more than a flashy, one-point-eight million credit paperweight and I don't think I was in any condition to use my Snakebite effectively, not while I was still seeing double.

I sighed and decided to let it go. In my current shape any confrontation between me and the Chimera would likely end in my premature demise. I ran a dirty gauntlet through my hair and rubbed my eyes. As I did I couldn't help but notice that my rough stubble was getting worse. Shaving it would be the first thing I did once I got off this fucking ship.

I didn't know how I had survived that but I had. The headaches and the pressure that the creature generated within me had been beyond crippling in each and every single encounter that I'd had with it prior to this one. The Minagen X9 in my system had to have been depleted maybe an hour or an hour and a half ago, making the raw display of biotic power that I'd displayed a surprising twist.

I never considered myself an exceptional biotic, nor an exceptional marksman, an exceptional close-quarters fighter or an exceptional anything. By rights I didn't think that I'd survive that encounter. Maybe it was all the adrenaline from the heat of the moment. Maybe it was the threat that I knew that these creatures posed to the galaxy, or maybe it was just sheer luck. Maybe it was something else.

"Thanks mom," I said out loud.

"No problem," a voice replied.

I whirled around. Standing like a sentinel in front of the entrance to the activation chamber was a slim, familiar silhouette. Her sleek black, form-fitting armor which had once been new and pristine was now pitted and scarred, just like mine was. Even the saboteurs had not been exempt from the trials aboard the ship.

Her helmet was off, allowing a cascade of red hair to fall around her shoulders. She was very tall for a woman, perhaps as tall as I was. Her stance was arrogant, her Nightbringer blade was sheathed on her back and her hands were on both hips. Dried flakes of blood covered parts of her armor and a bruise discolored the skin on her otherwise flawless cheek where I'd elbowed her, back in the data archives.

The scar that she had given me on my left cheek burned. Blue static danced around my fingertips and I could feel my heart thumping wildly in anticipation at the fight to come, sending blood throughout my body, bringing me to full awareness and dispelling the pain from the fight with the Chimera.

She cocked an eyebrow in an amused look and glanced below my armored belt.

"Is that a spare Predator or are you just happy to see me?"

I held up a finger to shush her. I grabbed the last syringe I'd taken from the medical deck and injected it into an emergency induction port somewhere around my collar armor. The synthetic adrenaline hit my bloodstream and flooded my systems. I'd be running on borrowed time, but hopefully it'd just be enough for me to go three for three on bad guys. I'm counting the Chimera as a win, fuck that thing.

"We're doing this, right? This is what you wanted?" I asked.

Olivia smiled at me and pulled the Nightbringer blade from her sheath. She drew it with a flourish and held it out in front of her, pointing the tip at me.

"I'm just giving you what you want, Romeo. A pseudo-catharsis to all the scars and feelings you've acquired in your time aboard this lovely ship."

Okay Sigmund Freud, no need to get personal.

I placed my own hands on my hip and stared her down. "You could have left, you know, or you could have gone with the rest of your friends. Instead you're going to die aboard this ship."

She let the tip drop to the floor and smiled again, this time all teeth and ice. "Maybe. Or maybe we'll die together."

"I'm just saying. Staying doesn't make sense."

"Love isn't supposed to make sense."

My hands went from my hips to the handles of the two Talon combat knives I had strapped to my lower back. I drew them and twirled them around my palms once before bringing both of them up in a tip-down guard position. Olivia grabbed her sword in both hands and brought it beside her head, blade horizontal with the floor and the tip facing me.

I brought one leg behind me and kept my other leg pointed ahead. I loosened up my shoulders and arms but tightened up my grip on my knives. "Do we really need to say anything before we start?"

"Love is silent."