.

Started off as a one night stand. Lingered to a fling.
The sirens and the sergeants didn't seem to mean a thing.
Hide your fangs all you want, you still need the blood.
Tell us that it's different now, you're up to no good.

Take my hand, show me the way, we are the children that fell from grace.
Take my hand, show me the way, we are the children who can't be saved.

One more nail in the coffin. One more foot in the grave.
One more time I'm on my knees, as I try to walk away

How has it come to this?

I've said it once. I've said it twice. I've said it a thousand fucking times.
That I'm OK, that I'm fine. That it's all just in my mind.
But this has got the best of me. And I can't seem to sleep.
It's not 'cause you're not with me. It's 'cause you never leave.

Bring me the Horizon – It never ends

Chapter 16 ~ The enemy of my enemy

"Just lemme see if I got this straight, Miranda,"

I said, absently tugging at the too short hem of the dress I hadn't had time to change out. Heck, even my arms were still covered in crusted flakes of batarian blood. I frowned at the comm device that spilled my XO's agitated voice into the cabin of the shuttle.

"Not only did the Illusive Maniac successfully lure the Collectors into clearing out Horizon, he then also leaned back in his chair and watched how we jumped like morons at a distress signal, whose falsified nature he 'forgot' to mention. But hey, we managed under great personal risk to obtain Collector data, so what's the deal? Then he let us dig through tons of junk data and siphoned off the results behind our backs. He knew exactly what he was looking for and when he found it he sent off another team, all the while laughing up his sleeve because we were still stumbling around in the dark."

It had never been about the colonies. It had been about me being an obedient bitch, tugging on leashes until I found a Reaper at their end. As soon as we outlived our usefulness the Illusive Asshole would fuck us over in a heartbeat and everybody knew it.

Everybody except Miranda.

"That's maybe a little drastic."

I eyed the shuttle's console. "Oh yeah? So what about your security clearance? You're certainly up high enough the food chain to have gotten the memo."

"I already told you, I did not know! There is nothing about it in the databases!"

I rubbed my face trying to let some of the tension go. Somewhere behind my eyes the lingering Omega-Enkaphalin was wreaking havoc in my brain, treating me to the headache of my life. The Normandy was just another hour away. I simply had to keep on marching.

"And that's exactly the problem, Miranda. You can't honestly believe that we would have ever learned of Mnemosyne's anomaly if EDI hadn't reconstructed that the Collectors must use some kind of IFF to get through the Omega-4 Relay?"

The woman on the other side of the radio turned silent. Then she sighed in resignation. "I don't know what to believe. It makes no sense to hide the information from us and – I need to speak with Jacob. Lawson out."

"The Illusive Man strikes me as a man who does not give up his secrets easily." Samara noted from her seat behind me. "He must want us to use this Relay very badly."

I nodded. I knew why I wanted to surprise the Collectors on their home turf. The sixty-four-thousand dollar question was why did he? I wasn't buying an inch of his Cerberus-only-wants-to-serve-humanity show.

"You know, Shepard, this should be our signal to turn around and head straight for the other direction," Garrus added from the pilot's seat next to mine. "Think about it, this can as easily be another setup. And just because it seems likely that all Collector tech derived from the Reapers, the IFF they use could still be something else entirely."

I grimaced. All too true. Paying a visit to the derelict Reaper that got trapped eons ago in Mnemosyne's orbit, was indeed a wild and risky stab in the dark. Still, regardless of the Illusive Man's agenda, it was past time to jam a few sticks into Harbinger's wheels and the IFF would help us to get our hands on a real big stick. There was just the bothersome detail that we didn't even know what exactly we had to look for. It could be an unobtrusive kind of black box they hooked up with the communication systems or some complex algorithm that had to be let loose on the ships' main controls.

A heavy silence filled the shuttle. My thoughts recoiled from the grim possibility that Garrus was right and we might just as well found ourselves trapped on yet another ship that wasn't quite as dead as it was supposed to be. Instead I sneaked a glance at the turian, feeling a strange mixture of exhilaration and embarrassment. So far neither of us had issued any further comments on the latest, uhm, "incident" and now that I had time to pull my wits together once more, the better part of me would gladly keep on pretending that nothing had happened at all. Again.

Maybe the trick was simply to stop kissing him. The first time might still pass off as an accident, but the second already begged for trouble, and a third time would certainly be a sign for an insanity that had blown out of any proportions. I mean, let's face it; we weren't just going nowhere with this, no, we were running straight into a dead end, all flags flying. Hell, not even the very essence of our bodies was compatible with each other. The best for both of us would be to scrape up what was left of our dignity and carefully back off before this ticking bomb could fly in our faces.

Only… I was no longer sure that I was strong enough to sever the ties and walk away. Instead I was stalling and the longer I stayed, the more painful the wakeup call would be.

There simply were no white picket fences in my world.

Lazarus had rendered me barren, and when I looked into my future I saw no children, no husband, no peace. Just the same stubborn me, growing older and grimmer, while manning Alliance' trenches and killing enemies with much bloodshed. If 'fucked-up' had a dictionary entry, it would sport my picture below. I perfectly knew that sooner or later one of us wouldn't dodge the bullet in time. If it would be him, it would devastate me; and that I still wanted to be with him scared me more than facing a dozen hungry maws ever could.

I watched his angular profile. If the bullet would hit me… I had seen the hurt in his eyes when he recalled the death of a woman he never had the chance to be with. Damn it, mine had already left a dent on him and I had merely been a comrade-in-arms back then.

I shut my eyes and turned my face away. Wrong. This was all wrong. No matter how much I wanted to, someone with a life like mine would only bring him even more pain. I simply needed to end this drama before it would damage us any further. God, I started to sound like a broken record. My head dropped against the headrest and I listened to Samara and Garrus chatting quietly about some new but old Thessian armorer until sleep shut me down.

It still had been one hell of a kiss.

~V~

One of the first things I learned when leaving Palaven during my basic training was that there was no such thing as privacy on a spaceship. That's why there was some mutual understanding among all ship crew, an unspoken code of honor to quietly mind your own business, while meticulously pretending you wouldn't know each other's bathroom habits.

Usually.

"You need something, Jack?" I finally asked, though my attention still hung on the grey plastic case that sat in front of me on the Mess' table.

It was a nondescript, two spans wide box, closed with a metal latch; the sort of case for storing precision tools. A derelict Reaper was waiting for us no two hours away, the Cerberus team we should meet there had gone silent shortly after Chandrasekhar Relay spilled us out into the system, yet instead of getting some shut-eye and prepare, I worried if it had been wise to dig out this dumb box from the bottom of my belongings. My training instructor would rotate in his grave.

"Nah. I just wonder if I should say something or lean back and enjoy the drama," the tattooed convict said.

I craned my neck to find her behind the galley, pouring herself a mug of dark liquid. At some point it might have been coffee, but after sitting on the stove the whole morning it rather resembled motor oil.

"What would you know?"

She shrugged. "I'm an excellent observer. Wouldn't have survived this long otherwise."

"Really."

Mug in hand she strode over and flashed me her blocky teeth. "You people always underestimate me. It's fun."

She lifted the upper half of the case with her index finger. Then she whistled, dropped the lid and slid her butt onto the table next to the box, one booted foot prodded on the chair to my right. A decidedly demonic smile curved her dark painted lips.

"Damn, that's desperate, Vakarian. Can't you think of a better way to get laid?"

I leaned back and crossed my arms. "Very funny. Too bad I can't remember that I've asked for your illustrious opinion."

She lowered the mug and gave me her psycho stare. "Fuck you, I have feelings, too."

I snorted. "Since when?"

"Hey, what about that guy at the Imorkan transit station? That was just three days ago."

I pushed the box a bit away from her. "Seriously? You were yelling 'I'm going to skull-fuck you'."

"He tried to sell me cut Sand. I was quite emotional about it," she huffed without even batting an eye. The woman was incredible.

I opened my mouth but she pointed her mug at me.

"Careful. You're pushing your luck, Vakarian. Look, I kinda like y– uh, the fact that you're not a total asshole like most people, so I'm going to give you some advice. For free."

I almost choked on the air caught in my throat. "Is this some sort of trick question?"

"No, you idiot. This is me trying to fucking help you," Jack replied, then added an extra portion of maniac for my benefit.

"Thank you, but no. See, I'm not sure this kind of… help, will actually help me. At all"

The convict gave me a glare. Right. I was merely alive because she was running out of places to hide the bodies.

I gave in with a sigh. "Alright, Jack. I'm going to regret this in about five seconds flat, but shoot. Please."

"Great. Now, stop dicking around and get over with it."

"Get over with what?"

She threw up her hands, spilling some of her motor oil. "You know, for someone who boasts to have outsmarted an AI at calibrating the ship's weapon systems, you're rather sluggish on the uptake."

I rubbed a coffee stain off my box. "Yah. By the way, I'm already regretting this."

The convict rolled her eyes. "Oh, c'mon, suck it up, Vakarian. I mean you and Shepard." She grimaced as if she had bitten into a rotten fruit. "Watching you – shit. It's like watching two retarded trying to hump a doorknob!"

Eh. My mind tried to produce an appropriate visualization and failed pitifully.

I pinched the ridge between my eyes. "Spirits. Why am I even listening to you?"

"Because you know it's past time you get your scarred ass up there and bonk her!"

"What?"

"Rats. Are you dense? You take the lift, storm her cabin, bend her over the couch and nail her for all your worth. Want me to draw a fucking map, or what?" She finished with a snicker.

I cleared my throat. Fucking map, indeed. "Have you lost your mind?" I craned my neck to find thankfully no one else within earshot. "There won't be any, uh, bending over. No nailing or bonking either." I hastened to add, sounding not at all strangled and abashed.

Jack commented my eloquent response with a short snort. "Yeah, of course not. You rather sit around with a loaded gun in your pants and stare at that plastic box. Wondering…"

Suddenly her mouth twitched and she leaned forward, licking the edge of her scared upper lip with the tip of her pinkish tongue. It probably was meant to be suggestive, but the only desire that crazy light dancing behind her dark eyes stirred up in me was to run for cover. Massani was a madman. Sleeping with someone like Jack was a creative, but not very clever way to commit suicide.

Her voice dropped. "Wondering, how fucking good it would feel to have her just right now, to thrust into her ready body, to make her co–"

"Will you shut up?" With a growl, I shoved her leering face out of my peripheral view. It was disproportionately harder to shove the notion out of my head. "What is wrong with you?"

"Many, many things."

Too true unfortunately.

But sometimes the only way out was to jump in at the deep end. I grabbed my box and got up.

With a scowl I pointed my finger at her. "You are a menace."

She chuckled. "Relax. No need to look as if you just had a hemorrhoid attack. I'm doing you a favor here, remember?"

"Go to hell."

She sipped on her mug and shrugged. "Yeah, yeah. Been there and guess, what? No-return policy."

.~'*'~.

"Shepard, I need to talk –"

The cabin was empty. Instead I heard the shower running. Askew I watched the door that lead to the bathroom.

"Do you want me to inform the Commander of your presence?" EDI asked.

"No. I think I just come back later," I said slowly, chasing away the too vivid images of me, her and a long hot shower that had nothing to do with cleaning up anyone.

Damn, Jack had been right in one point – there was something about Shepard that managed to lay waste to all my self-control and turn me into a needy primitive.

It was a rather worrisome development. We pride ourselves for our iron discipline for a reason. Being turian means growing up with an awful lot of rules and an even stricter conditioning of mind and body. You're expected to avoid excesses. To keep your own desires on a short leash. Staying calm and thinking things through before acting. Order. Sticking to the given hierarchy. Not only did the concept earn our forces the respect of the other races, it had also allowed us to channel our martial nature and move past our savage heritage. In that ironic light we were much closer to the krogans in spirit than any turian ever wanted to admit.

We all had to find a way to cope with our inborn violence and I usually sought my vents within controlled boundaries. The batarian barkeeper though… He had told me everything I wanted to know. There had been no point in hurting him any further. But the mere thought that he was involved in bringing Shepard pain had snapped something in me. I had never lost control over my temper like this. There was a word for this kind of frenzy and I didn't like its implications. Not at all.

I stared across the room at her bed.

Even setting aside all awkwardness and intercultural fallout, I hadn't an inkling of an idea about her motivation in this. For all I knew she could merely be looking for a friend who would distract her from her worries for a night or two. Even if – and it was big fat if – we walked the whole distance what would she expect us to do afterwards? Shake hands and return to business as usual?

I knew Shepard, the soldier. I knew her weapon preferences and usual combat strategies, that she more likely kicked than punched and that she, although an excellent vanguard, still tended to neglect her left flank.

But Shepard, the woman? There I drew a blank every time I believed to have figured her out.

One moment she would let me in and show me the silent desperation of being pulled under by her personal demons; only to shut me out the next and turn once more into the untouchable commander that existed merely for the cause.

And yet I couldn't deny that there was a certain appeal in staggering her long enough to make her drop her guards and let me see the woman she tried so hard to hide behind…

With a wince I realize that the shower had stopped. Before I could turn around and fall back towards the elevator, though, the bathroom door opened. The Commander emerged, wearing black sweatpants and a gray sleeveless shirt. She was toweling off her hair, then saw me and gave a start.

"Sorry…" I began, flinching. "I didn't mean to-"

"Never mind." she intercepted with a weak smile and slung the towel around her shoulders.

We carefully watched each other, the silence stretching uncomfortably. I gathered my resolve and held out the box.

"Ah, I have something for you. Thought you might like it."

"A bribe, Officer Vakarian?" She took the box, her mouth quirking in amusement.

"Why Shepard, don't you think I know better than trying to bribe my Commander?"

"I don't know. Do you?"

I snorted. "Just open the damn thing."

With a chuckle she sat the box on her desk and flipped the lid open. Inside was a black Stiletto. It had certainly seen better days, but it was the same model she had used back on the first Normandy. And she had never missed an opportunity to tell me at great lengths why Haliat Armory made the best guns.

Shortly after coming to Omega I had glimpsed the pistol by chance while trading for information with that quarian working one of the countless local pawn shops. Her death had still been fresh and seeing that gun… It had rubbed off the thin layer of scab to leave the small but deep wound bloody and raw once more. It had struck me then that I owned no other memento of my time with her than my memories. It hadn't been enough.

She looked first at the gun then at me in bewilderment. The towel slid from her shoulders and dropped to the deck. For a moment I feared I had breached some kind of human custom, but then her expression softened and lighted up.

"Thank you," she said slowly. "You have no idea how much I miss my old Stiletto." Her slim fingers traced the outlines of the slide as if caressing it and –

I cleared my throat. "Just… Don't get too excited. I have never properly checked her. She might not even work."

The Spectre chuckled, took the gun up and it fell apart with a few practiced clicks. "Have some faith in your fellow turian armorers." She examined the parts. "I think the cooling unit might need a look-over, but the rest? Good as new."

Shepard assembled the gun once more and sat it back down into its box. There she hesitated, her hand still lingering on the gun, strands of wet hair darkening her shirt and sending drops down her arms. The tension that hung between us was thick enough to slice it with a knife.

"So…" I began but my conversational skills failed me. 'You're whipping my instincts into a frenzy ' along with 'I dreamed last night that we gunned down a maw and then had sex in the sand' suddenly didn't seem like the smartest openers.

She arched her brow at me. "So?"

"A derelict Reaper, huh? Can't say that things ever get boring with you." Smooth. Back to square one.

The Commander shrugged. "I live to amuse."

"And here I thought it was all about issuing suicidal orders."

"Blah-blah-blah."

"Humans. Always so witty and eloquent with the comeback."

She crossed her arms before her. "Actually… I think you still owe me a rematch, Vakarian."

"I'm not sure, Shepard. Are you certain your ego can handle another rubdown?"

Her eyes widened. "Luck! It was nothing but luck. If not for my injured leg-"

"Excuses, Shepard, excuses. You can just as well admit you won't take me down on your best day."

A dangerous glint entered her eyes and she slightly shifted her balance as if to attack. "Aha. I'll remind you when you've run yourself in the ground trying to catch up. Strength is nothing without endurance."

"Oh, I can assure you, my endurance is just fine." I fixed her with a level gaze, my feet rooted to the deck. If Shepard thought she could make me back up with her thousand-pace stare, she would be in for a disappointment.

Her lips twitched into a smile as sinful and old as sapient life. "Maybe we should put your endurance to a test, then."

Careful, Soldier. Proceed with extreme caution. "We're still talking about sparring, are we?"

"Of course we do," she replied smoothly and spread her hands. "What have you thought?"

"Nothing."

Her wry smile told me she knew were both full of it. Alright then.

"Hangar at twenty-two hundred?"

No, Shepard, I think we should better not go there. You're about the only friend I have left and the chances that we screw this up are skyrocketing. I couldn't bear loosing you like that.

I grinned at her."I'll be there."

~V~

If a derelict Reaper falls upon a brown dwarf and nobody is left alive to witness, does it make a sound?

Grim-faced I made my way through the lab deck of the dead silent research ship with my two Cerberus agents in tow. Equipment, papers and overthrown tables littered the ground. I passed half a dozen shattered Petri dishes. A good thing the Normandy had been equipped with the latest generation of space suits. Three times as thick as my usual combat gear, they kept the hostilities of dark space for a good ten hours at bay and the oxygen supply would keep whatever had escaped those dishes from entering my lungs.

I crouched down and turned another Cerberus scientist in a once pristine white lab coat on his back. I simply had to be sure. Tall and slender as a blade he had short black hair peppered with gray. The empty sockets of his eyes stared back at me from a gaunt face stained with dried blood. Fuck. I was so goddamn tired of being one minute late and one dollar short.

Through the radio I heard a soft hiss.

"It's Dr. Chandana," Miranda voice said in my helmet and stopped next to me.

"You knew him personally?" I asked. His bloodied fingers were clasped around something.

"No. But I know some of his dossiers; that man was a genius in his field of work. He studied the impact of electromagnetic fields on synapses and methods to stimulate them to substitute for damaged cell tissue. Or enhance the functionality of healthy neurocytes – Commander, I don't like this. We have teams specialized in working with artificial intelligence. The Illusive Man should have never sent someone like Chandana."

Except...

Carefully I pried his right hand open. A tattered ball of maroon and white tissue rolled from his palm and hit the deck. Ugh.

"Except if his expertise is exactly what you need." I straightened to face her.

"You mean… No. No, Shepard that's impossible," Miranda replied with an expression behind her helmet's visor as if I had accused her of devouring small children.

I sighed. "Take a look around, ten to one they came to study indoctrination."

The Cerberus agent turned thoughtful. "Maybe they were searching for a countermeasure?"

"Yeah. Maybe." And maybe Hell was sprouting lily pads.

I ghosted past a tall female body a few steps ahead. She had a scissor sticking in her carotid artery. The lab assistant still had her eyes, but whatever they had seen it had twisted her heart-shaped face into a grotesque mask of dread.

"Any ideas how long they've been here?" I asked instead.

"I checked the log," Jacob begun, operating a console at one of the desks. "According to the records the ship docked eight orbits ago."

That would be roughly six days ago. An uneasy sense of foreboding crept upon me.

It had taken us four hours to get from Omega back to the ship. I then had a chat with the Illusive Man and he confirmed that the team would expect us. Whatever game he was playing, I had a feeling he would have mentioned if the crew had appeared on the brink of committing collective suicide. From the Chandrasekhar relay we had needed around 40 hours to reach Mnemosyne. 33 hours ago the ship had fallen silent. The scientists were about six hours dead. Whatever residual mojo the derelict Reaper was packing, it had hit them hard enough to drive them utter nuts within the course of less than three days.

"Is there anything in those logs that tells us what they've been really up to?"

"Not exactly. They made a few trips into the ship, set up sensors and -" He whistled. "They tried to salvage the Reaper's blue box."

"Did they succeed?"

"I'm not sure. Towards the end the records get increasingly erratic. It seems they suffered from extreme hallucinations."

Peachy. Just peachy.

"We go in and look for ourselves then. EDI?"

"Your best chance is accessing the Reaper's main control. Its location is presumably near the drive core. I will send you the coordinates."

"Just remember," Joker's voice filtered over the radio. "If you stumble over a bunch of weird eggpods, we have all the right to refuse you."

"Not funny, Jeff."

I walked towards the airlock. A dark brown handprint coated the pad of the access control. Someone had tried to get out. Or to let something in...

It's Normandy. Not Nostromo. Dammit Joker.

I opened the lock and my two faithful Cerberus companions followed me into the small chamber. Jacob locked the door and Miranda bestowed it with a discontented glance. The space suit successfully bereft her of her primary weapon and it made her itchy. The harder your worked those tiny element zero nodules, the more static charge you gave off in the process. It's even less thrilling than it sounds if you just deflected a handful of bullets with a Barrier only to find out that your body short-circuited the control unit of your oxygen supply.

That was why I trusted my knives. They always worked.

The air emerged from the chamber with a muzzled hiss, balancing the pressure to equal the space outside. I opened the lock on the other side. Through a large gaping hole I stared into the pitch black inside of a Reaper.

In for a penny, in for a pound.

I pushed away from the airlock and floated through the opening. Inside I felt myself descending and after a short drop my boots hit the deck with a soft clunk. The Reaper was still maintaining a weak gravitational field. Not much, but enough to keep my feet on the floor. I drew my gun, waiting for my eyes to adjust to the dark. I was in some aisle, its diameter perhaps twice my height. Ahead a faint light beckoned me. I followed the aisle for another twenty meters, Jacob and Miranda bringing up the rear. There it opened into a vast chamber, bisected by a runway that stretched almost impossibly long before us. Holes, some as wide as a small skycar had been punched into the Reaper's hull. To the right they opened into the darkness of space, to the left I could see the massive boiling plasma sphere of Mnemosyne, illumining the inside with a soft reddish light, while the Reaper unperturbed drifted along its orbit.

As it had for eons.

I gave myself a mental push and kept walking. On a runway that had likely already been old at a time when dinosaurs ruled Earth. It was hard to wrap your mind around the notion that the Reaper's tech was so ancient and at the same time so freakishly far ahead of ours. Where the Collector ship had merely given off an odd alien vibe, the Reaper slapped you in the face with its inconceivability. I tried to estimate the ends of the chamber but the angles and edges seemed to blur and bend all wrong. Despite its vastness the room conveyed a disturbing feeling of claustrophobia, lessened only by the wounds an ancient war machine had ripped into the Reaper some 37 million years ago, giving our eyes a window back to reality. Glistening tubes and cable harnesses as thick as the thighs of an adult krogan crowded the high ceiling above us like the bulging veins of some gargantuan beast. I turned my head and on the edges of my peripheral vision they suddenly seemed to crawl slowly over the walls. My eyes darted back. Nothing moved.

In his house at R'lyeh, dead Cthulhu waits dreaming.

Ah yes. I was going to smack Kasumi over the head with her "most recommended" paperback novel.

"The walls..." Miranda suddenly said, her voice sounding oddly afar. "They look as if they're shifting..."

"I know. Just a trick of the eye." At least I was telling myself. "Let's keep moving."

Silently we hurried along the runway. I fixed my gaze on a platform ahead. Two further runways spread out from there, one leading left, the other right. On the intersection the Cerberus scientists had set up a mobile lab complete with an assortment of strange looking devices. It must be mentioned survey station. Miranda made a beeline for the terminal and I looked over my shoulder and past Jacob. The way back appeared at least twice as long as it actually had been.

I checked the navpoint EDI had sent to my omnitool. According to the Reaper's energy signature the drive core should be somewhere beyond the wall ahead and below our position. I peeked over the rail. Darkness coiled underneath the platform like a thick impenetrable fog. Although my logic told me that the drop could only be forty meters max, on some primal level I just knew that if I jumped over the rail I would fall forever.

Miranda's soft curse drew my gaze away from the beckoning abyss.

"What is it, Miranda?"

"They weren't just after the blue box. They planned to bring it back online."

"Please don't tell me they succeeded…"

"No they didn't. They gained access to the core's data clusters but then they realized there isn't enough energy left to supply the main controls and to keep the Reaper in its orbit. The core is extremely instable. Any significant energy shift could tip it over the edge. Some engineers were working on stabilizing the core but they apparently encountered… issues. "

"Issues?"

"Equipment vanishing, measured data getting messed up, hard disks wiped clear, that sort of issues."

"You think one of the scientists tried to sabotage the project?"

"Unlikely, Shepard. Our people are dedicated to their work."

Behind Miranda, Jacob made a face.

Uh-huh, as dedicated as Wilson, I bet.

"I think they were already affected by all… this." She made an encompassing gesture with her hands. "Some even claimed that the ship was watching them."

I nodded, stoically ignoring the prickle between my shoulder blades. Oh yeah, better and better.

We followed the runway to the left. If my sense of orientation wasn't completely off it should eventually lead to the center where the drive core was located. The runway bent right and we followed its path until it opened to another chamber. A telling blue sheen tinted the damaged walls. There the drive core hulked below us.

"Damn, it's huge…" Jacob said solemnly.

Faint and flickering the drive core had about five times the size of the Normandy's and it was in its death throes. I stepped towards the edge of the platform, the glow of the core drawing me like a swamp light.

"EDI? We reached the drive core. Can you…" Nothing but static noise greeted me. I turned to my Cerberus agents. "Can one of you reach the ship?"

"Negative."

Nothing but to keep going then. I spotted a narrow ladder and climbed down. My breath sounded too loud for my ears.

Thick cables fanned out from the core, some running across the deck, others hanging above me like lianas in a bizarre synthetic jungle. They connected with dozens of terminals that seemed to merge seamlessly with the walls. Eerie blue shadows danced on the tech around me and I rounded the base of the massive field stabilizer that kept the core in its place. If Cerberus had managed to hack into the systems perhaps we could…

I stopped in my tracks. Someone stood in front of the core's main control. The housing of the control unit had been ripped off, connecting the inside and the shape's belly with cables. Not someone. Something. Behind me I heard Jacob gasp. The gun sprang back into my hand almost on its own.

The thing turned its head and its glowing photoreceptor focused on me.

"Shepard-Commander. We're most pleased to finally meet you."

.~'*'~.

Over the barrel of my gun I watched the geth watching me.

"I think we found our saboteur…" Jacob mumbled, taking up position to my left.

Geth didn't speak. Geth were machines, they didn't care about being pleased. And most certainly Geth didn't fix themselves with pieces of dented N7 armor. That… that looked suspiciously like mine.

"What are you doing here?" I asked, carefully eyeing the geth for any sign of threat.

"Knowledge. We seek to understand."

"Understand what?" An uneasy presentiment crawled up on me.

"The Old Machines."

"The Old Machines? You mean the Reapers?"

"Yes. Reapers."

Fantastic. "Why did you sabotage the scientists' equipment, then?"

"They worked to restore this platform of the Old Machines. It could not be allowed."

I narrowed my eyes. "Why not? You said you came here to understand them."

"Geth oppose the Old Machines. Their data will be used to strengthen our platforms."

"But there were geth allied with a Reaper called Sovereign!"

"Heretics. They are no longer geth. They consented to Nazara's dominion. You destroyed Nazara but the heretics are still bound to their code. They will deploy a virus that turns all geth into heretics. This platform was sent to seek a countermeasure."

"What will happen if all geth become heretics?" Jacob asked.

The geth switched his focus to him. "When the Old Machines return, heretics will defer to their programming."

"They will all fight for the Reapers…" I said.

"Correct."

"How do you know who I am?"

"Like geth you oppose the Old Machines. When heretics left to serve Nazara this platform was assembled. Our primary directive was to make contact with you. 'The enemy of my enemy is my friend.' Human proverb, unknown origin."

Now I had seen it all. "But you never did. Why not?"

The geth gave me its equivalent of a shrug. "You died."

Oh boy. Apparently the universe though my life would be so much richer if it had another wisecracking AI in it. But yeah, I wouldn't look a gifted geth in the mouth. Especially not one that was answering questions instead of trying to kill us.

I lowered my gun. "Do you know anything about an IFF the Reapers might use?"

"Identification, friend or foe. A misnomer, actually. Describes a system that can positively identify friendly platforms only. We can confirm that this Reaper possesses subroutines that will return on request a specific sequence of pings."

My heart gave a jump. "Is it extractable?"

The geth was silent for a moment. "It is. However the data is distributed over several clusters. Booting them will reactivate a significant part of this Reapers' consensus to unknown effects. It is therefore not advisable."

"Wait," Miranda added. "What about the drive core? The scientists calculated that an energy drop like this would destabilize it."

"Their calculations were correct. From their data point of view."

"But their data wasn't reflecting the real conditions, right?" I asked shared a look with Miranda. This geth was decidedly too clever for one of its kind.

"We reasoned it was wise to make sure they erred on the side of caution."

Right. I tried to reach the Normandy once more. Nothing. I eyed the geth. "Are you blocking our communication?"

"No. But the vessel of unknown signature that arrived after you is."