Nemean Abyss, The Great Wound System
Carvin Black Site, Level -3, Main Reactor Room
0059 Local Time, June 26th, 2185 Gregorian Calendar
Shepard was not one to back down from a challenge. Hell, back in 2183 where most people and even governments were too scared of even approaching Saren, she was there, front and center, trying to take him down. She led her team to recapture the Citadel from the geth and Sovereign. And now she was assembling a team for a suicide mission to destroy the Collector Base.
But now, seeing the twisted demonic caricatures of carvins emerging from metallic chrysalids growing like tumors upon the main reactor room, the self-preservation instinct within her was compelling her to reassess her commitment to staying in this general area. Preferably as soon as possible. She was starting to understand why the man leaving the message was telling them to destroy or purge the station.
"Tali? How quickly could you rig the reactor to explode?" She asked, already aiming at the nearest corrupted carvin with her Phalanx.
"Uh, a minute?" The quarian fearfully replied, gripping her shotgun tightly.
"Make it 45 seconds. Go!" Shepard ordered, then glanced at Virox, who, despite being battered and bruised from the previous encounter, already assumed a fighting position. "Let's buy her time to do this, then we'll get out of here!"
"Understood." He nodded emotionlessly, returning to a ruthlessly focused state of mind that she knew him for.
They aimed for the nearest carvin husk, one that was just crawling out of its chrysalis just above the exit, and opened fire. Laser and slug, both were stopped by the carvin's strange shield, which emitted a greenish glow in every spot that was struck, much like Virox's shield. Both of them kept up a volley of fire until the protective barrier flickered and disappeared, leaving the cyborg vulnerable to ranged attacks. It screeched and wailed horribly, but unlike with the previous encounter, it could not find an opening to pounce on them. It wasn't long before it collapsed from its wounds.
"How much longer, Tali!?" Shepard shouted without turning back.
"I'm working on it! You haven't given me much time as it is!" Tali exclaimed, frantically running her fingers across the console.
"That's because I know you can do it!" She playfully replied.
"Charming." Quarian jabbed back, and after a few seconds a dull slam was heard from where she was standing. "Okay, got it! I disabled some of the cooling systems. It should trigger the meltdown after some time, but I don't know how long."
"Good enough, let's move!" Shepard ordered, and the three of them bolted towards the exit at full speed.
Just in time too, as more feral carvins now fully emerged from their steel prisons, shrieking and gargling, kind of similar to the geth. With the room being so small and no cover in the slightest, they would catch up quickly. So when both Shepard and Tali passed through the doorway, Virox smashed the lock, and blasted it with his rifle after the door closed properly.
"That should slow them down for a time." He said, glaring at the door with tense shoulders.
"Let's hope so." Shepard nodded, and activated her commlink. "Shepard to Normandy, do you copy?"
There was a surprisingly long delay before the answer came through, and it was distorted to a point of almost being unintelligible. "-rely. The station's *static*-measures are *static*."
"Have the shuttle stand by for pickup, I repeat - have the shuttle stand by for pickup!" She shouted, trying her best to speak slowly and clearly so that they would understand even through the jamming.
When she ended the transmission, she saw Virox kneel besides the dead purple creature that scared him so much and tinker with something on its head. Before she could even ask him what he was doing, he grabbed the beast's mechanical eye at its base and in a gory spectacle ripped it out with a single pull.
"What the hell was this for?" She asked, wiping off some of the bestial blood that got on her armor.
"Data. If there won't be anything useful left in the command center, then at least we'll have this to give to the High Command. Maybe they'll be able to dig something out of it." Virox answered, shaking the rest of the blood off of the eye.
Shepard nodded, but then realized what the carvin implied. "Wait, you're going up there!? The station is about to explode!"
"Tali said that she doesn't know when it'll blow up. So I'm going." He answered, and this time his expression was different. No cold ruthlessness, no rageful bloodlust, and no fear. Only pure determination.
Suddenly the door they just closed shook with a flurry of attacks coming from the other side. Shepard immediately reacted by instinctively pointing her weapon at the source, but then the loud mechanical banging also echoed from above them.
"Damn, they must have gotten out somehow!"
"Maintenance tunnel maybe?" Virox suggested, jolting once again after hearing the banging on the door intensify. "That would explain how the one we killed first got out of the reactor room and killed this Insectorox."
So it's called an Insextorox. Shepard mused, looking at the massive mangled corpse next to them. But after one of the hits on the door made a sizeable dent in the metal she really felt that they needed to get a move on. "This won't keep them at bay forever!"
No one objected, and so they began to run back the way they came, towards the elevator shaft. Stepping over the corpses and moving through the blood-stained walls was not pleasant. But the alternative of standing and fighting was in no way preferable, and so they had to bear through it.
When they reached the elevator shaft, the door leading to it was trying to close itself, only to jam itself every time after moving a few centimeters in. It seems the damage was already done before the power was cut the first time. At the very least Shepard hoped that the elevator itself was still working.
Come on, please don't be broken. She mentally begged the inanimate object, pressing the button to call the elevator. It took a moment but then an echo ran through the shaft, and after she looked inside, she saw the hulking mass of metal move upwards towards them. Oh thank goodness.
The moment the elevator's own doors slid open with a hiss, they leapt inside, just as the sounds of torn and deforming metal were starting to echo through the now lit up corridors of the station. For a brief moment they had a breather, but it was clear that this respite would not last long.
"Two levels up, you should find a way back to the shuttle easily." Virox said, clumsily switching from his rifle to his shotgun in the somewhat cramped interior of the elevator.
"You still want to go up there." Shepard more stated than asked. "You know you don't have to do this, Virox."
"On the contrary, commander. As an Imperial soldier I received orders to investigate the reasons behind this station's loss." The carvin replied, though his voice was quiet. "Pulling out now would be a negligence of the highest order, especially since the perpetrators were the Grox."
He was clearly not willing to budge on this, but Shepard tried one last time. "There may be no time for you to get back to us."
"Then in that case..." He once again pulled out the blood-stained eye of the Insectorox. "...you should take this and give it to the Imperial Bureau of Intelligence. If I don't make it."
As he said that, the elevator let out a soft beep and its doors slid open, revealing the familiar corridor that would lead them back to the shuttle. Tali hopped outside immediately, but Shepard hesitated. Virox held the eye in his hand, extending it towards her and urging her to take it. She knew that this would mean him going up there and potentially dying. And while he had not been on the Normandy as long as some others, she considered him a part of the crew just the same.
And then she thought about trust - the very thing that separated them. Virox's secretive nature, his unwillingness to open up, all of that was not really helped by the circumstances he had found himself in. But she now understood why he was that way. The fear of repercussions was just a part of it. At his core, he was loyal. Loyal to his people, to the Carvin Empire, and in a strange twist of fate - loyal to Shepard too. He did not insist for her to go with him, preferring instead to go alone, not willing to risk more lives.
With a heavy heart she took the device from him. It was time for the two of them to finally start trusting each other for real.
"We'll guard the exit for as long as we can." She said, stepping out of the elevator and giving him one last look.
"The mission always takes precedence, Commander." Virox replied, though his expression softened. "But... thank you."
After that the doors closed once again, leaving Shepard and Tali alone. None of them said a word, as they made their way back to the airlock. Their journey was quicker this time, since they knew the way and did not have to sneak around. But Shepard caught herself looking back several times, even when the terrible wailing and screeching of the carvin cyborgs was not audible.
When they reached the airlock, she activated her commlink again. "Shepard to Normandy. We're at the pickup site but there were... complications. We'll be delaying the extraction."
"Understood. I have managed to partially *static*-rough the jamming. Communications should be *static*-re stable." EDI's synthetic voice came through, though this time more clear. "The shuttle will await the extraction at your leisure."
"Good. Shepard out." She replied, ending the transmission, before once again looking back at the hallway they just came through. Go, you crazy carvin. I believe in you.
Nemean Abyss, The Great Wound System
Carvin Black Site, Level 2, Hallway B-10
0104 Local Time, June 26th, 2185 Gregorian Calendar
Alright... you can do this. Virox sighed, leaving the elevator and taking a look at his surroundings.
This area was thankfully devoid of the scenes of violence and gore so pronounced on Level -3. Instead there were clean corridors, adorned with brightly colored warning lights, and little to no way to reference where one was in this maze. That is unless one knew where to look.
He had served on many ships and space stations through the long years of his life, and knew that all of them were built similarly, with layouts designed for efficiency, meaning they were all somewhat predictable. In less than a minute he was already on the right path that led directly to the command center and the data he was looking for. All of that accompanied by the infernal wailing and screeching of his twisted brethren coming from the lower levels, creeping ever closer with each passing second. They must have either heard or smelled him, which meant he had to be fast.
When Virox did finally reach the final junction, which revealed to him the entrance to the command center, he scowled. The massive secure bulkhead itself, that was supposed to separate the command center from the rest of the station, was partially forced open in the same manner that the elevator doors were. That... thing, which used to be a carvin, must have also visited this area, even before they came aboard. But why? This was the one question that Virox still could not answer.
Slowly and carefully he squeezed himself into the gap created in the bulkhead, wondering how the cybernetified carvin that made the opening in the first place managed to comfortably squeeze itself through it. Thankfully his armor did not get scratched too much, and before long he stood in the middle of the command center, in front of the main holotable. There was yet another corpse beside the door, this time of a normal Dronox, which too was gutted and horribly disemboweled, at least partially explaining why the bulkhead was forced open.
"Okay... let's see if this works." He said to himself and activated his omni-tool.
The orange device came to life around his hand and he connected it to the central computer. Somewhat surprising was the fact that there was no security verification, and it was doubtful someone from the higher ups had randomly given him security clearance for the files within the station's databanks. The more likely possibility was that the internal security and firewalls had been shattered so badly by the Grox attack that there was not much left to stop him. He knew all too well how dangerous they could be within the cyberspace and how difficult it was to operate a digitally networked organization with their hackers always on the hunt.
Still, the central computer dutifully obeyed his instructions and presented him with several displays and options, one of which was the status of the main reactor, which, while certainly on its way to a meltdown, was clearly not in a hurry to annihilate itself. Instinctively Virox started to look for security recordings and any potential files regarding the Grox attack. His augmented lenses began displaying a myriad of options, settings and folders, which he began looking through.
"Lab reports, crew manifest, supplies..." He said as he swiped along, trying to find something useful, before one specific position caught his eye. "Security! There it is!"
He entered the tab and began browsing what was inside. To his surprise he realized that he had access to camera surveillance throughout the whole station. This gave him an idea. After a few seconds of tweaking he located the cameras showing Shepard and Tali near the maintenance airlock, as well as those of the nearby corridors.
"Shepard? This is Virox. I have reached the command center and am now looking for any useful intel." He spoke into his helmet microphone while browsing the other windows of the 'Security' tab. "I managed to get access to the station's cameras, so I can warn you if more of those freaks start coming."
"Copy that. We've just taken out the first one, but we already hear more coming. Don't overstay your welcome." Shepard answered, though her voice was barely discernable through the static, likely courtesy of the station's active jamming systems.
"Understood. Virox out." He said before cutting the connection and returning to browsing the files in the central computer.
To his surprise, he quickly realized that the Grox did not delete neither the security logs nor the camera footage, and he quickly understood why. It seemed that the Grox somehow managed to approach the station undetected in a small ship, no larger than a light corvette and smaller than the Normandy. According to the security logs, the station's commander tried to send a request for help to the Frontier Naval Command, but by the time they detected the attacking craft, the Grox had already broken through the station's firewalls and prevented the signal from being sent. In desperation, the commander urged the crew to physically disable the comm suite in an attempt to alert the fleet, by which time the Grox have already boarded and began making carving their way through the station.
After that there was mostly what Virox expected. He watched with a strange wrenching in his guts as the Insectorox cut its way through the various hallways, escorted by the Dronox, some of whom, strangely enough, were picking up the bodies which were less mutilated. The station did not have enough room for a full security complement, so the Grox landing party quickly retook the communications array and reestablished a connection, with a dedicated transmission being sent to the fleet that talked about complications during routine maintenance. In a last ditch assault, the commander ordered to overload the reactor manually and destroy the station, only for the rest of his already depleted forces to end up slaughtered in the hallway leading to the main reactor in a vain attempt to retake the room - the aftermath of which Virox had witnessed firsthand.
But then, after the station was captured, the mystery of blisters began to unravel. The Grox used the security camera systems to track down and kill the surviving crew. In a mix of confusion and anger, Virox saw the mindless Dronox take the more intact corpses into the main reactor, and put them into the not yet fully formed 'blisters'. The 'blisters' themselves seemed to slowly grow in real time, siphoning energy from the still operational reactor.
Nanites of sorts? This would explain how they grew and why they were connected to the reactor. Virox thought, although something still did not sit right with him. But then how did the power go out?
He skipped a few hours ahead, and to his surprise saw something that did not make sense at all. As the incubation pods in the main reactor were fully developed and the carvins inside completely covered, the station's sensors picked up two ships entering the system, likely the vessels sent by the Naval Command to investigate. The problem with this was two-fold. First, there were supposed to be three ships, not two. Virox distinctly remembered that specific part of his briefing. Second was that commodore Xol-Irix said this only happened AFTER the total communications blackout caused by the power loss, not before. Yet here was the record that contradicted his claim. Ideas and theories raced through Virox's head. Did the Naval Command know what happened and did not share the actionable intel?
It makes sense when you think about it... the excuse about maintenance was flimsy at best, so they'd send proper warships to investigate. But why hide it? He wondered, still trying to piece together the logic behind this significant omission. And why are there two ships? Did they lie about there being three?
The Grox ship apparently detached from the station and flew to deal with the newly arriving ships. How it did so was not clear, but since there was no remains other than some engine exhaust, maybe an EMP or some other type of ship-disabling weapon that would leave no clear traces in this particular environment. It certainly was within the realm of possibility.
But it was then that things started to go strange. Virox looked at the reactor camera recording and saw the twisted carvin crawl out of its chrysalis under the careful watch of the Dronox guards. It looked just as ugly and disgusting as when he had first seen it, letting out the horrid moans and screeches. Two of the Dronox approached it with a strange device (Virox couldn't tell what it was from that camera angle), causing the carvin to cower and grab onto its head in visible pain.
Next there was chaos. The cybernetic abomination, for an unknown reason, lashed out at the two Dronox with its newly weaponized arms, tearing them apart in seconds. The third and last Dronox barely had time to raise its weapon before it too was put down with an onslaught of vicious attacks. At that point Virox realized why the corpses of the drones had wounds so different and more savage than the carvin crew - they were killed by a different monster.
"Virox! Get your ass down here, we need to leave! This place will blow up soon!" Shepard's loud voice suddenly pierced his ears.
He had to fight the almost unconditional reflex to obey her orders, to the point that his hands briefly began shaking. Still, he regained control and replied "I told you, the mission comes first, Shepard. Get to the shuttle and start the engines."
"You know that's not happening!" She shouted, accompanied by the sounds of gunfire and shrieking. "No one is getting left behind!"
"I almost have the data!" This time Virox raised his voice, though he instinctively glanced at the live camera feed showing their airlock.
He saw them firing their weapons constantly, and the floor was increasingly being filled with spent thermal clips. The closest corpse was mere meters away from them, suggesting that they were quickly being overwhelmed. Deciding not to distract himself further, Virox went back to looking through the reports and footage, though he made sure to watch the recordings at twice the speed. To accelerate the progress, he skipped right towards the end, hoping to see the final conclusion of this mess.
The Grox ship apparently did not return, which was strange. He suspected that they would have came back by now, since the feral carvin was slaughtering its way through the remaining members of their assault party. Virox almost thought that they had abandoned their efforts, until he saw a report that a third ship entered the system by that point. So much for the mystery of the missing vessel, though why it was separated from the rest was not clear.
Still, it was at that moment that apparently a security override was sent through the system, triggering an emergency shutdown of the main reactor. Why it came or who issued it was not clear. Perhaps it was the poor guy that shared the room with Virox right now. What was certain however was that the override was issued successfully, and all records ended shortly after, leaving Virox with nothing more.
That's it? That's all!? He frustratingly thought, looking at the display in anger, but no matter how hard he looked, the records simply had nothing else for him.
At this point he was grasping at straws. The Grox were his enemy since he was two years old. They were the demons, the ghastly specters that haunted him in his nightmares. HE of all people knew how dangerous they were and what they were capable of. But how was he to make a coherent and believable report from that? There simply had to be more. Something... anything that would put all the pieces together.
"Oh fuck, Tali!" This unexpected, sudden, and ear-piercing scream truck Virox like lightning. Instinctively he glanced at the live camera footage, only to see a horrifying sight.
One of the freaks got close enough to pounce and collapse upon the quarian, shattering her shields in milliseconds. Before Shepard even fired off her first biotic strike, it slashed Tali right above her left hip, and a small yet deep gashing wound was torn in her suit. The cyborg was promptly knocked off by a biotic shockwave and shredded with bullets from the Commander's shotgun, but the damage has already been done, and there were more twisted carvins inbound.
"VIROX, YOU HAVE TWO MINUTES! IF YOU WON'T BE THERE, WE'LL LEAVE WITHOUT YOU!" Shepard yelled, trying to stem the tide of ferals and help Tali at the same time.
Virox wanted to snap at her. He wanted to talk back to her, berate her for her weakness, tell her that if she wanted to leave him, she should have done so long before. He wanted to scream that this was the quarian's fault for getting jumped. The old him would have certainly done so without a second thought.
But when the words were about to leave his mouth, they were stopped short by a dry lump in his throat. Not a single word escaped. The hand that was about to turn off the live camera feed froze in place, and had actually started shaking. Virox's logic and reason pushed his body to action, but were met with an invisible emotional barrier, too strong to be overcome. He couldn't move a muscle.
Such a state should infuriate him, and yet he was not able to summon the strength to be angry. His eyes jumped between the still unexplored files and the camera footage.
And then he realized how selfish he was.
This was never about the data. He would not find enough anyway. No, this was something else, an attempt to stem this feeling in his mind, lingering and pulsating with pain like a malignant tumor. He was scared. Scared of not living up to both his and the Empire's standards. Scared of coming back, facing the inevitable tribunal that would take place with regards to his misconduct here. The Empire does not forget, and so he had no reason to believe that they would have let him attack the one person he was ordered to help and protect, without suffering the consequences. Here at least he would at least get a noble martyr's death, which would hopefully clear his name in the eyes of his superiors.
But now he cared not. The shame and guilt he felt from once again running away and avoiding reality that was staring him directly in the face was so great that he almost couldn't breathe. No amount of training, no horrid experience he lived through during the Grox War were enough to prepare him to cope with the unrelenting storm of emotions in his head.
Then the infernal screeching was heard once again, this time from outside the control center, bouncing off the metal hallways of the station. His earflaps opened wider, and he realized that the freaks were closing in on him too. Finally, with a hand clenched tightly into a fist, he slammed the console so hard that the screen broke and sparks flew. He then reached once again for his trusty Ravager and turned back towards the exit.
Virox had made his decision. And he would live or die with the consequences.
Nemean Abyss, The Great Wound System
Carvin Black Site, Level -1, Hallway D-57
0110 Local Time, June 26th, 2185 Gregorian Calendar
As Shepard was screaming at Virox through her helmet microphone and firing her Phalanx at the unrelenting carvin husks, Tali tried frantically to stem the bleeding and treat the wound with one hand and firing her submachine gun with the other. At the very least the husks still retained some basic level of animalistic self-preservation instinct, as they recoiled back every time a spray of bullets hit them or even their still active shields.
It was hard to express the pain Tali was feeling from the deep cut that the carvin abomination had inflicted upon her. Aside from the clamps and emergency seals on her suit that pressed hard upon her skin and stemming the spread of a surface infection, the wound itself stung and burned like fire, the pain intensifying every time she bent or twisted her posture even slightly. The medi-gel that she generously applied over the entire area of the suit breach was slowly turning the pain into a dull numbness, though it was clear that it could not fix everything by itself. That and she was feeling increasingly light-headed.
"That crazy... I swear if he doesn't show up, I'll kill him myself!" She muttered through her teeth, as she glew purple while charging another shockwave.
"I think that we should *huff* worry about ourselves right now." Tali said, though her voice was becoming increasingly more raspy. "Oh, bosh'tet."
Shepard noticed that she was struggling to keep her balance. "Hey! Look at me! We're getting out of here alive!"
"Please Shepard, I've had worse in the past." Tali half-jokingly replied, remembering the other times she was in a similar situation and thought she was going to die. "Compared to Saren's assassins firing pollonium rounds at me, this is barely a flesh wound."
Commander's look of worry did not vanish completely, but she still reciprocated a smile under her helmet, and preemptively moved slightly ahead, so as to take any potential attacks upon herself. In this formation, the two of them were keeping the carvins at bay with an unceasing barrage of metal slugs.
Meanwhile Virox was nowhere in sight. He did not even reply to the earful that Shepard gave him just moments before, and that was worrying. Tali knew Shepard well enough to realize that the time limit she imposed him was not an ultimatum, more of a way to spur the carvin on, though he obviously didn't know that. Shepard was always attached to her crew, almost to a fault, and Tali realized quickly after meeting him that the commander liked Virox, despite all of his quirks and oddities, a feeling that she could understand and to some extent share.
Now however that attachment was starting to become an inconvenience, since they were about to be overrun, and Tali was feeling increasingly numb.
"They're all yours, Chatika!" She exclaimed, summoning the drone to aid them in combat.
The floating orb obediently moved forward and, keeping a safe distance between itself and the carvins, began emitting bolts of electricity, zapping the forwardmost cyborgs that approached. It was occasionally flickering though, indicating that perhaps she was too demanding on the poor thing when she was using it to jumpstart the systems on the station. Not that they had a choice.
However, even if it had been in pristine condition, nothing could have prepared the drone for what was a particularly nasty feral carvin, that seemed to be bolder than the rest. It stood taller than the rest of them, with one arm twisted into some sort of a blade or spear, while the other was something that Tali couldn't recognize, with a hole at the end of it. The carvin screeched wildly and pounced upon Chatika, slamming its blade-arm into the glowing ball and knocking it onto the floor, causing sparks to fly everywhere.
"Shit, it's a big one!" Shepard called out, and switching to her shotgun before firing two shots.
The massive brute howled furiously, but unlike its brethren it did not recoil or halt its advance when fired upon. Instead, seemingly even more agitated, it charged at Shepard at full speed. Shepard ducked under a wide horizontal swipe by the carvin's massive blade-arm that would have surely decapitated her, had she not rolled out of the way of the attack. But in that particular moment she was vulnerable, and the monster capitalized on this opening almost immediately, as it swung its tail with great strength and knocked Shepard back into the wall, her barriers just barely absorbing the force of the attack.
Tali winced under her mask, watching as the carvin made yet another swipe at the commander, who was forced to summon her biotic power to form a dark energy sphere in her hand and block the attack this way. Surprisingly the brute did not use his other hand to attack, something that Shepard used to her advantage, pulling out her Tempest and blasted the carvin's chest with a hail of bullets, which further infuriated the monstrosity, and causing it to raise its other arm.
Making a split-second decision, Tali summoned all of her rapidly fleeting strength to aim her submachine gun at the carvin's head and fired a short burst. Tiny metal slugs hit the horribly malformed, the neck, and even one of the jaws, blasting it off in a bloody spectacle.
The brute briefly stumbled away, staggered by this sudden attack, but it soon found its balance again and now stared directly at her with its lifeless cybernetic eyes. It pointed its other arm at her, and Tali, looking at it from this perspective, realized that this wasn't just an arm. It was a weapon, and the hole at the end was its muzzle.
But the most disturbing of all was what happened next, as the carvin let out a guttural bellow, distorted by its extensive cybernetics, but one that Tali's translator somehow picked up as one, singular word.
"KILL!"
Before Tali could even comprehend the implications of those words, and before the brute managed to fire its arm-cannon at her (something that would have likely annihilated her remaining shields), an explosion rocked the entire hallway. It was so sudden and loud that all three of them, Shepard, Tali, and the blade-arm carvin immediately shifted their gazes at the source of the noise, only for yet another blast to erupt from there. At first Tali thought that it was the reactor finally overloading, but quickly realized that the explosions were too weak, and did not reverberate through the floor and walls strongly enough.
And then she saw some of the carvins suddenly scatter, running around frantically. They were covered in some sort of a glowing liquid... plasma. They screamed and screeched, as the superheated goo burned through their energy shields and started eating away at their implants and flesh. When they were running about like that they looked like living torches or some ghastly fireflies.
Through the chaos and between the blazing cyborgs a different silhouette moved at great speed towards them. Still carvin-like, but distinct from the rest. Tali feared the worst, preparing for yet another ravenous monster to join the fray, until the suddenly very familiar carvin pulled out an equally familiar weapon and blasted the brute in front of them with it. Then, at full speed, Virox rammed his target, knocking it away from her and Shepard. They tussled and wrestled, neither willing to give ground to the other.
"Virox!? You came back!" Shepard exclaimed, having recovered from her own fight with the massive carving cyborg.
"Yes, now get Tali out of here!" Virox roared. He then delivered a powerful blow into the brute's face, snapping one of its two remaining jaws like a twig.
Tali let out a sigh of relief, not only because Shepard quickly complied and helped her get moving again (her own legs were slowly giving away), but also because they could finally get off this accursed station. Shepard led her through the first bulkhead of the airlock, while Virox still struggled to overpower the brute, who now started to use its arm-cannon to fire what at first glance looked like concentrated plasma projectiles. The liquid slid over Virox's shields, though they kept flickering furiously, indicating heavy damage.
"Move! Get into that airlock!" He shouted, finally managing to kick his enemy away far enough to start using his shotgun again.
"You're not gonna make a noble sacrifice and stay to cover our retreat, are you?" Shepard asked, as she left Tali to lean against a wall.
"No, I'm putting some distance between us and these fuckers! I'm not planning on sticking around any longer!" Virox answered between the blasts from his weapon.
After a few seconds they were all at the exit, and both Virox and Shepard were laying down covering fire, while Tali started working on the control panel. They still had to depressurize the room properly, or else they would be flung into space and probably into a black hole. Therefore she fought the increasingly strong spinning in her head and tried to engage the proper procedure as quickly as possible. It took a few seconds but the bulkhead promptly closed once she was finished.
"Alright *huff* we're safe. We'll depressurize any moment. You can *cough* call the shuttle." Tali said, but was cut short by a powerful coughing fit. The infection was clearly worse than she thought.
Shepard gave her a worried glance, but quickly pressed the button on the side of her helmet. "Shepard to Normandy! We're ready for extraction! Get the shuttle in position immediately!"
"At once, Commander." EDI swiftly replied, and as the depressurization commenced with a hiss, she added "The shuttle is on standby and awaiting your arrival."
Just then the bulkhead that Tali had just closed rang with dull sounds of impact. The carvins on the other side were clearly not letting up, incessantly banging on it, and she started to wonder... if they could speak even in this state, could they use the controls from the other side to open the bulkhead? Or worse, vent them into space before depressurization was complete.
Thankfully the latter part of her concerns was alleviated almost immediately when the hissing suddenly stopped, indicating that they were indeed standing in a vacuum. The wound on her stomach began to pulsate with pain once again, so much so that she almost lost her balance.
"Alright, we're in the clear. Tali, hit it." Shepard said, and Tali pressed the button to open the airlock.
It opened to the dark void of space, separated by the ring of light coming from the nearby black hole. The banging of the carvins quietened down, being heard only through the slight vibrations felt through their feet. Ahead of them was the shuttle with its doors opened, separated by around a dozen meters of absolutely nothing. Tali felt her stomach churning from the prospect of crossing this gap, which wasn't helped by the burning she was already feeling from the earlier wound.
"Alright, let's go one by one!" Shepard ordered and pushed herself out of the airlock, assisted by her biotics. After a brief glide through the empty void, she safely landed in the shuttle.
It was now Tali's turn, but at this point her legs were practically made of jelly. She stared across the gap that she was supposed to cross and quickly came to a very definitive conclusion - she would not make it.
"Come on!" Shepard urged her from the shuttle.
"She's too weak to make the jump!" Virox interjected, for which Tali was thankful. His next words however were somewhat concerning. "You'll have to catch her!"
Have to wha-OH KEELAH! OW! Tali mentally screamed, as the carvin lifted her up a bit too roughly, before lobbing her through the vacuum.
Her entire life flashed before her eyes during this brief flight. She could have sworn that time itself slowed down to a crawl. Even the pain in her stomach seemed distant for a while. But then she felt herself being pulled forwards with even more momentum, and before long she already crashed into the interior of the shuttle. The impact wasn't fast, but combined with her existing wounds, it almost made her faint.
As she was recovering, the shuttle door closed shut, and with the corner of her eye she saw that Virox also managed to get onboard. Good, at least they weren't holding that exit for nothing. It took insurmountable effort for her to keep her eyes open and sit up, but she succeeded.
"Get us out of here!" Shepard shouted at the pilot in the cockpit and the shuttle shook in response. They were finally out of the fight.
To be perfectly honest, Tali had enough of that station. Both in terms of it being a general occupational hazard and of its contents being just outright disturbing and scary. It spoke volumes that she had met more dead (or dead-ish) carvins in her life than she had met living ones. At the very least Virox came back, and while she was slightly angry at him for just throwing her into the vacuum of space out of the blue like that, he somehow made it up by saving them from that massive freaky brute.
"Well... I guess this goes to the list of things I never want to do again." Tali started, trying to calm her hoarse breaths for long enough to speak properly. "And by that... I mean being thrown around like a rag doll."
Surprisingly none of her teammates initially gave a reply. Only Virox broke the uncomfortable with a single "Sorry."
His voice sounded distant, which made no sense, as he was speaking through the teamcomms. Were her suit speakers broken too? Or maybe her ears were starting to get clogged? At this point anything was a possibility, since Tali felt that all of her orifices were starting to become vessels for organic cesspit of bodily fluids.
"Oh I didn't mean it like thaaaaaaaaaaaat." She answered, as she struggled to keep her head looking straight ahead. For some unknown reason she was feeling like laughing and giggling. Guess the fever was slowly kicking in. "Just warn me next time."
"Hang in there, Tali. We're almost back on the Normandy." Shepard put a hand on her shoulder, trying to reassure her. She was such a mom sometimes. Not that Tali would know. She never got to know her own.
"Relaaaaaaaaaax, Shepard." She playfully answered. "I'm tooootally fiiiiiiiiin-"
Her words were cut short by a sudden coughing fit. She tried to keep it under control, but after the third cough her balance seemed to have totally collapsed and the world turned upside down. She felt herself falling off the shuttle chair and onto its floor. Both Shepard and Virox stood up immediately and gathered around her, but Tali could not hear what they were saying. Shepard was frantically screaming something into her helmet, while Virox looked absolutely scared. Or was it confusion? Tali couldn't tell, she was absolutely confused herself.
The cold floor felt like a welcome respite from the burning heat that her body was producing.
Perhaps the wound really was far worse than she anticipated.
A/N: Sorry for the late upload, I've had some things to sort out, connected with me graduating from unemployment for the second time. I always thought that Tali's weak immune system had not been properly touched on within the game (with only a few brief mentions on specific occasions). And according to cannon she should have a horrible infection every time she's knocked out in combat, as it's implied that her suit is breached in that state. Don't worry, she's not going to die in this fic, just a tiny little piece of exposition. I've actually decided against putting the Ravashir plot into these chapters, but don't worry. They'll be touched on in the next one. And finally I'm planning to do a summary of Virox's findings in the command center during the next chapter in case what I wanted to say was not conveyed properly. Hopefully that will be enough. Cheers!