"We circle around this thing one more time, Garrus, and we're going to get blown out of the sky."
"Really, Wrex? I wouldn't have thought." Garrus growled, "I'm looking as best as I can!"
"There! Right there!" Tali exclaimed as she pointed to what looked to be a hole, "See it?"
"Yeah, but is that big enough?"
"Doesn't look like we're going to have a choice!" Liara said as she saw two gunships come up from behind them, "Just bring us in Garrus! Dive in if you have to!"
With a second to decide, Garrus yanked the yoke toward the pathetically sized hole and held his breath.
"Grab on to something and brace yourselves! Now!"
"Slow the hell down!" Tali yelled, "We're— we're going in too fast!"
"I don't think I can!"
Whatever passed as wings immediately shred off their craft when they entered the hole. Tali immediately slipped and fell to the ground before watching the glass composite windshield crack and break over Garrus.
She couldn't really tell what happened after that. All she could feel were her bones being rattled by how fast the ship was sliding across the muddy looking floor.
Suddenly, the ship pummeled into a long vertical beam and crushed its nose in before coming to an abrupt halt.
The final tremor passed.
Surprisingly, the first one to voice a complaint was Wrex.
"Damnit, Garrus. Didn't think I'd see the next day for a moment there."
Garrus didn't have the courtesy to reply.
"Garrus?" Wrex asked to see if Garrus was listening.
Sensing something was wrong, Tali slowly got to her feet.
"Garrus?" Tali watched the dust settle around him, "You alright?"
"No," He said finally with a ragged breath, "I don't think I am."
Liara overheard and instantly made her way to them both. When she finally laid her eyes on Garrus, she gave him a look of disbelief when she realized the thing sticking out of him.
"Oh Goddess..."
"Bad enough for me to take a breath." Garrus murmured as he looked at the small little pole lodged just under the seal of his abdomen.
Tali immediately started administering first aid while Liara kept watching.
"...Garrus." Liara murmured.
"I'm fine. It's not deep. Suit says I'm still okay." He turned to stare at her, "Just hurts."
The way his mandibles flared spoke volumes of the pain he was holding back.
Wrex, with his crestfallen look, grumbled to the group he was going to check the perimeter while they tended to him.
Liara faced Tali and nodded to her.
They needed to pull it out.
"Okay." Tali said after setting a hand on Garrus' shoulder to get his attention, "...We need pull it out."
"...Okay." He nodded bitterly, "Just do it."
Liara, ever so carefully, smeared a numbing agent around her fingers and rubbed it gingerly into his wound before slipping out the shrapnel.
He winced and clenched his teeth. "Fuck."
"You okay?" Tali asked as she tossed the pole behind her without a second glance. Liara saw the hole and felt relief. It wasn't that bad.
"I'll be fine." He said as he shooed them both away before stepping out of the seat clumsily, "We should catch up to Wrex."
They both nodded and grabbed for their weapons.
"Shit."
"What?"
"My gun's missing." Tali said as she looked about the floor to see if she could spot it, "Do you see it anywhere?"
Liara shook her head as she looked across the floor herself. "No."
"Wait... I left it back in the Mako."
"You'll just have to stay behind us then." Garrus murmured as he stepped outside of the gunship.
"Come on, Tali." Liara urged, "There's nothing we can do about it now."
"...I know."
As soon as Tali stepped off into the collector ship and graced the area around her with a long and studying stare, she frowned. "This? This is a ship?"
"It's no ship I've ever seen." Garrus added as he looked around the ugly walls himself, "How do they even keep in atmosphere?"
"Not by anything conventional." Liara put in with a mumble.
"This way." Wrex called to them before pointing out to a source of light, "Come on."
They followed Wrex in silence until they come across what seemed to be the hollowed-out center of the ship. It looked as if it expanded all the way out from bow to stern.
"Keelah..." Tali said as she gawked at the sight, "You could fit two dozen of the Normandy in here with room to spare for a cruiser..."
"What the hell is this..." Garrus whispered under his breath.
"Hell, it seems..." Liara murmured.
They all suddenly hear a soft sound coming from somewhere close by. Immediately, they hide under the shadows and look up to see where it was coming from.
"See anything?" Wrex asked.
"No... Wait. I do. Right there." Garrus pointed to what looked to be a hovering octagonal platform.
They all watched it without saying anything until it was far out of view.
"Think they know where we are?" Tali wondered out loud.
"What the hell kind of question is that?" Garrus said, "Of course they do."
"Then why are we hiding? Why haven't they come for us yet?"
Garrus thought about it and could only shrug.
Liara took a breath and wiped away some of the dirt from her forehead. "We should get out of the open."
"Agreed." Garrus nodded, "Over there. Another tunnel."
They all go without making a sound and slip back into darkness.
"We need a game plan." Garrus began, "We need to find a way to find the crew and get an exit strategy. The ship's too big for guesswork."
"Let's find a computer then." Tali said, "It's a long shot to try, but I don't think we've got anything else."
"Huh. Would you look at that." Wrex said with a smile, "A terminal. Right there."
Tali felt her shoulders sag slightly in relief. "Fantastic. Cover me while I try to see if I can get in."
They jog up to the computer and take positions around her to cover her while she worked.
With just an omni-tool and her wit, she started.
And since she'd never touched a collector computer in her life, she started pressing buttons to see what it would do.
It may have made her look busy, or even made her look like she knew what she was doing; but she hadn't the slightest clue of what she was doing.
Exactly the opposite really.
Random things started popping up on the screen and Tali hated to admit that she couldn't understand any of it.
"You see anything yet, Tali?" Garrus asked as he kept sight of the hallway.
"You've given me thirty seconds to literally try and interface with technology I didn't even know existed until yesterday. No, I don't have anything yet." She scowled as she tried setting up her omni-tool to read the text on the screen.
As she had expected, it didn't match any known language recognized by galactic standards.
"Sorry. Just asking."
She started pressing buttons again randomly to see if she could get anything out of it.
"So." Wrex began tersely, "Think poking around with one of their computers is going to set them off about where we are?"
"What do you think, Wrex?" Garrus said rhetorically, "Honestly."
"Ah."
"Ah what?"
Wrex said nothing.
"Ah what?" Garrus repeated harshly.
Wrex still didn't say anything and Garrus rolled his eyes when Wrex snickered.
Asshole.
Garrus faced Tali to see if she'd found anything yet. "Anything, Tali?"
"I... I think so." Tali said with a nod, "I think I've got something that looks like a map... of the ship, I mean."
"Really? How'd you manage to do that?"
"Not... uh, exactly sure." She admitted sheepishly. She snapped a picture of the monitor, took in one shallow breath, and stepped away from the computer.
"At least it's something." Liara sighed, "We should probably move though. Staying here for too long isn't a good idea."
Map or not, it still didn't help ease any of the anxiety Tali was feeling. The only thing that would make her feel better was when she would find John, and when they were far, far away from this place.
"Wherever you are... Just stay alive, John..." She murmured quietly to herself, "Please."
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If Marcus Grieco had to explain how he felt at this very moment, he'd say he felt detached from his senses.
Everything around him was murky and cloudy.
And he felt like he'd been dreaming for days.
Nor could he remember anything.
Without ever opening his eyes, he wiped away the beady sweat from his forehead and took in a ragged breath of humid air.
He groaned hoarsely before opening his eyes and frowning. "...Where the hell am I?"
He pressed both his hands against the muddy looking glass prison and started to feel panic.
"What the...—the hell?"
He hadn't the slightest clue of what was going on.
But Grieco had good enough reason to believe that whoever or whatever put him in here wasn't for a well-intentioned reason.
"Okay... Fuck, okay. Think. Think."
The first thing he needed to do was get out of this... thing.
He dug his hands into his pockets to see if he still had that lucky screwdriver his daughter gave him before his deployment.
Fortunately enough, much to Grieco's relief, the screwdriver was still in his pocket.
He grabbed for it, set it against the glass, and started chipping away.
"Come on... Come on..."
At the sixty-seventh stab, the flat head poked through to the other side and he felt cool air seep in.
In an awkward sawing motion, he worked his way to crack the glass down the middle before kneeing the whole thing and having it shatter over him.
Then he stepped out, fell to his knees, and wretched.
His whole body ached. Felt like he'd ran an entire marathon without ever exercising for it.
He lay on his knees with his face down in the dirt to keep himself from dry heaving any more than he did.
Finally coming to his senses, he stood up, albeit slowly, and got a look around at where he was.
His breath left him.
It wasn't just him. The whole crew was in here. Every single one of them in pods just like the one he was in.
He could see their faces.
Pakti.
Barret.
Raymond.
Tucks.
He felt his eyes redden with tears and felt total helplessness.
Why were they here? What should he do? Why was he even awake?
He heard a collector and slinked behind something before watching the only area someone could enter.
"Shit..." He breathed, "Fuck..."
He saw one come in. "Oh god. Oh fuck."
He had to get out of there.
Now.
He searched for a way to escape without getting caught and eventually saw a small tunnel big enough to crawl through.
Swallowing his fear, he stooped in and crawled into the decrepit looking hole. He kept crawling and swore to himself and the crew that he would come back whenever he'd get the chance to free them all.
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30 Minutes Later.
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He made it to the other end and pulled himself out.
He'd never been one to be afraid of small spaces... but he was really starting to reconsider that after this.
He lingered at the tunnel for a minute or so to make sure he hadn't been seen or heard. When the go was all clear, he reached for a rock to mark the tunnel he came from and decided to keep moving.
As far as he was concerned, he was the only one from the Normandy still conscious. And he didn't even want to guess what happened to Liara, Garrus, Wrex, or Tali.
It was hard to see anything in this place. For the most part, the long and open tunnels were mostly dark, save for the occasional light that would come up every once in a while.
He kept in the shadows and remained so.
At the bend in the tunnel, he saw a collector standing absently in the light, staring emptily at a console. At the table just nearby was its gun.
Marcus felt his heart start pounding. This was his chance.
Wielding his screwdriver more like a knife than anything else, he stalked up to the collector.
The thing was easily a foot taller than him. And the next few moments would decide whether or not this would be the end of him. But he had to try. Or else the crew would be doomed. And he'd never get to see his wife and kids again.
Marcus leapt onto the collector's back and started stabbing repeatedly into the neck's soft tissue.
The collector hardly made a motion to resist.
He didn't have time to think much on the issue. He grabbed the head and stabbed out its eyes. As it fell to its knees, he dug the screwdriver deeper into its eye socket until he was sure the flat head scrambled its brain.
The collector finally fell into the dry sooty ground beneath them. Black blood started to pool around the body.
"Fuck..." He breathed heavily as he stood up from the mess he made. He reached for the gun on the table, studied it for a moment, and moved on.
Marcus felt a little better now.
He'd made a plan during his crawl through the rat hole. And so far, it was holding.
Step one was to find a gun. He could check that off the list.
Now he needed to find an exit.
Then he'd double back and get the crew before leading them all out of here.
He fell back into the shadows and hoped for himself that what he was about to do would pull through for them all.