Author's Note: So have to try and tough it out for another 11 months in universe until we reach the final battle, for lack of better term. Luckily recent reviews have given me ideas on how to continue the story. Read, Review, Favourite and Enjoy!

Chapter 76: Rift Delta Part 2

12M 12D 19H Until the Colossus Fires

The E-Y-K9 was a marvel of Tebrid engineering.

A heavily armoured thick durasteel shell lined with electrokinesis muscles and powered by a ZPM core, appropriately tamper proof of course. The suit also featured all the appropriate attachments for biotics as well, whether it was flinging themselves across the battle field with a Vanguard's charge or forming a huge invincible wall with omni-gel Biotic Elcor do it all, and with the addition of dozen's of pounds of omni-gel and dedicated Neu Eezo boosters they could do it much better.

Elcor typically lumber about the battlefield on all four limbs, which makes the task of firing guns rather difficult. Instead two Massive guns are strapped to the back, controlled via Blink clicks by the Elcor. The guns in question were experimental weapons developed by the Tebrids, attempts to scale down the Thanix cannon and Tachyon lance technology so that the heavy weapons can be portable, still too massive for any normal soldier to carry, but perfect for the Elcor.

And Perfect for a giant interdimensional ball of meat. The meat ball discarded its Turian prisoners and pieces of crude armour as it slipped into the E-Y-K9, changing it's shape to fit the armour.

Mordin did not believe that the worms had the capacity for sapience, but that was only true for the individual worms, as they gather together they form of a collective consciousness, while the addition of the Thorian engineered Quarian Brain and GreyBox did boost that intelligence that was the limit. Instead the Greybox included some standardised programs, such as the Draconian developed universal translation VI that made it possible to translate and understand everything around them. Thus the Meat Ball learned that plans were being made to invade it's homeworld and slaughter its kin. Turnabout was fair-play and all that.

A blade of Mass Effect fields punctured the door and caused it to start to break back down into Omni-gel. The worms weren't just in the suit, they had also attached themselves to the backs of the Turians, directly to the brain stem giving them the perfect opening to hijack and override control over their own muscles. The door fell away and the controlled Turian's went on the offensive.

"What's with you guys!?" Tarquin shouted as immediately the Turians rushed the door.

"No Lethals!" Smok telekinetically pushed the Turian's out of the way. "The worms are controlling them!" Their bodies were under control but not their brains, and their brains were calling him help. "Use your omni blade to disable those things! I got the big one!"

As Smok was saying that, the Omni armour on the monster suddenly appeared, followed up by a blue field as the beast charged forward, slammed into into Smok face first and sandwiching him between the gorilla/tank cross and the wall of the ship. Lances of flame slammed directly into the Meat Ball's face courtesy of Smok, doing little than making the enraged monster back away. Smok began backing away as he continued to pelt the creature with fire, unfortunately Tebrids do good work.

"For Dragon's sake!" Smok cursed as he whipped out a plasma shot gun and fired into the face of the heavily armoured monster, detonating the mass effect field and turning the Omni Armour into shrapnel but leaving the actual armour underneath intact, because of course the Tebrid's fire proofed the armour. Instead the Elcor-like monster spread their stance and the weapons on its back opened fire. Jets of Red hot metal were spat out, and blocked at the last moment, barely. Smok had initially disabled the safety protocol that snaps force-fields to into existence so that he'd be able to use his pyrokinesis, when it became apparent that wasn't going to work he reactivated it in time, causing a suffocating force-field to appear to try and suppress the attack. Better to limit his own options than to let the station get destroyed, or so Smok likes to think. The other weapon was getting ready to fire anyway, a Tachyon cannon that would snap the station in two if fired here. Smok's telekinetics grabbed the discarded door left in the laboratory and after crushing it into a ball threw it into the charging weapon and triggering a explosion as the weapon was destroyed.

"Come and get me you slimy bastards!"

Smok then pulled the classical tactic of running away as fast as possible, activating his boost pack and letting the jets shoot him forward, with the Meat Ball chasing from behind biotic Charge letting them keep up with Smok. There were ways of slowing the monster down, setting more fires to trigger the fire suppression fields, security doors, a less direct route, but you see Smok wasn't just running away, he was leading the heavily armoured meat ball away. Soon the Draconic had arrived at his destination, the cargo bay, and so had his pursuer.

"Oi." Smok wasn't running way now, he just had his mask on and his hand on a lever connected to the main door of the Cargo bay. "Get off our ship." Smok pulled down the lever. The Cargo bay doors opened up to the void of space, immediately all the air evacuated from the cargo bay. The armoured meat ball desperately started increasing its gravity in order to keep from being sucked out into the void of space. Unfortunately for it the entire ship was against it. Under Smok's command the ship tipped itself over so that the open cargo bay doors were pointing downwards to the surface of the planet, and then the artificial gravity on the ship was cancelled, and suddenly the super heavy mass of meat and metal turned into a meteor and crashed into the surface of Lessus.

12M 09D 10H Until the Colossus Fires

The size of the Meat ball had been reduced as a result of crashing into the planet. The remains had been fed to the Dextro-Thorian and were reanimated. A more secure holding cell later and now the interrogation began.

"Why did you attack our people?" Smok asked with a glare, sitting in a chair while watching the cavern where the mass of worms were writhing about. "We're still trying to disconnect the rest of you parasites from them."

"Now you ask?" A high pitch voice echoed from everywhere and nowhere. There was still some distortion even after their thoughts had been turned into something he could understand. "Where was this when you were planning to destroy our nest and slaughter us?" Smok watched a memory play out, Mordin and Tarquin discussing forcing their way through the Rift and killing the Worms.

"I need to have a chat with the scientist and liason it would seem." Smok stated as he let out a sigh. "We don't run around committing genocide against sapient beings and we certainly don't invade their territory without good reason."

"Lies!" Smok winced at the force used to say that.

"How do we remove your people from ours?"

"No." The nest of worms snapped by way of response. "You have attacked our colony, taken our people hostage, and killed us. You will have no cooperation from us!"

Well that was a failure.

"Do you even have a name that we can call you by or...?" Smok was hit by a sharp spike of pain, like someone shoving a rail road spike through his skull, forcing him to sever the connection.

Smok left the mental palace, returning to the newly upgraded quarantine room with the ball of worms trapped behind a steel glass cell. Smok shook his head in the negative and Tarquin let out a sigh. Great. Time to go brief the Council.

"Individual Worms Non-Sapient." Mordin was revising his previous observations about the worms, for obvious reasons. "Consciousness forms from pooling together in groups like Geth. Each Worm is Psionic and Biotic. Individual worms are able to attach themselves on a neurological level to Dextro based lifeforms such as Turians and Quarians, overriding muscle groups. Because of decentralised piecemeal body type they're able to fit themselves over a variety of different shapes." Individual holograms of both the tentacled meat ball shape and the post crash Elcor shape were brought up as a side by side comparison. "Testimony from Smok paints the worms as highly formidable combatants, both from the ability to take over the bodies of others and their power as physical combatants." Though Mordin was the one giving the lecture, the eyes of both the Nyreen and Tevos holograms were sitting Squarely on Escheel's with a glare until eventually the Salarian cracked.

"What are you two staring at me for!?" Escheel eventually snapped with a glare at the other two Councillors.

"Don't even think about it Escheel!" Nyreen snapped.

"What are-?"

"Don't!"

"Nyreen, if you don't clearly explain things to her she'll turn around and do it anyway." Tevos explained as she let out a sigh. "You're people have a long and unpleasant history of 'uplifting' primitive, violent, Pre-FTL races to fight your wars for you, especially in the face of overwhelming odds." Tevos stated her tone of voice implying this was rather obvious before. "The Krogan, the Yahg, The Rachni."

"As I recall there was quite a Asari craze a while back to try and 'domesticate' The Vorcha." Nyreen snapped her attention turning to Tevos who awkwardly pulled on her collar.

"In our defence we were going for 'engineers' not 'soldiers.'" And all of that was flatly ignoring the fact that at least one of those had been to fight the individuals sitting opposite of them in this room.

"Seconded." Senator Udina piped up, some agreements going through the crowd of Union senators whose holograms accompanied his. "The Union does not condone the enslavement of Pre-FTL species for use of labour or soldiers. Smok, once all of the worms have been removed from their hosts you will return them to the rift and then have it sealed anyway that you can." At minimum, building a box out of neutron material around the Rift should ensure that nothing can get in or out. "With that matter settled we should consider looking at other sights for another rift."

"Illium perhaps?" Tevos suggested bluntly. The Asari were still in the good books regarding the Rifts, the issues that exist with the other two's territories still exist after all. "It's far away from Lessus, and there's already sizeable infrastructure on the planet that we'll be able to make use of."

"I think our friends here will be mildly upset at the world that has managed to legalise slavery in Council Space." Nyreen stated indicating the Union Senators.

"Excuse me!?"

12M 08D 22H Until the Colossus Fires

Illium is one of the younger Asari colony worlds, Illium was a garden world turned city planet, the first Asari born on the planet is only now reaching their equivalent of middle age, around five hundred years. It was also one of the biggest hotbeds of illegal activity in Council space, a fact largely attributed to the fact that it's on the border of Terminus space. At this point Illium was little more than a giant mass of legal grey zones and plausible deniability wrapped around weapons, drug trials and trade deals of questionable to flat out illegality. Tevos gave the green light to 'clean house' while the union was in the area. While teams of telepaths were sweeping the planet efforts were being made to set up a new Astral Rift nearby.

"As soon as the missile is detonated I want security teams ready for whatever is on the other side." Liara was taking over for this one too, of course as far as any of the people here knew she was the Liason to the Stellar Union. "I do not want illium to become the victim of another worm infestation!"

The missile fired and was subsequently detonated, however this Rift soon proved itself to be exceptionally abnormal, as not only did it stabilise within moments of coming into existence, but something also came through. A giant round, perfectly smooth ball, attached to something on the otherside via an umbilical tether, it was a design that was so familiar that Liara thought someone had messed up.

"It's a Rift Sphere." Admiral SpeedJunkie explained as he produced a hologram of the item in question. "The design matches ours." One can expect the Rift spheres to hold some degree of similarity to one another, aside from things like a cockpit for people to enter the rift through, sensors or mining equipment all of their Rift Spheres have been pretty bare bones thus far. That said, there was writing across the front of it in the Tebrid's language, a serial number for the standardised parts used.

"Did you lose it?" Liara asked looking at the Admiral with suspicion.

"It's true that we lost several probing devices during our initial attempts into the Rift, but they were all destroyed and the debris later retrieved, further more..." A second hologram, apparently identical to the first, right down to the Tebrid writing on it. "This one is currently in storage at Site Alpha."

"What was it designed to do?" Liara asked looking at the Tebrid with suspicion.

"Release probes into the Rift to try and explore deeper into the dimension." The Admiral replied bluntly. "It hasn't seen much use, because the probes we released were either destroyed or were transported to the other side of the Rift. Or so we thought at least." The first of the two holograms played, depicting another familiar device, one of the deep space probes that the Admiral had been talking about.

"Is that what I think it is?"

"It was heavily damaged, we had to transplant the black box into a new device to decipher the contents." A holographic video appeared next. "Shall we watch the contents together?"

Familiar scenery started to play out. The science team led by Mordin at Site Alpha testing the probe and putting it into the Rift Sphere, then Darkness. The footage resumed play showing a brief snippet of the Parshati's planet as it went through it's familiar cycle of growth and regression, before hitting the distant barrier of warped space that surrounded the region around the planet and the footage cut out with snow. However rather than staying blank, the footage resumed with a figure both familiar and unfamiliar as the one holding the device to their face.

"Is that an Unbidden?" Liara was surprised to say the least at the sight of the familiar looking entity. To be more specific it looked like one of the purple coloured wizards.

"No the way this one's body is composed is completely different." Admiral SpeedJunkie disagreed.

The new being holding the probe was composed of familiar crystal, Zro, unlike a normal Unbidden which is made out of blocky and disorganised crystal this one looked more like strands of interwoven fibre glass. The new footage cut out again, this time showing footage of a giant single celled organism that had a ship flying through it. A second time, the remains of Hub Alpha have formed a permanent crescent while Hub Gamma circled around a Ecumenopolis that likely belonged to the Animator of Clay. A third time, a huge rocky world with moving stone formations crawling along the surface. going by the pattern so far it was the worms home world. A fourth time, this time it wasn't a world but a huge crystal spike with a ring of other crystals floating around it, though it's sheer mass put it on par with a planet, more importantly it was under attack by the familiar ships used by the Unbidden.

Finally the same extradimentional entity with a station identical to what they used as a launch and retrieval platform for the Rift Sphere before putting the probe into the internal compartment and sending it through the Rift, with the final cut showing the Admiral's men extricating the device from within the sphere.

"As you can see, it seems that someone has kept track of all the planets in the void that we have visited and-"

"I'm sorry could you rewind the footage a bit?" Liara asked in a polite tone of voice, as if she was strangling her own feelings. "The second one, with the giant Amoeba."

"Ah sure." The Tebrid rewound the footage. From the ship a figure emerged, it might've been hard to figure out who they were, were it not for the long mechanical tendrils coming out of their back and crawling out to the Organelle which was then taken and brought back into the ship. "One of Lawson's monsters, in a Salarian ship!" Liara snapped and this time her tone of voice was far from polite.

12M 08D 20H Until the Colossus Fires

Word was sent to Citadel concerning the Salarian's duplicity, not only did they let Lawson and his gang of monsters through the rift, but they also provided them with one of their own ships, and by the looks of things in exchange they were doing some freelance exploration for them. Naturally Citadel Security had been dispatched to Escheel's apartment, to protect her from the trio who had taken over her apartment.

"You really have to stop doing these things." Shepard had taken her heels off as she sat in Escheel's recliner like chair, it wasn't exactly built for humans but it was close. "Every time the Salarian's Meld up-" Curse the Universal Translators for butchering her swear words. "-we need to go over you Clocoas territory with a fine tooth comb and pick out the ones causing trouble, and if I'm being honest, it's really kinda annoying!"

"Not... a walk... in the... park for... me either!" Escheel was having a hard time breathing right now, and by extension speaking. "Get this... thing! Off... Me!"

"That's rude." Leo stated by way of reply, currently using Escheel as a seat cushion.

"She lying to us buddy?" Shepard cracked open a can and pored out three glasses for herself and for Leo and Escheel.

"No." Leo notably made no effort to move off of his prisoner.

"Yeah I figured that." Shepard leaned over glass in hand as she glared at the opposition. "I'm beginning to think linking all you lizards into a big fat hivemind is the smartest thing you ever tried to do." The Dragoon downed the contents of her glass as she continued to glare. "At least this way you won't have all that less-plausible-by-the-day deniability to hide behind whenever one of you tries something!"

"Can't... Bree..." Shepard had opted to direct Leo off Escheel.

"Now is there something you would like tell us about your little hive mind? Like where they are and the Shroud they think they're doing?" Shepard put Escheel's glass within range of the Salarian.

"As far as I know they're supposed to be developing Tachyon based technology." Escheel sat up, taking a moment to let her cracked ribs readjust themselves.

"Weapons?" Shepard asked familiar with the Tachyon lance weapons.

"Transmitters." Escheel corrected as she took the drink. "Current Long Range communications technology relies on entangled particles, unable to be intercepted, instantaneous, but also limited to communication between two individuals and difficult to mass produce. Tachyon transmitter and receiver theoretically offers flat improvement over commercial long distance communications technology."

"Provided that you can avoid breaking time and space over your knee when ever you text home to Mom." It was reckless, but the benefits were obvious if you can make it work the way you want it too.

"Yes. This is a design flaw I agree." Escheel seemed to agree with Shepard's assessment, though Shepard herself only got more angry.

"Is that what Lawson is helping you stupid people with? He's building a transmitter for you so that he can let you reach out across the vast void of empty space and reach the other side of the void?" Shepard glared at Escheel, like this question was the most important that she had ever asked, and in her opinion it just might be.

"Maybe?" Escheel replied with a shrug of her shoulders. "Here's where they should be anyway." Escheel waved her omni-tool around and transferred the information to Shepard's own Omni-tool.

"Huu." Shepard just let out a sigh of exasperation as she received the information and waved her partner over. "You are the most useless being I have ever had the displeasure of talking to." Shepard dropped her empty glass on a table as she waved Leo over, pressing a button on her suit Javik suddenly appeared in the room, grabbed the two Dragoon's by their shoulders, and then teleported away again.

The Three individuals soon reappeared on a Union ship docked at the citadel, which then de-docked to take its leave.

"They are Traitors." Having listened in on the conversation Javik was now expressing his opinion. "In my cycle they would have been deprived of their limbs and given a choice, starve to death or consume their own flesh."

"We have to find them first." Shepard immediately went behind a thin screen to get dressed.

"Yes. This Lawson creature is a slippery one if what you say is true." Javik was holding his chin as he pondered the thought.

"Courtesy of the Shadow Broker." Leo took out a suitcase and clicked it open, inside was a sample jar, containing a finger. "Taken from one of Lawson's monsters when we had her in custody once. What do you make of it?"

Javik picked up the jar, and his entire body shivered.

"A hybrid of several different creatures. Human, the Thorian, other unspeakable monstrosities, chief among them the twisted essence of the Reaper's. A powerful psychic and biotic." Javik dropped the jar back into the suitcase, visibly panting at what he just wrung himself through. "If you find where these creatures are don't bother trying to take samples: glass the planet from orbit, this isn't a creature, it's a plague playing at a species. If a single cell is allowed to escape-"

"Little more concerned about them doing more than spread at this point in time." With a click Shepard finished putting her armour on. "Everything we've been able to dig up on the bastards say that what they want is to create a perfect synthorganic life-form, and either spread it across the galaxy or remake all life in the galaxy based on it. The perfect slaves that will never be able to rebel again."

"The creatures Lawson has been Breeding." Javik concluded and Shepard nodded.

"The worst part is that we haven't even seen the end goal yet." Shepard held up the finger to Javik. "This isn't the end result, this is the template. Imagine if this was applied to 'Krogan' or even 'Pasharti?' Imagine if Lawson is able to combine this with all the crap we're pulling out of the Rifts? Imagine them being able to separate and recombine their bodies like the Worms, Teleport from place to place like your own people or the Warplings, or mutate people like what happened to the Salarians Lawson was working with? Now imagine all those myriad possible horrors as weapons in the hands of the Reapers."

Javik nodded his head in understanding. That might not be Lawson's goal but it was what he's doing. Reapers have spent billions if not trillions of years coming up with specialised techniques to get people to do what they want and Gaslighting them into thinking it was their idea, even after being theoretically cured of indoctrination Lawson could still be egotistical enough to think he could never be controlled and proceed with his Reaper born scheme anyway. Right now he is getting very close to transmitting his designs to his masters.

"I don't know about what he thinks his ultimate goal is, but I do know that we have to stop him before his madness kills us all, or worst."

"Agreed. I have not been asleep for Millennia only to become a slave to the Reapers now." Javik made his opinion known.

"What about the coordinates?" Leo asked bluntly as he was already curating his selection of weapons for the next stage of the job.

"Probably lead to a black hole, or some place equally as unpleasant." The Salarian reputation for sabotage was vast, and given Escheel's reputation thus far it wouldn't surprise Shepard to learn that she had been bamboozled by her own people into giving false information. "No if Lawson wants to establish communications with the bastards so badly then the place that he'll do it is the one spot in the galaxy that's closest to their point of entry." Shepard's Omni-tool projected a galactic map, though it quickly shrunk down as the one part that Shepard wanted was zoomed in on.

"Security is going to be tight there boss." Leo stated looking at the system in question.

"Yeah I know. It might not be that Lawson can even get there." The system in question was the Bahak System. It was originally a place that was being colonised by the Batarians, however it was swept through by the Stellar Union like the rest of the Batarian's space with the aliens being restricted to their home planets and penal armies, with the colony in the system paved over and replaced by a 'research' station. Then the Reapers came and the 'research materials' were released to cut off their retreat, the same beings who now controlled the territory: The Unbidden.

Review Section:

RonaldM40196867: Well, it's contained now. I've talked at length already about how poorly I think Mass Effect 3's ending was done, not to mention cutting down on the gameplay features and squadmates introduced in the second game.

Monster King: Glad you like it.

Halo: So long as you're enjoying it.

Guest: That gives me some ideas actually.