So yeah, I'm alive and this story is indeed not dead. In fact this chapter will be veeeery long as a way to compensate for the huge time gap since the last update, and to finally conclude Tali's and Joe' little misadventure in Omega. So grab a snack and get comfortable, this will be a huge one. I'm also training my third person writing style and decided to use this chapter as a draft for it so… feel free to leave your feedback and let me know if you prefer the old style or the new one. If you guys enjoy it I might keep it, otherwise we will return to see the world through the eyes of this crazy psychic struggler of a protagonist.

This chapter also gets very dark towards the end, even by F.E.A.R standards. So be ready for some very strong scenes.

You have been warned


Having his ass knocked out by a big fall, a devastating explosion or both was something he was already religiously conditioned to at this point after all the misadventures he had to endure. Different circumstances but the drill remained the same, the familiarity of the ordeal provided a brief nostalgia that his heart barely had time to savor as his eyes slowly began to open and the two glowing orbs staring at him through a purple-tinted mask reminded him that he was a long way from home and with another set of priorities at hand. He moved, but only barely. His attempt to get back on his feet was stopped by the three fingered hand of the quarian engineer resting on his shoulder with a very firm intent to keep him laying down

"Stay still, your skull took some serious hit. You were out for a while now." She said with slightly tilting her head once her fingers brushed briefly against his skin through the hole in his military sweater. The absence of the wound that should have been there after an unpleasant encounter with a krogan pirate made her narrow her eyes behind the mask, but she bit back her questions. "You should take it easy."

"Yeah… Maybe in an ideal world, kitten. Maybe in an ideal world." He shrugged away the numbness and bits of fatigue threatening to settle in as his body started to remind him how long it has been since the last time he had a proper rest, choosing to sit up against the floor and cracking his neck for good measure before staring curiously at their dark surroundings. "For now, no rest for the wicked. I would love for you to share though where my gear is and what the heck happened exactly. I only remember staring at some fine piece of artillery before feeling myself falling."

"We got hit by a rocket and we crashed against the sidewalk a few yards from here. It definitely wasn't a pretty sight." She gestured to a table in the corner of the room, watching in awe as he stumbled back to his feet and started making his way there. The smoke, the fire, his immovable form at the driver seat and panic settling in every nerve of her body as she nervously struggled to get them both of there as mass accelerator rounds kept flying aimlessly over the air was still printed in her mind like a broken recorder. And yet here he was, going over his gear like nothing even happened, his body language showing no signs of pain… much to her confusion. "Seriously, I really think you shouldn't be moving at all right now. A high amount of concentrated explosive agent collided practically against your face, Joe."

"It wouldn't be the first time my face and the end of a rocket launcher decided they like each other a little too much, so don't worry." He stated, casually sheathing his knife back.

"That kind of stubborness can end up getting you killed someday."

"Actually one could argue it is the reason I'm still alive."

"You are a strange human." She said, trying to spot any injuries on him but finding none.

"Like I said before, it is part of the charm." He smirked, inspecting his assault rifle for any signs of jamming. "How did we end up here though?"

"Oh, I carried you here." She said, inspecting her own shotgun for good measure until she noticed the incredulous stare he was giving her. "What?"

"A few yards huh… It couldn't have been easy dragging my fat ass all the way over here." He said, sounding more as he was talking to himself than anything else.

She only shrugged in return. "It probably wasn't even this far away. Just a guess."

"Still, I owe you." The assault rifle was back in place, alongside a few grenades kept together by an improvised bandolier that it looked like it was going to hold despite the odds. Turning to fully face his quarian companion, he gave her his best attempt at a genuine smile. "Thanks Tali."

She shied away from his gaze, scratching her arm in a gesture that was becoming very familiar to him before uttering a barely audible "don't mention it."

"You are ready to go?"

She gave a determined nod before grabbing her shotgun, giving room for him to take the point at the door as she proceeded to watch his flank more out of habit born from their cleaning of the cruiser than anything else. There was no sounds being made outside, no signs of activity from whoever was that shot them from the sky, in fact it has been dead quiet for a while now since she barricaded themselves into some small abandoned and dirty room, so she didn't know why it was so surprising to see the street outside completely desert and with not a single life form to see. Sure there was a whole gigantic piece of evidence that some kind of heavy intensity battle had taken place there: bullet holes decorating the metallic structures, sky cars burned down and smoke clouds in the distance told a very clear tale of destruction and bloodshed. And yet there were not even bodies to be found, only blood.

"Weird. It's like someone came here with their pants down ready to do some serious damage but left before they could go all the way." Her odd human partner stated, his face impassive but his body language clearly tense. His finger was now resting on the trigger and his eyes began scanning for any signs of problems before he kneed closer to a pool of blood. "Or maybe they didn't."

"What do you mean?"

"I mean that maybe there is more to it than meets the eye."

"I… beg your pardon?"

She stared at him with eyes narrowed in confusion behind the mask, her reaction getting a small chuckle out of him before he stood back on his feet to look at her with a thin smile. "it means that there is more to this fucked up scene than we can see."

"It doesn't change our goal though. We find the Sons, we find Captain Breizh." A chorus of gunshots very far away from their current location rang out as soon as the words left her mouth, the unsettling silence had been replaced by the morbid reminder of the lawless and chaotic nature of the station and what awaited them on the way ahead. She tightened her grip on her shotgun as her heart started racing inside her chest until she put a stop to it with a deep breath and a final resolute stare into the smoking horizon before turning her attention back to her against-the-odds-partner. "And now I guess we know exactly which way to go."

"This kind of attitude will take you very far, kitten. Very far." He chuckled to himself, glancing at the weird and ruined scene around them one last time before starting walking towards the sounds of battle and destruction. "Guess following the shots it is."

And following the shots they did, for a long and anxious time as they kept going through more of this ruined residential neighborhood plagued by destruction and blood but yet completely absent of any dead bodies that would normally be decorating a scene of such carnage. The oddness of this fact made the engineer suspicious and the notion that they were marching towards lethal danger put all the nerves in her body on high alert, a feeling that was shared by the forgotten son taking point in front of her, but for a very different reason. Unlike his quarian companion, he could almost taste that very distinct sensation in the air infiltrating the layers of his skin and hammering its way into his skull, producing the same feeling that would circulate through his entire body in order to form one clear message that it took him many life threatening situations to be able to understand: danger.

But not the kind of danger he would see in his tours, not the kind of danger that would fly past him without leaving a scratch almost like the uniform made him bulletproof, not even the kind of danger that used to stare into his eyes with a knife in one hand and the life of his team mate in the other while forcing to make a choice, but the kind of danger he really wanted the believe it was finally behind him … the ghostly and freaky danger of something very nasty lurking in the dark. The gunshots decorating the walls, the residue of what was obviously artillery used all around him was easy to explain. The trails of blood and the absence of bodies was not and he knew that whatever freak show was present in this district or whatever it is called was responsible for this, much to his own confusion. He faced a lot of ghosts in that hellhole but couldn't remember one in particular that wouldn't leave the bloody remains of its victims behind as some kind of twisted warning or decoration for the place.

"Maybe it is something new, maybe it is something weirdly different." One of the pools of blood managed the feat of standing out among the others because of what were clearly footprints leading to an isolated wall of what appeared to be the entrance to an alley... or at least what looked to him like an alley by the futuristic standards of this place. A quick glance at the wall revealed a single word painted in fresh blood on the metallic structure of the wall: REVENGE. His hand came to scratch his chin as he studied the wall with a small glint of amusement in his eyes while the possibilities started racing back and forth in his head. Or maybe it is something too familiar for comfort.

As he mused over the cryptic nature of whatever forces were behind the strange and inconsistent picture of destruction that was surrounding them, a beeping coming from the technological device inside the wrist of his quarian companion made her jump out of her watch in search of the source. Tali's fingers started to dance over the orange interface before her interaction with the Omni-Tool came to a halt as her eyes narrowed in suspicion as she read the words displayed in the holographic interface covering her forearm. "Odd."

This ceased the psychic soldier's little inspection of the ally all together and as he returned to her side, the engineer turned to look at him with what he detected to be confusion in her bright eyes before speaking, "Comms are receiving a transmission from an unknown source, but most likely from somewhere in this ward."

"Your captain maybe?"

"I…" She gave the incoming call message a longing glance before focusing on him once again with bright orbs behind the mask shining in what he recognized as sparks of hope. "Maybe? I don't know, ID is unknown but… nothing is there to say he couldn't manage to contact me through an alternative source… if I happen to be in range."

"Only one real way to find out, kitten."

She nodded briefly before accepting the call with a small level of reluctance. Whatever high hopes that she would be hearing the voice of her captain again were crushed by the deep and guttural voice that came from the other side of the call, "if I were you, I'd get my ass outta this street right now."

She looked at her human companion in confusion and a small dose of shock before asking with a sharp note of suspicion dancing in her accent, "who is this?"

"Get the fuck outta the street now!" was the only thing she got before the call ended as suddenly as it had come, leaving her with more questions than anything else.

And yet despite the harshness and rudeness of the voice, it's word carried a serious note of a warning. She was about to ask the strange but sharp human for an input before noticing that something on the end of the neighborhood had caught his undivided and guarded attention as his eyes remained focused with a fiery intent and his whole body language screamed combat readiness. Curious, slightly fearful and grabbing her own shotgun more tightly than ever, she turned to see what kind of trouble was waiting ahead of the way this time. The ones responsible for crashing their skycar, looters having their way with the deserted homes and buildings like the one in the many preparatory videos on life more hostile environments that she had been tasked with studying before the start of her pilgrimage, or even a totally new hostile third party in the middle of this massive nightmare among other things was that she expected to see up ahead. The reality though was far more twisted and disturbing than anything her imagination could produce.

"Keelah…"

Completely gray skin bordering on the rot of a decomposing corpse, eyes empty and devoid of any kind of emotions, and exposed wounds that ranged from simple gunshot wound to exposed flesh and bones that almost made her vomit in horror were one of the many inhuman attributes that make up the gigantic coalition of humans, turians, batarians and other species she couldn't even recognize coming out of windows, ducts, and any other hole they could use to crawl out before rushing towards the duo in clumsy haste and clearly hostile intention judging by the way some were swinging their makeshift weapons and trying to aim the guns some of them were in possession of.

Tali found herself completely frozen at the sight of the horde rushing towards them, a sentiment shared by her human companion for a totally different reason. It wasn't the overwhelming sense of dread emanating from this band of undead that made him stare wide-eyed, it wasn't the horror of witnessing something clearly paranormal in front of him that made him freeze like a green boy, but rather the fact that different from the quarian engineer he could see clear as the day the psychic strings connecting all of them to a main source that was out of sight and inexplicably out of reach. As the legion of puppets began to approach, He was no longer a dimensional traveler lost on a lawless space station, he was once again an unlucky lone soldier standing amidst the fire and carnage of a destroyed metropolis as the horde from hell came to strip off his artificial flesh grown in a tube and take away his soul stained by the ties that bound him to the Mother of the Apocalypse.

At least until a shot piercing his shoulder broke the illusion by overloading his senses with the sweet and familiar feeling of the only thing that could remind him that he was indeed very much alive: pain. One head grabbed two grenades, tossing the discus-like explosives towards the horde while the other grabbed the hand of his frozen companion as he activated his reflexes. Tali felt the wind literally rushing past her as she started being dragged to the closest alleyway more faster than her mind could process, in fact the only thing she could make some sense of was a violent explosive against the horde of twisted creatures before she found herself falling against the counter of some store of some kind as her odd companion started firing non-stop through a door that he promptly closed as soon as his assault rifle overheated.

A rotten, bruised face of a salarian crashed against the closest window right after, trying and failing to go through the heavy blinds before Joe punched the creature with enough force for a bone to crack. Others tried the same tactic, smashing against the windows and door with makeshift weapons, only to suffer a more severe punishment for the dare when the psychic soldier tossed an incendiary grenade through a hole in the window and watched with a satisfied smile as the zombified creatures in their tail began to burn. It was a temporary solution, and judging by the number of puppets on their tail, one that he estimated would give them a minute at most of a window to breathe.

But regardless, he couldn't help but smile at the sight before turning to face the quarian engineer, who kept staring at the windows with bright eyes widened in fear before she managed to eventually muster enough courage in order to ask, "WHAT IN THE NAME OF MY ANCESTORS WERE THOSE THINGS?!"

"Something that wasn't supposed to be here." He answered in the most nonchalant way possible as he made his way to the door in the back of the room where he peeked through the back door before closing it shut and returning to the balcony where she still was leaned against. There was a variety of what seemed to be hunting tools, some whose purpose were completely unknown to him due to its alien design, but it didn't matter. His eyes were scanning in search of something else entirely. "But again, when has this ever stopped shit from hitting the fan before? I just honestly can't tell."

"I… what…" She took a deep breath, shaking her head as if in an attempt to wake up herself from any nightmare she could possibly still be in before the sounds of the horde outside once again approaching reminded her that this was real and it was coming in their direction. Getting back to her feet, she turned to the human working on placing cloth wicks ripped from his sleeves on several open bottles of alcoholic beverages retrieved from some hidden box now tossed aside, before attaching six to his improvised slots and start to tie up the remaining tightly with what appeared to be a piece of wire. "What are you even doing right now?"

"Giving us an edge and making sure they will regret coming our way. They might sure look hella intimidating, but you will be surprised by how soft they actually are." He frowned as if in deep thought for a solid minute before start to weirdly remove his left boot, his odd behavior just aggravating her feeling of unsettling as she watched him shaking it upside-down until a small metallic object with a white star and a sun separated by a lightning bolt engraved in blue, white, red and green fell out of it. Its meaning was completely alien to her, but it seemed to be a source of a deep nostalgic feeling judging by the fondness in her companion's eyes as he picked it up. "I knew I still had you with me, you little bastard."

She tried her best to ignore it, as it wasn't for her to ask or even inquire about something that was clearly personal. But there were other things that he has been more than reluctant to share and at the same time completely oblivious of how much his attitude gave away knowledge he was trying so hard to pretend he didn't have, and for that she needed some answers. "You know what these things outside are."

He didn't answer, he simply stored the… device in his pocket before starting to put his boot back, much to her growing frustration. Her frightened tone grew to something resembling a growling as she muttered, "Joe…"

"Is this really the right time?" He stared at her with these same dead eyes she found so hard to look at, as if expecting her to avoid them in the same way she has been doing since they embarked together on this attempt of a rescue but she didn't, not this time. She just stared back despite the chilling in her guts and the fast pacing of her heart, going over his words silently in her head. Sure, she wanted answers after seeing literal corpses moving towards them with deadly intent, but now, with them pinned down like this and these creatures closing in, she couldn't exactly disagree, this was hardly the time or place. "Yeah, thought so. Listen, odds are you will never see these things ever again once we finally find your captain and we go our separate ways. Until then, I'm making a point of not letting them hurt you, okay?"

"You can't guarantee that and I'm not asking you to." She stated in an annoyed tone, sighing deeply before turning her attention to his odd makeshift work and then back to him. "But I won't insist because you are right, now it is not the time or place. But once we are not in immediate danger you are going to explain to me exactly what we are dealing with!"

"Fair enough. For now let's just focus on not dying." He replied before proceeding to attach the bottles to the ceiling by a wire that went all the way down to a small crack in the wall near the entrance to the store. "Do you still have incendiary grenades?"

She nodded, grabbing the discus-like explosive in her three fingered hand. He stared at the bottles being now suspended above them before scratching his chin in deep thought before extending a hand to grab it. She tossed him the charge and watched as he planted at what seemed to be a calculated distance from the tripwired door before grabbing his assault rifle again and throwing the door a pointing glare. Soon enough she understood why, soon enough the masses of dead people came to smash violently against the window blind once again and pierce the door with a Omni-saw of all things, much to his surprise and to the engineer's shock and horror who shrieked at the sight of the door starting to be cut before she was shaken out of it by the psychic soldier's hand on her shoulder. "We need to move."

She simply nodded as they headed to the back exit, the image of the dead marching as something born from a wicked nightmare once again assaulted her mind and the sounding of metal being saw and glass being smashed kept tormented her mind even when the hunting store was replaced by the red neon of Omega and a mazed like residential courtyard, only coming to a dead and abruptly silence stop when the results of her companion's work got lighted into action and a inferno caused my a explosive charge and several bottles of alcohol set the store and the puppets who had barely managed to set foot inside ablaze. The flames didn't look like they would go out anytime soon and the others who weren't caught directly in the explosion would soon burn as well. This small relief didn't last though, as more and more puppets started to converge towards them from the apartment windows nearby, only to be met with a hurricane of mass accelerator rounds piercing their chests and skulls as the ex delta force operative activated his reflexes. These puppets were clearly more agile and slightly more smart than their Fairport counterparts, but luckily they were just as soft. A barrage of well-conserved shots in high speed did the trick in suppressing them and all it took was one good grenade tossing from the quarian engineer to demolish their clumsy initial advance entirely, giving the duo extra time to put more distances between and the paranormal army of corpses trying to close in.

As they ran, shooting down more and more living corpses crawling out of buildings, alleyways, and even small ducts connected to the inner part of the station, things became chaotic very fast. Despite the puppets' physical fragility in the face of weapons and the limited amount of explosives the duo possessed, they had a gigantic numerical advantage that was becoming increasingly difficult to overcome through brute force alone. They would take out a large group, so large to the point where their guns would overheat due to the sheer numbers of the attackers alone, only to find themselves running for their lives as another larger group replenished the other. Hit, run, and repeat. Between Joe's reflexes and accuracy, Tali's shotgun and tech skills, and loads of explosives and makeshift incendiary agents, they manage to carve a path of slaughter to what used to be a street market, now completely ruined and filled with only smoke, blood and destruction as they ran through it guns blazing…

Until one lone krogan puppet walked out of an alleyway a good few feet in front of them, wielding what was unmistakably a bloody missile launcher. So far they had been lucky when it came to these new… puppets variants, the ones in possession of guns were few and still too clumsy to be a real problem. In fact, they have been more of a nuisance throughout this wild chase than anything else. But this one in particular had its weapon perfectly aimed at them. Joe's reflexes activated on instinct and he was about to put two between the dead eyes of the reanimated corpse, but something else caught his attention: a single energy slug traveling in slow motion thanks to his psychic gift colliding against the puppet's head and sending it to the ground. He narrowed his eyes and as they followed the trajectory of the shot the only thing he could see was another metallic apartment block fair away in the distance. Nothing unusual about it, except the very brief reflection of light he was only able to spot due to how slow things were moving right now. Shaking his head, he deactivated his reflexes and they both pressured forward, running and shooting their way into what seemed to be a secluded and semi barricaded mechanical workingshop.

It was dark, trashed and barely protected, but would give them time to breathe. The doors were heavy and steady enough, and judging by a few details around the workshop someone tried to use this place as an attempt at some kind of safe haven, but they failed. Maybe there was some entrance they both didn't check and that the legions of the dead outside hadn't yet stumbled into by sheer luck, or maybe whoever was seeking refuge here never managed to close the door in the first place. So many possibilities, so little time to ponder them all as the numbers of their pursuers kept increasing and their vicious attacks against the doors started to produce results thanks to the heavy weight of two dead krogan smashing their lifeless forms repeatedly against the blocked entrance. Slowly an opening was created and the corpses controlled by an unseen puppet master stumbled into the workshop in search of what should be two new victims…

A skycar crashing violently into them was what they found instead.

The mass of undead were knocked down by the aerial vehicle's takeoff like bowling pins. Discolored blood splashed against the windshield and a lone krogan clung to the front of the skycar, much to the astonishment of the pair who watched the creature trying to smashing the futuristic car and headbut the windshield with wide eyes before Joe started to aggressively maneuver to vehicle in hopes to knock the dead krogan off.

The basic principle of driving this thing wasn't so different from driving a car back at his word, just in a more alien way. The fact the skycar wasn't in top condition didn't help his efforts in getting rid of the puppet and as such, his opinionated engineer partner took the matter into her hands and shot the krogan in the head through the glass with her shotgun. The puppet went numb and fell down to reveal they were about to crash against a store. The psychic soldier's reflex activated by themselves and the skycar skidded violently in the air until landing awkwardly on top of a building with the engine screaming and a small amount of smoke coming from all the ends of the vehicle.

"For the sake of our survival… I would prefer if you avoid doing this again in the near future, Joe." Tali said between heavy breaths, trying to make some sense of what she assumed was the use of his unnatural speed while behind a wheel.

"I will try to remember that next time we are about to crash into some building." He glanced at the smoking coming out of the skycar, narrowing his eyes suppressing a curse before turning to her. "This doesn't look good."

"I warned you, it was in a precarious state." She glanced at the skycar herself, muttering what sounded like silent curses under breath for a brief moment before voicing her thoughts. "Propulsive drive is compromised, leaking element zero left and right. The only reason we didn't crash in the middle of the flight was because I patched it and even then it's more of a temporary measure than a solution… and don't even get me started on the system of the haptic adaptive interface or all the internal estructural problems I couldn't even attend."

"Alright, I get it. It is a shitty car. But don't forget it, you were the one who insisted on this plan."

"I know…" She sighs, glancing at the horde above in the streets with something resembling renewed optimism and relief before giving him a proud look. "And judging by the view, we can't exactly complain about the results. I might not know a lot about these… creatures, but it doesn't feel like they will be able to climb all the way up here."

"You got that right." Joe's eyes remained focused on the masses of the puppets several feet below more out of instinct than anything else, all of them connected by the psychic strings that weirdly enough seemed to lead somewhere very far away from there. Just one of several oddness concerning this army of the dead, but thankfully despite some of them also being tougher, faster, or even slightly more smarter than what he was used to, they were still clumsy and most of the time incompetent enough for him to believe they would indeed not be able to reach the top of this building at all. "I would even go as far as to say we earned ourselves a break for the time being."

She stared at him in silence for a long moment, half studying the way his eyes were so fixated on the paranormal mob below and half deciding on whether to ask for what felt like the hundredth time. "Ready to explain to me now why there are corpses walking all around this district?"

"We are hardly out of danger, you know. Still not the best time." He finally turned to face her, still looking composed and weirdly unfazed as always. "Besides, what differences would it make?"

"Actually knowing that I'm not hallucinating due to what could be the start of some trauma, stress, a neural infection or a combination of the three would make a huge difference on my current mental state, thank you very much." She snorted.

"Oh you are not going crazy, believe me. That would be a blessing. This hell around us is as real as it gets and it is not picky about who to tear apart or to drive completely insane." His hands gripped the steering wheel so hard that his knuckles turned white, his posture became stiff, and his gaze became unnervingly more voracious as memories and secrets that only he possessed dared to scrap the surface before he pushed them to the back of his mind and focusing on her again. "The less you know, the easier it will be to forget."

"Not if I keep wondering forever why I stumbled upon the inexplicable when trying to rescue someone important to me, if this is what happens when the ancestors of so many misguided people abandon them to their own fate due to ingratitude or some kind of… sin."

"You will have an easier time if you don't mix religion with this."

"Not if you keep refusing to share what you know."

At that he laughed, laughed genuinely and in good nature. At her persistence, at the fact that he was talking to a curious soul who actually wanted to understand this kind of horror instead of just fight through it and bury it so deep in the darkest corner of her mind that one day in some quiet road she would finally be able to breathe without thinking about it, like the few men and women who had managed to survive through the infectious hell crawling out of the Ground Zero. He stared at her mercury eyes behind the mask and she stared back, his gaze not getting a reaction out of her like it did many times before.

"We used to call them puppets." He allowed a shadow of a weak smile to show up at his lips as he glanced down at the horde moving seemingly randomly. "And maybe in some sort of small act of mercy from fate, they are by all effects just empty drones being held together by something else entirely. Just walking sacks of dead meat moving according to the dance."

She stayed dead silent, processing, thinking and accepting the information. Maybe dispatching so many of these monstrosities in such close encounters had managed to leave her completely unimpressed by any absurdities behind the origins of their dead pursuers, maybe working with him and seeing the odd way he could move had anesthetized her against further eccentricities waiting in their path. Regardless, as she stared into his intimidating eyes, she only had one question to ask…

"Who's the puppet master?"

Good question. He thought to himself, making sense of everything that was thrown in their way so far. He had seen Shades beat men to death in a grotesque spectacle of blood and screams, he had witnessed Scarecrows dragging unlucky souls into the shadow of death and he had seen his own mother dissolving the flesh of living beings with nothing but her mind.

But until now he had never seen anything like what was all around them. "That would be a Remnant. A mutated undead nutjob. People who were… changed by something and gained some uncanny set of skills, like raising the dead to serve as some meat shield. But this? This is different. A Remnant might be able to roughly raise a room full of corpses if they are close enough to said room. These fuckers though number in the thousands and so far I haven't seen any signs of the one freak show pulling the strings."

"This is insane, all of this. And yet I can't have the luxury to be skeptical with all this," she gestured to the masses below, content with just stumbling with no real goal, "right around us. It is so… unnatural. What exactly can change someone into being able to do something like that?"

"You best left this last one unanswered." He shrugged, turning his attention to the white smoke coming out of the car. It didn't seem to be getting any better.

"Why are you so reluctant in sharing what you know?" She asked, a small note of tiredness and genuine curiosity in her voice.

"Because ignorance is the only insurance you got against all of this." He sighed, pinching the bridge of his nose for a second before giving her a tired look. "The more you know… the more dragged into this shit you will be and frankly I'm kinda tired of people dying on me every time something like this happens. Now… can you do anything at all about this junky car or what?"

She simply stared at him, then at the skycar and back to him again before sighing deeply. She wanted to know more, she needed to know more. But for the time being the little he decided to give would have to be enough. "I can try, but I don't have any tools with me like back in the workshop. Regardless of what I do we will still be running on borrowed time."

"Not like we have a lot of other options, and we can't stay up here forever. We need to move and…" His eyes drifted for a moment to the general direction of where he had caught a glimpse of that sniper's position. "And maybe pay a visit to our mysterious guardian angel."

"Thought I was the only one who noticed." She followed his gaze, her own mercury eyes trying to see more than the apartment block the distance located in what appeared to be some kind of slum. "It got me thinking, maybe whoever was behind the scope was the one who gave us that cryptic warning from before. Maybe… Maybe they know where…"

"Where your captain is." He glanced at her, earning a short nod as she kept staring in the distance with something resembling a hopeful gaze behind the mask. "I usually don't make a habit of spouting bad news, most of the time I keep my dosage of daily pessimism to myself. And I know I haven't given you loads of reasons to take my word for it, but when this kind of shit happens… survivors are not really a thing. Maybe-"

"No." It is a simple word, but one so full of resolve and determination that he really stopped and considered if it was even wise to pressure on the subject. The small hint of a glare she threw his way only added to it. "I'm not stupid. I know what the situation looks like and I understand… I understand that we might be chasing a ghost. But… I have to try. That's all I can do, to try and see if there is a chance to fix all of this. You are free to leave all this insanity behind if you want to. I won't stop you."

"I didn't come all the way here just to quit in the middle. I said I was going to help you, remember?"

"Then I better start seeing what can be done about this stupid skyca-"

Her entire world start to shaking by the impact of rockets crashing into tons of dead bodies powered by an unnatural force, giving the station's reddish lighting an orange hue as the artillery weapon took action and began to purge the tainted streets of their undead occupants as A-61 gunship start a spiral of mayhem and controlled chaos in what looked like a attempt to completely wipe out the puppets in that block. Mass accelerator machine guns made quick work of everything the rockets hadn't dispatched already, cutting through the helpless horde like blades shredding paper into tiny pieces. It was quick, brutal and efficient. The puppets never stood even an illusion of a chance against the combat aerial vehicle whose design and specification were completely alien to the psychic soldier and nothing out of the ordinary for the quarian engineer, who both watched as the neighborhood where they had been chased through just a few moments ago was practically liberated. The air vehicle rotated itself as if searching for any more targets, finally finding what it was looking for in the form of a seemingly ruined skycar with its two occupants hurriedly trying to start the engine again.

"Joe…"

"Just one second." He was practically smashing every button icon he could in the adaptive interface in hopes to make the bloody thing fly up.

"Joe"

"Anytime now kitten."

New rockets came to replace the ones fired previously at the horde as the pilot carefully aimed at the skycar, seemingly taking some form of twist pleasure in seeing his prey struggling in vain to make it work what could be the difference between life and death. His finger slowly moved to press the firing icon…

"JOE!"

"Here we fucking go!" A punch, one single and unpractical standard punch was all it took to make what should be the most advanced type of technology he ever saw to function as it should, one second before two rockets were launched at them with deadly intent.

"KEELAH!" Fear, shock, and other thousand of unpleasant emotions made her scream at the top of her lungs like there was no tomorrow, without even realizing that due to luck or perhaps the strange skills of the human at the wheel, they were not being obliterated by the two rockets that had hit the place where the skycar was previously grounded. The air vehicle took off, doing it's best to stay clear from the mass accelerator rounds being shot at them as the gunship gave chase.

"DIE FUCKERS!"

Why the hell this sounds so fucking familiar? Joe could help but wonder. Even though the guttural voice blasting through the gunship speakers was nothing like he had ever heard before, the line itself made him chuckle for some reason, even when a barrage of shots was doing a hellish fine job in finding its mark despite his best attempts at outmaneuvering their pursuer. His reflexes could do the trick in dodging rockets at the last possible second, but trying to straight out fly a war machine with a civilian vehicle barely keeping itself in the air simply wouldn't do at all. The ongoing aerial chase was by all means a race against time he wasn't sure they could win. Not with the skycar practically screaming as it was slowly being torn apart by bullets. It took them almost getting hit by another rocket for his mind to finally start formulating some sort of plan. Air traffic was completely absent in this district , whether due to the infestation of the psychically controlled corpses or any other reason he wasn't sure, but this meant that his alternative was limited to the streets below.

And so he began to reduce altitude just in time to dodge another rocket that flew aimlessly through the air, the gunship was quick to dive in chase of the duo's vehicle, even when the altitude was uncomfortably close to the sidewalk and the dozens of Puppets that had escaped from its fury found themselves obstructing the way, crushing the windshield of the increasingly decaying skycar and being obliterated by the high-speed impact against the gunship's armor. Between those who were being progressively crushed by the aerial combat vehicle itself and those shot down by the shots aimed at the skycar slowly losing power, soon the pilot's window was so obscured by dark blood that he hadn't even seen that his targets had turned right around the corner and that he was about to crash violently against a abandoned shop….

Until it was too late.

The building and gunship meet in a violent collision of glass and metal being bent as the air vehicle cut a path of destruction through the now ruined store while the pilot screamed expletive after expletive in shock and anger, until a dead silence settled in after a violent crash. With the adrenaline dying down, the quarian engineer allowed herself a tiny triumphant smile at the sight of the gunship completely immobilized among metallic debris getting farther and farther away as they drove off. It was only when they started leaving that neighborhood behind entirely that she felt safe enough to take her eyes off that scene and to sigh in relief.

"It's good to know my driving skills didn't get rusty either." He allowed himself to smirk, glancing at the mirror to admire his work before focusing once more on keeping driving them as far away from the whole mess as possible amidst smoke and weird noises being produced by the dangerously decaying skycar. "Just wished I didn't have to fuck up this thing even further to save our asses from getting blown up by another fucking missile. How much time can it hold up in the air?"

It didn't take a genius to know she was pursing her lips behind the mask, slowly coming to some grim estimations before turning to him with tired, shiny eyes. "Your little life saving stunt didn't help with the things I listed earlier, in fact I am 100% certain it actually worsened them to the point we have roughly more 5 minutes of flying-"

Red lights displaying all over the interface practically screaming a deadly warning cut her off short on her explanation, followed by the vehicle slowly losing power mid air. They stared at each other before the inevitable, with her giving a weak and forced smile behind the mask before muttering "or less." He would have laughed in any other circumstance, but now all he could do was growl like an angered animal for a second before the skycar finally started to succumb to the impartial laws of gravity as they began to fall down. The buildings getting closer and closer, his quarian companion trying and failing to suppress a series of shrinks while desperately holding onto anything she could grab, the last effort being something that he partially replicated without taking his eyes off the incoming buildings and sidewalks.

I just hope I manage to stay fucking conscious this time around. Was all his mind could formulate before the vehicle started hitting building to building In its chaotic descent until eventually reaching once again solid ground, rolling viciously until it eventually landed on a sidewalk. The only thing that managed to prevent the unlucky duo from colliding against each other and the interior of the skycar until being turned to mush was this new world equivalent of a seat belt, but that didn't meant that they completely unharmed by the time the vehicle stopped moving and they found themselves staring at the completely obliterated windshield with their forms upside-down.

"Well… shit." Moving his neck to look at her proved to be a painful effort, but he didn't care. He would be as good as new in a couple of minutes, his engineer partner in misfortune on the other hand wouldn't be so lucky depending on how badly the crash treated her. "Are you okay?"

The little quarian seemed to be in one piece, although even the smallest movement seemed to cause her some dose of pain as she herself turned to look at him with uncomfortable eyes. "I'm probably bruised and there is the chance that I broke something… but I will live. Are you okay though? This looks painful …"

He raised an eyebrow at that, at least until he noticed what she was referring to. His form was mirroring her own, upside-down and with small pieces of glass sticking to his face, chest and arms. While she had her alien suit to protect her from those small inconveniences, the psychic dimensional traveler wasn't so lucky. "It looks worse than it actually is, trust me. Now, I need you to muster what remains of your strength. We can't hang on our asses right now. They might-"

His words were cut short by the several footsteps rushing towards the crash site, eventually surrounding the fallen air vehicle with their grotesque and decaying forms in search of New potential victims. They gazed at each other, her shining eyes glowing with fear staring at his gray ones filled with what seemed to be annoyance. The puppets surrounding the skycar started growing in numbers to the point where they were casting a huge shadow over the crashed vehicle, it was only a matter of time before they started crawling underneath to finish the job. He tightly grabbed his knife and she desperately checked her position, both their hearts beating with different kinds of emotions as they steady themselves for what could possibly be the end…

Until hell fire was brought upon the army of the dead in a blink of vicious burning curtain of fire, slowly annihilating the growing horde and leaving the ones who escaped the flames completely free to be torn apart by the barrage of mass accelerator rounds that came right after. Their would-be-killers fall by the hundreds, leaving behind once–again-lifeless-bodies or unrecognizable carbonized remains. All they could do was just stare in confusion and some dose of relief as the puppets were wiped out and in their place armored boots surrounded the skycar. They didn't have the chance to make sense of it or even properly react before the doors were being forced open and they both started being dragged off the car. Tali yelling and struggling despite her pain and Joe himself trying to stab the nearest target until what was unmistakably a rifle butt hit him straight in the face.

His head went spinning for a few minutes until everything started making sense again, Tali being forced to her feet by two armored figures with a four eyes helmet covering their face and five more figures in the same dress code, with what was clearly a very slim turian standing out of the rest pointing their guns straight at his face. Old instincts started begging to kick in and he felt the urge to unleash his reflexes as his hands tightened once again around the knife, but he put all of his impulses to a halt. They have them both at their mercy and yet… no weird energy bullets starting flying. They could have set up a charge on the skycar while them both were stuck inside and just let the explosive agent do its trick and yet… here they are.

More intrigued than wary, he gave Tali what he hoped she could decipher as a reassuring look before addressing this little life saving party. "You guys ain't shooting, so I guess this grant me safe space to reckon you are friendly?"

He couldn't decipher the turian face behind the helmet, but he felt their eyes practically scanning every inch of him before the gun pointer answered in that characteristic flanging effect. "And you ain't with the Sons, or dead and still walking like all those weird, grotesque freaks crawling out of every hole in this busted district . So the only thing left to determine how friendly we are going to be is… how is it that you humans say? Whether or not I can point my finger at you."

A woman then. The flanging effect was the same to the point where there wasn't any distingable difference at all, but there was indeed a feminine tone to it that made him sure it was a female turian under all that layer of protection. "Well, mind if I get back on my feet before you pass judgment? Back hurts from lying on the floor… and there was the crash and all."

Her three finger hand grabbed the collar of his sweater and he felt himself being practically lifted back to his feet, her concealed face turning from him to his quarian companion being flanked by the four-eyed-helmet-grunts for a minute before she asked. "What are you two even doing out here in the open anyway? Whole place is under self imposed lockdown. Nothing goes in or out without getting blasted out of the sky."

At this he grinned, a cruel and unnervingly grin that contained nothing but disgust and frustration. "Yeah, the bitch queen of the Afterlife forgot to mention this little detail when she gave us a ride down here."

He couldn't see it, but from the long silence that followed he knew she was giving him some kind of suspicious or dubious stare. "Aria doesn't pay as much attention to her backward as she pretends she does. As long her operations are not disturbed she could care less if the people started eating each other. And you didn't answer my question."

To his surprise, Tali was the one to answer with some strange painful tone to her voice as if the engineer was in some manner of pain and yet he could see that her eyes were, for the first time, hopeful. "My captain got abducted a few days ago by a pirate band. We managed to retrieve the bill of sale… it lends us here until we were shot down from the sky and ambushed by those creatures. Have you seen him? A Quarian like me with a suit in blue schematics."

At that the concealed turian gave Tali her undivided attention. "I usually don't go around spreading my pessimism, girl. But it is unlikely that your friend is alive. Too much shit hit this district in a couple of hours, those little monsters are thorough and the Sons are not taking survivors."

The engineer just stared back in silence, the hopeful gaze being slowly replaced by tiredness and then annoyance at the implication. She seemingly too exhausted and too sore to do more than just stare for two solid minutes before mustering the energy to speak. "You can't know that for sure."

"I know what I see and the only thing I see crawling in this district is death. But again, I can't remember the faces of every single poor bastard that we managed to rescue from the streets. So you are free to prove me wrong."

Crossing his arms and gazing at her in an inquisitive manner, Joe asked "So, you are running a evac. This means you are taking us with you?"

The turian just sighed loudly in what seemed to be a mix between tiredness and annoyance before answering. "Evac would mean we have somewhere cozy and safe from this dump to drag them to… it is more complicated than that and I'm not about to just disclose our ops to you. As for taking you two… It is entirely up to you. I can't force the both of you to accompany us, but staying out here in the open will surely get you killed. But it is your call"

He did a quick math regarding the chance of some convenience like that falling in their way again before glancing at Tali, taking in how even slightly moving was causing her pain. She definitely broke something in the fall. "Do you people have medical supplies by any chance?"

"Maybe, maybe not. Like I said, I'm not disclosing shit to you. Brick of some fucking war against walking corpses or not, we are still in Omega and I don't know you." She stated matter of fact, narrowing his options to one single course of action. So far they were just clueless running for their lives amidst chaos and now his partner in misfortune was wounded. Could they really afford to just keep pushing by themselves?

He really wasn't feeling very tempted to push his luck with faith, especially when said faith already proved capable of literally flipping his entire world on a whim. Just to prove his point nearby sounds of debris being moved and bodies clumsily stumbling around caught everyone's attention, punching him back into fighting mode and reminding everyone else of what was crowding this district now. "Place looks less inviting by the minute so… you got yourself a deal. We will tag along."

She nodded, grabbing her rifle tightly and gesturing for her squad to start moving before addressing the odd duo one last time. "Then let's move."


One long ride aboard some space carrier of sorts forced to keep itself at a low altitude due to what the turian in command explained as "they having air superiority and a shit ton of artillery to bust the shit of whatever they want" later and they found themselves being escorted inside what seemed to be a old residential complex converted into a makeshift military compound that has seen a lot of action judging by the looks of it. Barricades on the brink of falling apart, destroyed vehicles, and a diverse mix of what were unmistakably green boys with barely adequate protection supplemented by a small corps of professionals in proper armor made up the security of the place. The more he studied it, the more questions arose in his head. Even if the puppets of this world were far numerous, he doubted they could still cause this type of havoc alone when facing a proper fighting force.

Smelling of death, crowded with unknown threats that are a mix between supernatural powers and regular forces…. This place looks even more like home by the minute. He thought to himself as they passed a few hallways guarded by a fair share of guards that eyed them both with suspicions until they noticed the turian at the head of their walk. Her helmet long ago removed, exposing a stern looking feminine avian face with a talon shaped red marking decorating the middle of her face. She became even less talkative once they reached the compound, but he could see clearly that her presence alone invoked some deep respect and even wariness in the grunts to the point she didn't have to say anything to go through until they finally reached what looked like a penthouse.

They almost jumped to the sound of her voice when she started to address a tall four eyed figure leading a discussion by a corner of the room.

The batarian eyed them up and down for a long minute with his upper eyes glinting with suspicion while his lower ones remained focused on the turian. It took Joe a huge amount of willpower to not cringe at the strangeness of the act, especially when all the four eyes focused on them and the alien showed a mouth full of sharp teeth as he gave them a grin. "You survived, call me impressed. With a horde that big coming your way I wasn't exactly betting on your survival."

"Do we know you?" Joe asked, his own eyes narrowing as he started analyzing the batarian green armor with yellow schematics, a sniper rifle attached to his back by tech still mysterious to the psychic soldier. "Through all the shit we have been pulling through, I don't remember seeing you."

"But I saw you, human. Both of you through the reliable scope of my rifle. Good to know you have the sense to move your ass out of a dead crowded street."

"Still doesn't ring any bells."

"Think, Joe." Tali cutted in, giving the batarian a half curious, half cautious glance. "The voice behind that unknown call from earlier."

The Fairport survivor seemed to be in deep thinking for a long moment before the gears finally started to turn on his head. He gave the batarian a clinical look before starting to formulate something that ended up being cut by the turian. "Always full of surprises, aren't you Al. So, I take that if you know those two you might as well fill me in on why they just aimless running-"

"Wait, you are Al…. Like Big Al?" Tali asked, the same hopeful energy was backing to her shining eyes as she limped closer. A sentiment which wasn't exactly shared by her partner in misfortune.

The four eyed alien in turn narrowed his lower eyes, with his upper ones remaining focused on Joe for a reason completely unknown to the psychic soldier who just stared back with a dead expression. "Alkhesvan Son'belok. But sure, people who have difficulty saying my name have taken a liking to calling me that. And considering we only had one very short contact on the comms, I would like to know where you learned my name."

"We… we are trying to track down my captain… he was sold to a gang in this situation. the Sons of… Khar'shan was it?" She took a deep breath before continuing, the soreness of the fall making it difficult. "We heard you had… a disagreement with them so we thought that maybe you would know something about it… anything?"

At this, all his four eyes turned to her. Whether the engineer having his full attention being a good or bad thing remained to be seen. "A disagreement is to put it lightly. We had a deal going on until someone decided to … alter the terms of the deal. Now we are at each other's throats. They are not the heaviest of the hitters when it comes to manpower or the brightest ones when it comes to brain cells either. But they helped throw the place into chaos. As for your friend, I can't account for all the slaves that pass from hand to hand when it comes to those fuckers. It's a big market out there."

"Told you not to get your hopes up girl…" the red-faced Turian muttered, her words either not registering or just being completely ignored by Tali.

"Just think, please. His name is Keenah'Breizh, he is a quarian in his late 20s, blue suit and a blue helmet. Do you remember anyone like that, anyone at all?"

"Like I said, big market, especially in the Terminus Systems. Can't account for all… wait, what did you just say?" His upper eyes focused on the floor of the penthouse for a long moment as if he was deep in thought, until his undivided attention was back on her again. "Blue suit was it?"

She nodded vigorously, even though her posture seemed to get more rigid possibly as a result of the pain but she didn't care. The batarian expression in turn got grim and even a bit sorrowful before he tilted his head to the right in an unfamiliar gesture to the psychic soldier, who finally decided to speak up. "From the look on your face, there is bad news coming her way isn't it?"

"Your remarkable ability to tell the obvious was duly noted, human" He practically spat the word as his head tilted to the opposite direction as soon as his upper eyes turned to the psychic soldier, much to Joe's confusion who just frowned before the batarian turned back his full focus to Tali. "And you… Nyreen, off the curve as this will sound, I think they deserve access to the medical wing. It will be quicker this way."

She stared at him with an unreadable expression very akin to others of her kind before letting out a tired sigh. "If this is going where I think it is, do as you like. It is kind of the bare minimum. We did earn ourselves a break for a couple of hours until the next assault so I'm going to make sure that everyone is ready for what will come next. They are in your care, call me if you need help or if they start to cause trouble."

The batarian gave her a small nod as she departed from the penthouse before turning to the odd due again, his expression less guarded and suspicious this time. "You two follow me. One of you has questions and I have answers. Plus you don't look… too much injured or inexperienced and this is certainly not a charity front. So if you decide to stay, you both will be useful. Do we understand each other?"

They both just glanced at each other, Tali's hopeful eyes staring deep into his paranormally acute gray ones. His face gave away nothing and it didn't look like he was going to protest or even… make a sound, which she took as an agreement to the terms laid to them. "We understand."

"Good. Now follow me, there is a lot you two obviously don't know." Big Al marched forward, The odd duo following close behind as they started to pass through more guarded hallways with a ruined aesthetic to it until they eventually reached an area that was converted into a mix between a dormitory and an infirmary where several wounded were being treated with varying degrees of success.

Some were obviously just agonizing to death, some were still breathing but barely and others were just being checked by what looked like a team of unqualified professionals. There was so much pain and suffering in the room that it took a moment for Tali to register that her partner in misfortune and the batarian were talking again, the words seeming to bounce off her uncomfortable state before she focused herself to listen.

"Are things just as fucked as it looks right now or it's going to be one of those situations where it is not as bad as it looks?"

"It's exactly as bad as it looks, human." The batarian sighed loudly, frustration and tiredness leaking out. "Selected a few survivors of the outbreak who had some medical training, but we are low as fuck on supplies thanks to the quarantine. Unless by the pillars a miracle happens, most of them will die. It will be very problematic to burn all the bodies."

"Is that your main concern?!" Tali asked, almost in the brick of exasperation before her wounds reminded her she wasn't in condition to raise her voice or to force her body. "Those people are agonizing to death and you are concerned on how you ar-"

"You mentioned a quarantine, I imagine the fuckers who chased us through the streets in that air vehicle are the ones enforcing it?" Joe asked, making a point to shoot her a warning glare. There is a time and place for attacks of conscience, kitty. Now it's not the place.

"That would be the Sons." He practically spat the words. "Ever since the dead started walking they decided to put their whole arsenal and manpower to make sure nothing leaves this district. Which means shoot first and ask questions. Extreme, but so far the entire station has no clue what is happening around here, so for better or worse… it is working."

So that means the Remnant or whatever that is raising this army of the dead is physically confined to this district. Joe nodded to himself before eyeing the batarian with something as a mix between suspicious and curiosity. "And what's your role in all of this?"

"Bearer of bad news apparently…" Big Al muttered, his footsteps coming to a halt as they reached what looked like a very worn down tent. He slowly turned to face them, his four eyes resting on Tali as his face took a sour and almost remorseful expression. "Before you go inside, I think you should know. Supplies are running dry and the medical crew is mostly a bunch of amateurs. They did everything they could but in the end-"

Tali practically darted inside the tent as soon as he started talking, the meaning behind his words clear as the day. It all happened so fast that Joe needed to rely on his reflexes to catch a glimpse of the immovable form of a quarian in a blue suit just lying on a stretcher alongside a dozen of other bodies that made up the interior of the tent. A shrink piercing through the air filled the tent with its painful intonation and the psychic soldier couldn't help it but pinching the bridge of his nose and take a deep breath. He knew this was coming, he knew it was only a matter of time. And yet hearing her produce such sounds of anguish was like having a Phase Commander punching his face all over again.

Since when did I begin to be so damn empathetic again? Either she is a bad influence or getting rid of that fucking creepitc asshole flipped a switch that I sure as hell had no intention to flip back. Joe allowed himself to give the tent one last glance before his attention returned to Al, who was watching with a neutral expression as his four eyes remained focused on his face.

"My condolences."

"Ignoring the fact that it sounded forced as fuck, you might as well save it. We didn't even know each other." Joe's face took a dark grimace as the sounds of his quarian partner crying started to leak, it was for this same reason he skipped funerals even when it was his old comrades in arms getting buried. Always unpleasant, always too… dark. "She on the other hand… yeah, it doesn't sounds good. How did it happened anyway?"

"He was among the few slaves that managed to escape captivity when the district started to get overwhelmed by the dead. Got shot in the commotion, we managed to treat him for a while but without proper medical supplies or the means to seal back his suit… it was only a matter of time. It happened a couple of hours ago." He crossed his arms "She will get over it, eventually. She has to."

"After months of intense therapy and loads of alcohol, maybe." Tali's still weeping just served to furtherdrive his point across in a very uncomfortable kind of way. "If we are going to keep chatting, can we at least do it away from here?"

The batarian nodded and they both started walking, giving the engineer time to grieve. "I never got your names."

"I'm Joe Winters, the crying mess inside the tent is Tali Zorah. And you are what, the one of the few good Samaritans with a conscience in the whole station?"

"Hardly." The chuckle that left his throat was all but good natured, it was tired and dry. Like his state of mind. "More like the only bastard unlucky enough to help set this whole thing up from scratch. Altruism is not among my qualities, that's not how you survive in Omega."

"And yet you are here helping with the the evac, sounds like one hell of a contraction."

"It wasn't exactly a choice. Most of the folks here are a bunch of scared locals or hardened cutthroats who were all following the turian you saw earlier, Nyreen, away from the fray. We go way back and for some unknown reason she decided it was the right time to collect old favors and made me help her set the whole thing up. Talk about fucking bad timing." Al turned to fully focus on him, his four eyes taking a dark aspect. "And evac means there is some place we can start moving people to in order to escape this mess, we are by all aspects completely stuck in this district."

"The quarantine you called it. I imagine things are not just as simple as ended it with some old fashioned shootout." Break whatever blockade the Sons put up and the dead will start going to the other districts. Even if the methods were a pain, they were keeping this whole chaos contained. It was a simple math, and yet the batarian's words about men being deployed kept resounding in his head. "And yet I can't help but have a feeling that you have some kind of plan."

"Perceptive." For a second it looked like he was fighting a smirk. "We have a plan, at least the beginning of one. One that will sadly depend on the freaks running outside and the Sons' willingness to throw away men and resources."

"What do you have in mind?"

"It will be quicker if I show you." They had gone back to the large window making up the first room of the penthouse, giving them a very convenient view to the rest of the district. One section of the window was open, making a good vintage point for a sniper. It didn't took too long for him to realize that's where he was watching him and Tali from, firing a shot that saved them a load of trouble at the hands of a krogan puppet. The batarian offered his sniper rifle, which prompted Joe to give him a questioning glance. "Go ahead, see it for yourself."

Peeking through a scope was too… nostalgic for some reason. For a minute he felt himself back home, hunting down the only thing that could have come to harm the one person that manage to bring some resemblance of light to his dark world. A small part of him was expecting to spot Harlan Wade's monstrous form among the streets below so they could engage in another primal, infuriating final showdown where only the accursed patriarch or the forgotten son would walk away alive. But there was no Creep lurking outside, no war between the most powerful superpower in the world against a mega multi-national conglomerate with unlimited resources, just a world still completely alien to him…

And one fucked up overprotected base build upon the foundations of something that he couldn't decided if it was previously a warehouse or another residential complex. The whole thing was a fucking fortress, reinforced with turrets exhibiting rockets to be launched, snipers in spread among key points between the buildings and gunships patrolling the perimeter around it. There was also a few shuttles hastily leading in order to disembark troops that looked all too for combat. A huge commotion started taking place, armored batarians moving with military discipline taking what was clearly firing position in preparation for something big. Something that different from the majority living things in this space station he could witness in first as a big agonizing screen filed his ears and a big reddish blue implosion began to envelop a good portion of the district as the scream grew in pitch. He glanced over his shoulder and realized that Al couldn't neither hear or see what was happening right before their eyes. Which meant one thing. That implosion was psychic in nature…

And something big was about to happen.

The pitched screen suddenly died out, as it did the implosion. For a moment all that could be heard was just that deadly unnerving silence that could drive a man already on the edge of the abyss to snap. It lasted for a long while, dragging its maddening effect for as long as it could until until the grim reaper finally decided to throw his dices and a proper army composed of dead people came in marching with the efficiency of a machine on the slaver fortress. Starting a shootout he wouldn't have believed possible if he hadn't been witnessing it firsthand. This army of puppet wasn't even close to the small bands of meat shield he faced in Fairport, or the slightly more sophisticated creatures numbering the thousands that have been chasing him and his quarian partner. Those things were well synchronized, motor coordination still completely intact and the ability to work as tean in full display to all to see, all while still showing clearly signs of being a dead puppet for some unseen force that is clearly far more powerful than he had imagined.

They gave the barricades and blockades made by the Sons a run for its money, using a vanguard made up of krogan to crush them and overwhelm the Sons to the point where the ones who didn't managed to retreat were being killed. Gunship bolted into action, hammering the horde down with a rain of mass accelerators and rockets until what looked like… energy attacks again of that same reddish blue color started to harass the gunships, even managing to envelop of them its aura and telekinetic smash it into pieces or throw it against the others. He scouted for the culprits, and the source seemed to be a group of dead asari that seemed to be acting as the catalyst for this psychic attack, at least until the snipers started to pick them off with synchro shots, leaving the remaining gunships and turrets free to focus on the rest of the horde still lenient on firearms. It took almost one hour in total, but by the end of if the Sons of Khar'shan emerged as the victorious side… but not without a fair share of loses that he had no doubt it was detrimental.

"It keeps happening every two hours. We have no idea why they are targeting the Sons in such way or why this particularly bunch is more intelligent than the ones just roaming the streets at random." Except Joe did know or at least had a very strong hunch as to why. With the last vestige of the horde being finished off, he focused on the area where the psychic implosion had originated, trying to remember in detail. "Luckily they seem to be more focused on the Sons than they are on us, at least for now. Which is something I convinced Nyreen to use to our advantage."

It came from underground. It was hard to see it, but he was almost certain that the implosion had made its way somewhere from the ground. Like a fucking cancer growing out of the metal keeping this place floating. "You want to use those periodical attacks to weaken the Sons, then you move in and finish them off. Ending the quarantine and making room for a evac."

"Whether we can make a evac or not it's secondary, I'm more focused on making sure I'm not going to die in this bloody district."

"And then what?" Feeling satisfied with his discovery, he handed back the rifle, which the batarian readily took it from his hands. "You end the quarantine, put as much distance as you can between your ass and those things, but there is a still a huge way out open for them to trail right behind. You know where this is heading."

"Yes, with me and everyone else with a brain cell getting on a shuttle out of this fucked up rock."

"With them completely taking over the rest of Omega."

The batarian all but shrugged. "Sounds like a problem for Aria and the big three. They compete day and night for every inch of this fucking station, might as well let them defend it for a change."

"I'm new to this whole "lawless land lawless mindset" kind of thing that Omega seems to be all about, but I spent a good chunk of my childhood on the streets and I know the rules. So I think I can say that letting those fuckers run free basing solely on the "it's not my problem" excuse it's not only extreme as fuck, it is also one hella of a dick move, big boy Al."

The batarian expression darkened and everything in hisbface seemed to scream that a very exasperated and short on patience speech was about to be vocalized by the four eyed alien, but to the psychic soldier's surprise what left the batarian's throat was a tired burst of laughter. "You have no clue how much you sound like Nyreen right now. We were at each other's throats for quite a while trying to reach a compromise on how to run things over here, clash of personalities you could call it. She has a moral compass too strong for her own good, I just want to survive long enough to get paid. But in the end she agreed to let me take charge when it comes to the hard calls because I reminded her of a simple cold fact: most of the people who breathe and shit in this rock wouldn't even blink on jumping to the opportunity to sacrifice your skull to save themselves. You wouldn't know since you aren't a local and I don't particularly care if you do. So unless you have a better idea just stay out of the way, human."

"How the fuck everyone knows I'm not a bloody local?!" He asked more to himself than to the batarian, shaking his head as if the nature of the subtle threat just bounced off him completely. "It is almost becoming comical by now. As for our little dilemma, I actually do have a better idea. Tell me Al, do you even know what those things outside are?"

Al narrowed his upper eyes, his lower eyes looking at Joe as if he was either stupid, mad or both before answering with some hesitation. "Others of your kind have taken to call them… "zombies" I think, as for me, I don't care what they are or where they came from, we already are far past the point of theorizing over this shit. All I care about is that they can be destroyed."

"You got the right attitude but the wrong mindset over there, big boy." Joe smiled, a smile that contained both a scold and amusement. "If you want to burn something down properly, you need to know how much gasoline you're going to be throwing its way. Those zombies are all powered up by one individual who exerts complete control over them. You put down that one individual, you end the entire crisis in one single blow."

"And I'm just supposed to take your word for it, ignoring how batshit crazy and out of nowhere it sounds, just like that?"

"You and your crew have been fighting dead people walking, I think your suspension of disbelief was already crushed and bent down like a pretzel a long time ago my four eyed friend."

"just because I kept things civil doesn't mean I'm your friend." He snorted dangerously for a moment before resuming his rant. "And even if what you are saying holds, finding the one behind this army of the dead will take a lot of time, time that we don't have. We are reaching a deadline and I don't have volunteers, and Nyreen won't order the folks we have here on a baseless seek and destroy mission. She knows better than to spark a mutiny."

"I know and I'm not asking you or her to do this. Never was the type to ask someone else to do the job for me, that's why all I ask is that you hold off your little assault while I'm on it."

The batarian just stared at him with his four eyes for a long moment like he had grown a second head before finally saying. "You are one weird, suicidal human."

At that Joe chuckled. "I prefer the word practical."

"You want to go back out there without backup in searching for the whereabouts of an unknown target. It's practically suicide."

"On the contrary, I know exactly where I'm going and what I'm looking for. All I ask is that you hold your thunder off. Can you do this?"

As Joe stared into the eyes of the batarian, he was grateful that Tali was still crying and mourning over her captain as they discussed this. Based on what he saw of her, She would absolutely argue against this plan until the air left her lungs. Luckily there was no shining warm light in his eyes, just the calculated and cold gaze of a fellow killer with no attachments of gratitude. "You have two hours. If I don't hear from you by then I will just assume you are just another mindless corpse walking out there."

"That's more than enough." As he started to walk away from the batarian, the math of the act was already spinning in his head. Taking into account the distance, the armies of the dead and the origin of the psychic implosion, a combination between stealth and speed would be his best ally on this dangerous endeavor. Nostalgia began to burn inside his chest again, but before he could take contemplate the implication of it or take one more step the deep voice of the alien stopped him in his tracks.

"You're not planning to just walk out there as you are now, right?"

"Come again?" Joe turned to face him with a curious frown.

"You are unarmed and as far as I can see, you are packing no protection whatsoever. That doesn't exactly put the odds in your favor. You might as well shoot your own foot and tie your hands behind your back before marching out there on this stupid idea."

"Yeah, still got a handgun and a knife. Was also kinda just grab one of your guns on my way out for the rainy future. And I'm not exactly very fan of armor." Not even remotely familiar on how to put those things on being completely honest.

"And just waste time walking there all by yourself?"

"Why do you even care?" He asked the batarian, something between annoyance and curiosity in his tone. "You haven't been exactly subtle about your dislike for the whole ops, why do you care how I'm doing this anyway?"

"Because I don't just send men to simply die without a chance of succeeding. This is not the military."

"I sense some history." Joe smirked, hoping that preying might throw him off his back.

"One that is not for your ears to hear." Al's upper eyes narrowed as his lower eyes kept scanning the psychic soldier's face for a long moment before he allowed something akin to a smirk of his own to appear, revealing his sharp like needle teeth before gesturing for the human to follow. "Now come, let me see if I can get away with throwing something your way that luckily will give you a shot at not dying."

"I didn't ask for your help, you know." Joe stated, but despite his reluctance, started to follow the batarian.

"It is in my interest for this plan of yours, regardless of how insane it is, to succeed. The assault will take away resources in the form of men and the weapons we managed to amass since the quarantine got into motion and I prefer to lose neither."

God bless pragmatism.

A few minutes later the forgotten son found himself staring at a reliable set of one assault rifle, a shotgun, a few proximity mines, grenades, and what the batarian described as being the Rosenkov Materials standard issued hardsuit, displaying a white, gray and black scheme of colors at top of the table where was laying beside the firearms. His previous comment about a distaste for armor caused the batarian to just lend him the medium model, "not too light on the shield but not too heavy on the plate either" he said. Joe didn't really understood or cared enough about it to go over the specifics, right now his bigger concern was one of a much more simpler nature: how to put the bloody thing on. The room he was in had a big deal of privacy, an old storage back room turned into whatever faced the like of the crew running this attempt at a resistance. The perfect spot for him to figure out how to wear the damn thing without sacrificing his dignity in the process. A task in which he barely had the chance to think about how to start before the door behind him slided open and he turned to see a very deep breathing and strangely agitated quarian engineer glaring at him with a very strong intensity that for a very brief moment reminded him of his mother.

"Tali?"

"Have you lost your mind completely?!" She practically yelled, which caused him to raise an eyebrow in surprise and curiosity. This was by far the most vicious he saw her and the lapping was absent from her movements.

"I mean, plenty of folks back where I come from are still trying to debate whether I was always a nutjob or just a case of severe stress going through the roof so…"

"Deflecting with your strange sense of humor will not help your case now! I know what you are planning. Going back there alone, are you trying to get yourself killed or what?!"

"Oh, that. Well, while you were… preoccupied I saw something interesting through the scope of our new friend. I think I know where the Remnant is hiding its mutated ass at. If I manage to neutralize it, this whole freak show will be over. This entire district is just one bullet to the head away from peace… well, as much peace as you can have in a place like this anyway" He shrugged.

"And instead of asking for the help of the numerous armed personnel in this building you decided that you are going to do this by yourself…" She looked at him like he had grown a second head. "This is foolish, idiotic, and… why go back there without backup? Makes no sense"

"Because I can't go around sharing with the rest of the folks here what I shared with you, can I? They would either think I'm pulling shit out of my backside or that I'm just mental. Not exactly far from the truth, but this wouldn't help my case in inspiring a mob of some righteous crusade deep into the den of the undead. Not that those folks are the most righteous type anyway."

"You are so…" she closed her hands into fists, letting out a long and deep breath of her longs before staring at him with enough intensity to melt through steel, a mix of determination and grief induced fury burning in her shining eyes. "Okay. When are we departing?"

At that he crossed his arms and let out an exasperated sigh of his before mustering his most emotionless face to address her. He knew it would come to this eventually, his hope rested on the possibility of managing to leave before she noticed what he was up to. It seems he was out of luck. "Let me do yourself one huge favor and stop you right there, Tali. You ain't coming on this one."

"Keelah, Joe. Do you really think I am going to let you just walk out of here to get killed after…" She shaked her head violently for a minute, burning fury being replaced by sadness for a brief window of time before her irradiated determination was back again. "I am going with you okay? I can't stay here…"

"What you need to do is grief. We ran through hell and more to get here only to find out that… well, you can't win in this kind of situation when there are lives at stake. Your head is clearly not on the game and you are wounded. Definitely not the best combo in this kind of op. Besides, I will need to be surgical and thoroughly, you will only slow me down."

"The doctors assured me the damage was minor and some medi-gel was applied already." She put her hands to her hips and gave him an affronted gaze. "And our past hours together should have shown you that I am more than capable of taking care of myself and keeping up with you."

"In a gunfight against living, breathing and normal people. Not monsters. Because that's what I'm going to hunt down Tali… a monster in its own turf when it will have all the advantage that it could possibly need." Not to mention any hidden cards this thing might have. Remnants can't summon a psychic implosion of reanimation that size. "If you come with me this time you will die."

"At least I would have the chance to make sure you won't…" She squeezed her left arm, lowering her gaze to nowhere in particular as the very familiar overwhelming glint of guilt took over.

"So that's what this is all about." When others close to you kick the bucket and you don't, that always leaves behind an impression doesn't it? "What happened wasn't your fault."

"It wasn't it? Really…" she glanced at him, her eyes pained. "Do you know what the medical crew said? That he was already struggling with broken bones and internal bleeding due to the beating he endured from the Sons during our captivity. The violation on his suit and the posterior infection only occurred… a few hours after the quarantine. If we had arrived here sooner…"

"You would magically pull a room full of medical supplies out of your Omni-Tool?" As obnoxious as the question sounded, his dead set tone and expression made her consider what he just said. She couldn't give him an answer. "Yeah, thought so. You couldn't have prevented what happened, Tali."

"The only reason we both ended up captured and in this situation was because of my pilgrimage!" She yelled at the top of her lungs, her eyes started squeezing half shut like she was fighting tears from coming. "If I had not accepted his help he would be alive now. He would be safe and… not dead and beaten in some dark, filthy, lawless space station! He… he didn't deserve this."

"We rarely get what we deserve, kitten. And there is always that one thing we think that if we did different it could have stopped a whole lot of shit from spiraling into chaos. But you can't change the past."

"No, but I can still control what happens next. And I will not let that happen again." She mentally punched all her distress back to the deepest corner of her kind before staring at him with eyes still tearful behind the mask but full of will. "I will not let you get killed."

That's cute. He felt a smile threatening to break his emotionless mask for a second before snapped it off, placing a hand on her shoulder and giving a soft squeeze over the suit. "I don't intend on dying tonight. I'm not your crewmate, captain, or whatever he was, okay? I have been doing this for a long time and besides… the people here will need your help."

"To do what?" She tilted her head to the side, her eyes a mix between concern for his safety and curiosity in the meaning behind his words.

"Plan B. Al has a whole tactical assault prepared in case things on my end don't go well. You are an engineer, I'm pretty sure they could use your help."

"You could use my help. You saw how many of them were out there… you will end up cornered."

"I don't intend on being seen until it is already too late. Besides… I can't do what I'm supposed to do while watching out for you. You come with me… we both are going to die and then those things will march on the rest of the station through the big black gape Al and his army of misfits will leave behind." His face was cold and serious, the hand on her shoulder started squeezing with a more firm note of a warning behind its seemingly touch, but despite this, his eyes, usually so terrifying and inhuman, were pleading with her. "You will have to trust me."

She stared on the floor for a long time before finally allowing herself to look at him again with eyes sadder and exhausted. "I'm just tired of this, all of this. I don't want anyone else to die because of this horrible place… I don't want you to die in this horrible place. All I want is for this to end."

"Then stay here, stay safe, stay alive and I promise that I will end all of this shitstorm. For you, for your dead friend, and for this band of lowly cutthroats sheltering our asses." He chuckled to himself, retreating his hand from her shoulder and gazing at the table again. His hands went for the assault rifle as he started to study it. "I know the last person you parted away with is kinda dead a couple of rooms from here, but the world just hates me too much to grant me this kind of luxury."

"... why everything you say is always either utterly fatalistic or just some creepitc attempt at humor."

"Some would say it is because I'm missing a few of my marbles."

"... what marbles?"

The utter confusion in her voice that was just a few seconds ago full of boiled grief induced rage made him let out a genuine but short burst of laughter before putting the rifle down and turning to face her once again, confusion and tiredness very visible in her glowing eyes. "Tell you what, how about some quid pro quo? If you sit tight and wait, I will take some time to school you in our slangs once I get back."

"If you get back. I still don't like your chances." The engineer's eyes were conflicted with grief, concern, tiredness and frustration spinning through her head. "But I… I would hate myself even more if you ended up dead because of me. I… I will trust you. Just be careful out there. I know that maybe you are… conditioned to all of this, but some of us are tired of keeping losing people."

Losing people… losing me? He tilted his head at the implication of her words until a big smile slipped past his neutral expression, the smirk that usually made its way to his face in the middle of a blaze of carnage. Sinister and unnerving, like everything else in his life, but also the most sincere way he knew to demonstrate joy. "I forgot how it was to have someone caring enough about me to the point they are genuinely concerned on whether I live or die, so thanks for that, Tali."

She stared at him in confusion, her gaze bearing a thousand different questions on what kind of torment he had been subjected to in order to get caught off guard by another living being showing him some empathy. But she held it, letting only a tired sigh escape her lungs before giving him a final plea. "Just be careful out there okay?"

Much to her exasperation all he gave her as an manner of answer was a playful wink before turning his attention back to the table where most of his equipment was storaged. She still wanted to argue, still wanted to help him, but if there was the slightest chance that his prediction about they both dying because of her involvement… she just couldn't risk it. Losing someone over her problems was already enough for a whole lifetime and so she turned to leave, resigned to having to trust her circumstantial partner to survive the carnage waiting outside.

"Wait." She stopped, glancing over her shoulder to see the most embarrassed she saw of him in all the short time they have known each other as he looked between her and the hard suit on the table with reluctant eyes. "So… as weird and shocking as this may sound, I will kinda need your help with putting this armor on."


30 minutes of having part of his dignity ripped away and a trip in a futuristic vehicle thanks to some strangely generous batarians later, the forgotten son found himself back again in what he had for a long while now internalized as his element: crouching, rolling, running and crawling through the darkness of a completely wasted neighborhood infested with the unnatural… but now with some proper layer of protection accommodating his scarred body. According to the shuttle pilot that dropped him in the area "Zombie" activity was heavy based on previous reconnaissance, and yet he hasn't seen or heard or even felt a single trace of any puppet in the immediate area. Partly a blessing and partly a curse, it was too calm, too… peaceful, a huge contrast to everything he had witnessed and prepared himself for so far. But that allowed him some room to focus his undivided attention on finding the paranormal golden goose behind this nightmare.

Which meant trying to find a way to gain access to whatever kind of metallic and sci-fi equivalent to a subsoil that this place could possibly have. It took him twenty minutes of search thanks to his overcautious manner and always sticking to the shadows, but he finally managed to locate a shaft that seemed to lead deeply into the rabbit hole that luckily would lead him to the source of all the chaos and destruction around. With only one way to find out for certain and with the familiarity of the situation being too close to home for him to even consider hesitate, he made his way down into the darkness as the melody of A Little Night Music in the form of a high pitched sound made by his lips accompanied his descent into the unknown. The absence of any light and sound engulfed him, with only his footsteps breaking up the wariness hanging in the air once he reached solid ground again.

The flashlight feature in his Omni-Tool came to life immediately, one final courtesy from Tali before his departure he would bet taking into account the special attention she gave to it after he was already suited up. His light in the darkness… It was a thought that made him chuckle in good natured manner as he made his way forward, taking in the rusty and creepitc scenario around him. It was exactly what one could expect from taking into the futuristic aspect of this new world: a metallic set of very large and spacious underground hallways connected to more rooms that seemingly led deeper into the heart of the station… but now completely tainted and ruined by the very same things he thought were several dimensions behind… corrosive decadence at its finest. Blood served as paints to the walls, highlighting the rotten aura surrounding the tarnished architecture, the ambience carried a familiar sense of dread in the air that hit the guts of the hardened like a cannon ball crushing through wood…

For him it felt like the most pure form of nostalgia pulling the strings of the part of his heart that secretly longs for this kind of violence as he walked forward through pools of still-drying blood and ducts leaking hot steam. He was completely back in his element, much to the horror of what still remained of his sanity and to the delight of the darkest part of his psyche. And as his steps echoed through the haunting silence, so did one pressuring question in his mind as his eyes scanned every corner with the help of his flashlight.

Dark, dirty, and completely creepy. There is no bigger give away that you will get jumped on as soon as you allow yourself to believe in some false sense of basic fucking security leaning solely on the bullshit illusion that you are alone, and that the whispers in some well hidden corners are just your brain doing some trolling thanks to the good old paranoia.

His steps came to a halt as soon as his foot connected with something too soft to be metal and yet too solid to be just some garbage lying around on the floor. The flashlight's glow revealed nothing less than a severed human forearm in a pool of fresh blood, the body to which it belonged nowhere to be seen amidst the decrepit hallways. So why in bloody hell nothing has jumped on me so far? The waiting, the fucking anticipation when you know some shit is about to throw hands with you was always the one bloody thing that got me shaking nervously under my pant like a hooker going OD.

Something knocking down what sounded like cans followed by hasty footsteps in the far end of the tunnel caused him to flash the glow of the Omni-Tool that way, only to reveal nothing but some more garbage, blood and now empty cans of what appeared to be preserved food scattered across the floor as the footsteps became increasingly distant to the point of being completely muffled, only for a chorus of incoherent whispers coming from seemingly everywhere took its place as he started to walk toward it with his rifle ready and steady. Something akin to a childlike excited grin made itself present under the helmet as he approached the corner, with the idea of activating his reflexes quickly becoming a after thought as soon he unsurprisingly came face to face with just another empty dirty tunnel with one thing setting it apart from the others, the metallic walls had the same words that spotted in the streets written in blood decorating the entire place: REVENGE. His eyes narrowed as he considered touching it for a minute, at least before two claw-like hands coming through a last-minute materialized-hole in the wall got a hold of his head and arm and he came face to face with the easily recognizable form of a Scarecrow.

"YOU SKINNY LITTLE BIT-"

His words were cut short as result of being violently pulled inside the portal by the ghoulish creature that started beating and slashing against the armor, with some of its attacks piercing through and others bouncing off the hardsuit completely, much to the seemingly increasing frustrating of the Scarecrow who got his faceless head violently headbutted by the psychic soldier in retaliation. The creature pushed the forgotten son back into the world of the living in response, more than content to just disappear back inside its realm of darkness but instead found itself being choked as Joe charged forward, punching the paranormal creature repeatedly until its claws got hold of him again, dragging his form back into the hole as it resumed its previously attempts to cut through the layer of protection of the armor… only to have its skinny arm grabbed and snapped by a supernaturally accelerated hand.

The Scarecrow shrieked, pushing Joe, who had a strong vicious hold around its neck and seemed to have no intention of letting it go, off the portal. Not even when he found himself falling and getting submerged by a pool unmistakably made of blood he let go of the apparition, not until he finally managed to get his hands inside the Scarecrow's mouth and ripping its head apart. He watched with a wicked grin behind the helmet as the Scarecrow mutilated form dissolved in black smoke before he started swimming upwards. As soon as the now reddened form of his armor popped out of the blood filled hole and his eyes started scanning his surroundings he realized pretty quickly that this little skirmish inside the black hole had taken him somewhere else entirely in the tunnels. The infinite labyrinthic hallways were all replaced to what looked like some kind of storage room for the unseen puppet master behind all this carnage if the insanely large amount of still bloody dead bodies were any indication.

He didn't had time to contemplate the meaning behind the macabre piece of art around him, for as soon as he stepped out of the pool constantly being filled by the blood dropping from the ceiling something emerged from it behind him. His reflexes activated, but as soon as he turned to confront the new threat, he found himself lifted into the air by the spectral emaciated hands of what looked like to be a crossing between a Scarecrow and what could only be described as nothing but a demonic version of the blue ladies he had the chance of see earlier either dancing to the music of the Afterlife or chasing him as a dead puppet. Its form was completely spectral, with its aura being a dark blue tainted by dirty red and what looked like five horns adorning the sides of its heads. It's eyes were lifeless and its ghoulish face had no lips, giving the appearance of a perpetual grimace.

He could feel the rage irradiating off it, and he could also feel it almost crushing the layers of protection around his neck as it started choking him viciously before throwing him away across the room. He skidded through blood, bodies and oil before finally stopping and getting to his feet, grabbing his assault rifle and preparing to put some well placed rounds in the thing. But before he could pull the trigger, the new apparition opened its mouth and exploded into a psychic blast that reverberated through the entire room and made Joe flinch slightly in discomfort as his ears were slowly and painfully forced to deal with the high-pitched, vicious wail. His mind barely had time to think about what more new absurdities were waiting for him there before the bodies in the room started shaking violently as reddish blue strings appeared above them and soon the meaning behind that little psychic explosion became clear enough for him.

"Just my damn fucking luck…" Hands got a hold of his arms and shoulder, his reflexes activated as his hands grabbed his rifle tightly and smashed its butt violently against the face of a turian who had half of its skull sliced open.

He did the same with more four dead assailants who were in the process of trying to tackle him, sending their now even more broken dead forms to the ground before start sprinting through the masses of rising puppets trying to get a hold on his blurring form to no avail. Even with his movements hyper accelerated, continuously dodging the rising horde was becoming increasingly more troublesome to the point that the he was aimless running, shooting, and punching through the increasingly red room in a attempt to reach some space that wasn't piled up with reanimating corpses of both humans and aliens progressively more difficult to get rid of. A glance over his shoulder revealed the sickening immensity of the horde that was forming behind him, pushing him to run faster as a mix of red, blue, purple, and greenish tainted his helmet visor as he fought forward through the masses of puppets to the point where those colors were all he could see in his race amidst the darkness.

As the red at the corners of his eyes grow in proportion and as blood start leaking for his nose, Joe finally spotted what could be his life saving alternative from keeping overusing his reflexes to keep himself alive in the form of another haft in the corner of the tunnel. Using the blood and oil on the floor, he slided over the haft, practically jumping through it in hopes to escape the mobile meat grinder ruthlessly chasing after him… and triggering the five landmines he had left behind in their path of ruthless pursuing. The seismic tremor caused by the explosion caused him to let out a bloodied smirk at the sound of one small triumph blasting away his immediate problems, but he didn't allowed himself to relax at all. Instead he kept going deep down until his boots reached once again solid ground as he sprinted through more hallways and metalic rooms, taking the time to give his reflexes a much needed break.

Although the small army that was at his back didn't seem to be coming anytime soon, he still found some small opposition in the form of those new evolved puppets setting up periodically ambushes that were quickly annihilated. Even without his reflexes for the time being, those lifeless creatures were still nowhere near the same level of skill as a replica soldier. The only problematic aspect of this incursion were the fact that some of them still had their full functional armors on, forcing him to play more safe than he was used to in order to avoid additional injuries and save his strength for what seemed to be like the real dangers behind the decay of this place … floating above what looked to be some kind of ventilation control systems room reshaped into what looked to be some creeptic altar with a blue lady with nothing but dried blood to cover her naked body standing right of the center of it with her back turned to him.

She was immovable almost like a statue just facing the blood and dust on the wall but Joe noticed a very subtle, almost unnoticeable tilt of her head as soon as six inactive puppets in the room with strings connected to the floating woman recognized his presence and decided to draw their weapons. They got hammered to the ground with three smoking holes in their chests and foreheads as he marched further inside the room, with only then the blue lady allowing herself to fully acknowledge his presence as she turned around to show him the full extension of her psychic mutation. She was unmistakably a blue lady… a asari if he remembered correctly, with several open cuts and grotesque bruises decorating her naked body, a very predominant mark around her neck shined with blue reddish energy and there was a bullet hole in her forehead. What were once healthy blue and violet eyes have decayed into rotten gray skin and lifeless iris staring at him with something that he was very familiar with: raw and unchecked boiling hatred.

"YOU!" The asari's words echoed through the whole room but he could see that her lips moved slower than they should and not in actual sync with her words, making him realize that she was probably using psychic energy to project her words but not without some visible amount of discomfort. "YOU… DO NOT…. BELONG! YOU… SHOULDN'T… HAVE… COME!"

"And you are the one responsible for this circus going on and about in this place, I figure." Joe took some cautious steps further, finger close to the trigger and eyes scanning the decadent room in search of anything remotely resembling a threat, but nothing appeared. It was only him and this Remnant-like creature it seemed. "Usually I go on solving the kind of problem you created by just shooting, it doesn't get more simpler than that and never failed me so far. Can't beat the . But I sense a story there, under all the layers of guts from the disemboweled bodies your helpers left behind. Why are you doing this?"

"BECAUSE… THEY… DESERVE…. TO PAY!" The asari's face twisted into a mix between what seemed for a moment to be physical pain and pure untamed rage as she stared into the ceiling, a sickly reddish blue aura covering her form as psychic energy started irradiating from her. "THEY ARE ALL MONSTERS… THEY ALL DESERVE TO DIE!"

"Ignoring the fact you sounded a lot like my brother right now, that's kinda rich coming from the zombified gray woman floating menacingly in the middle of the room." Despite his jabs, it didn't seem like she was registering his words at all. She only kept staring at the ceiling as her back eventually bent into an unnatural angle, giving her an almost spider-like form. "I mean sure, this station seems to be as crooked as it gets, but I have yet to run into a moralist Remnant, even if it is one that can speak. What is really causing your anger, why are you so dead bent on killing everyone?"

The little lighting the room had was beginning to flicker due to what he could feel as her telesthetic signature emitting small psychic pulses growing larger and larger as her unnatural bent body started to shake.

"What is that you want revenge for?"

At that all her volatile movements ceased completely and she started producing disgusting cracking sounds as she fully erected herself into a straight position. Her aura was dissipated as her eyes remained closed, the disturbances in the light stopped and for a moment silence reigned in the room until her dead eyes suddenly opened and she opened her mouth to produce a pitched wail overcharged with what was clearly psychic, distorting the room into sickening colors of blue, red and orange. The sonic implosion made by her throat was painful, but at the same time it carried something that made Joe tilt his head to the side in curiosity as the familiar sensation of a clear but raw invitation collided against his skull. The briefest spark of hesitation crossed his mind before he shaked it away in favor of allowing his mind to dig through the opening she had left for him.

His entire world went completely white as her memories began to emerge and slowly started to paint the picture of a dark and filthy basement barely illuminated by the red lights of Omega. A grinning batarian was sitting in the middle of the room, what looked like a drone floating at his side as he seemingly watched the opposite end of the basement with a very unsettling delight. Following his gaze immediately revealed why and Joe could feel his hands closing in tight fists at the grotesque sight of four male individuals; a human, two turians and a salarian having their way with a binded asari on a dirty mattress with what was clearly a slave collar around her neck.

The only thing that kept him from painting the room with the blood of all five men was the fact that as infuriating as this was, it was only a projection of something that had already passed a long time ago. Enraged and disgusted, he averted looking at it, but the sounds of the misdeed and the asari's muffled screams kept haunting his ears for a very painful and torturing moments. He felt his teeth grinding and a burning necessity of causing the projection of those men some pain growing in the back of his mind, to the point the sterile and almost gray atmosphere of the vision started to get increasingly red, threatening breaking the psychic link for a moment before he forced his kind to come to a halt.

This seemed to eventually pay off as the despicable walking sacks of shit in the room finally seemed to finish their horrific doing, retreating from the hysterical asari that just rolled herself into in a visible show of discomfort as a result of her bindings. The sitting batarian finally raised from his seat, slowly walking towards the men in the process of dressing themselves up again as the asari remained weeping on the ground.

"Disgusting pieces of shit…"

"I got to say, it didn't felt any different than fucking another asari… only there was no eternity embrace and black eyes thing." The human said, revealing a mouth full of silver teeth. "You sure she is the real deal?"

The turians and the salarian remained silent, but the three of them casted skeptical looks at the batarian as well. The four eyed creature just smiled wickedly before saying. "Yes, I'm sure. An acquaintance of mine who is clinically inclined tested it for it. Congenitally sterile and with a little deadly incident in its personal files in regards to what should have been a one night stand two years ago. I was very thorough before deciding to acquire it. As always."

"Still… I kinda not sure.."

"Does it really matter? We are done here anyway." The salarian stated, bringing up his Omni-Tool. An action that was repeated by the other three individuals before they all started marching out of the room.

"Pleasure doing business with you." The batarian's lower eyes focused at his own Omni-Tool that brightened up to life, grinning with what the psychic soldier recognized as greedy before turning to the weeping asari with a strange look in his eyes. He was studying here and Joe so understood why when he decided to do the same; her entire body was bruised, her left eye was swollen, there were some strange claw scars decorating the entirety of her left thigh and there were some strange slashes made by a blade in her belly. "It looks like it is time for the both of us to conclude our businesses as well it seems. A pity, really. You made some good piles of credits when your condition was more… adequate for use. I almost feel bad."

There was a lone table in the room with a bottle of some unknown drink, ashtray and a pistol at the top of it. The batarian grabbed the gun, inspecting it for a minute before starting to take slow and calm steps towards the binded the asari who kept staring at the four eyed man with a mix of horror and repulsion as he came closer and closer until her bruised features twisted into something more familiar: hatred.

"In appreciation of your services, I will make sure to aim for your head." The batarian said calmly, inspecting the gun one last time before aiming at the asari staring burning daggers at him. "You won't feel anything, I can guarantee it."

"Go… fuck… yourself…" She muttered weakly, her voice dry and with a note of pain. The batarian just smiled before pulling the trigger.

The world got a little redder and a little slower as weirdly enough Joe's reflexes activated on its own, allowing him to watch as the mass accelerator round traveled all the way from the barrel of the pistol and towards the asari and to contemplate the beautiful raw destructive capabilities of a red psychic implosion that shaked the entire basement. A very familiar wail of pain seemed to echo along the implosion through the entire world around him, the source of it clear as the day as the contraction destroyed all the electronic equipment in the basement and started engulfing the asari in a red aura as soon as the round pierced her skull and painted the mattress under her with brains and purple blood.

Instead of just going numb like a dead body should, the asari shrugged off the hole in her head and instead just started convulsing violently as she simultaneously started to rise from the mattress as her bides were completely disintegrated. The batarian reacted by shooting his gun at her until it overheated and then just stared in fear when the contraction finally dissipated and the asari went completely motionless. Her neck cracked twice in an abnormal fashion and she opened her eyes to stare at him with cold murderous intent. She wailed at the top of her lungs and the entire world started to shake and fall apart as a masculine screams of pain echoed in his head.

Joe blinked to find himself standing back at the ruined dark ventilation room twisted into some sort of alter to what he could now only describe as the embodiment of karma finally coming back to bite you in the ass before blowing out of proportion, staring at him with pained and angry expression as her lips twitched and her body started to wriggle. Despite her weird mannerism and clearly hostile aura, he couldn't help but stare at her with more solidarity that he was actually expecting to muster. "So that's what this is all about huh? Balancing the scales, giving karmic justice a push straight into the direction in which everything and everyone gets a giant flaming boomstick shoveled in their asses whether they actually deserve it or not… I wonder if we should also put you in a red dress and give you a doll."

The Remnant bruised gray face twisted into a macabre grimace as she stared dagger at him. "YOU… MOCK… ME?"

"Nah, ain't mocking you. Just contemplating how fucking far we have come from occasional bits of nostalgia to full scale cruel irony personified." He felt like slapping himself as he looked at her, because against his best judgment he wanted to try and talk her out of this mayhem. There was nothing in her empty, dead eyes but the hatred fueled force that was keeping her here. They were unforgiving, they were inhumane. But again, so were the eyes of the Mother of the Apocalypse in what feels like another lifetime. "And as hypocritical as this will sound coming from me of all people, this killing spree you are on is not the answer to your problems. Sharing your pain with a bunch of innocent people might seem like a good stress reliever right now, but in the end it won't bring you any kind of peace."

"THERE ARE…. NO… INNOCENTS! THEY ARE… ALL… MONSTERS… WEARING… THE FACES…. OF PERSONS!" Her aura started to glow again with enough intensity to produce a small heat wave from her dead body and he could spot the red form of four spectral ghoulish ladies emerging in the shadows off the opposite sides of the room almost in a protective manner. She stared at him with clear murderous intent. "AND… SO ARE YOU!"

"Maybe." He practically shrugged as his eyes kept scanning the ghoulish apparitions, a quick math going in his head before he focused his attention solely on the vengeful Remnant again. "But I'm a monster on a mission and right now that means putting an end to your little bachelor party. I won't let you keep painting this station in red."

The ghoulish ladies started to glow more intensely as her decaying and beaten features twisted into a dangerous grimace, her dead eyes lighting up in reddish blue color as an aura of the same color surrounded her entire body. "THEN… YOU… SHALL… DIE… WITH… THE REST!"

Her reddish spectral apparitions started to glow in preparation for what he instantly recognized as another death wailing coming his way, the Remnant summoned two blue spheres in her hands shining with a reddish in its center. His reflexes kicked in and all of the four ghoulish apparitions disappeared in a puff of smoke as a mass accelerator round pierced their spectral form. A smirk appeared in his face as his little bet on whether or not those things played by the same rules as a Specter seemed to pay off, allowing him to focus fully on the Remnant who was just about to throw the two energy spheres at him, at least until a grenade being tossed by his blur figure connected with her face. Smoke enveloped her dead figure and having dealt with enough Remnants to know better than to just trust one grande to get the job done, started to shoot at her through the smoke. One energy sphere was thrown his way in retaliation but his speed allowed him to dodge without lessening the storm of gunfire he was sending her way, at least until he felt what seemed to be like one massive magnetic field slowly weighing down his movements and pulling him towards what revealed to be a floating energy sphere.

His reflexes went down as his teeth began to grind painfully as he put all his physical effort into helplessly fighting the gravitational force until starting to float in the air like a ragdoll beside his rifle caught in the same radius of energy sphere showed him how futile it was. The smoke from the grenade explosion dissipated fully, allowing him to see that despite the volley and the grenade the Remnant didn't have one single scratch. His eyes narrowed as he studied her, slowly coming to the conclusion that the energy aura surrounding her wasn't just for show just as she threw a second energy sphere in his. The energy attack collided with the gravitational field, enveloping his back in a burning sensation of getting hit by a dozen trucks as he felt the air getting knocked out of his lung when his form went flying over the room and colliding head on with the ceiling. Gravity started to do its thing as he felt himself falling, but the Remnant had another predicament in mind and he had another blue-reddish energy ball hitting him right in the face and sending him crashing back against the ceiling a second time before finally hitting the ground with a thud and going limp.

The Remnant floated closer to the psychic soldier's fallen body, her lifeless eyes remaining focused on him as if searching for any subtle movements that would reveal any life still remaining inside the human… but she found none. Instead her feet finally touched the cold metal floor of the room, looking between the immobile human to the big hole in the ceiling where he had previously been thrown at. Something akin to mid disappointment flashed in her dead eyes before she closed them in preparation for what was to come next. Her barrier died out and the devastating force of resurrection that have allowed her to amass her army of vengeance started to build itself up inside her one more time in order to add another addition to her ranks, but her wail never had the chance to make its way out of her throat as she felt something hitting her right in the face with vicious abandon. Her neck almost broke and she took a step back as her eyes snapped open to scan for the new threat only to find nothing in front of her but the same dirty room and what should have been the body of her trespasser missing from the floor.

A small hot breeze passed by her and she felt the same vicious force hit her in the same fashion again but this time in her back. Another hot breeze, another heavy and vicious hit, this time from her right. The same happened again from her left, and soon she found herself being ruthlessly assaulted by a seemingly invisible force at least until she managed to catch a brief glimpse of it for a very short second: her trespasser with a bloodied shotgun in hands aiming for her head. Her eyes widened and her twisted expression took one of fury until a point black round pierced her skull and bent her head backwards. He followed by hitting her in the belly with the butt of the shotgun before spinning it as a baseball bat into the back of her head. He prepared another shot as soon as the shotgun cooled down, but before he could pull the trigger a volatile scream escaped her throat sending his world into a spiral of pain as the psychic generated sonic force assaulted his ears and his vision went yellow.

Something strong and heavy hit the front of his helmet, sending him tumbling to the ground as his head kept spinning. Whether it was the effects of the psychic scream or a concussion was hard to tell, especially when the same blunted force kept assaulting his face over and over again to the point he could feel the layers of protection of the helmet being bent and the strange energy pulsing with psychic residues hitting closer to his actual face. As soon as his vision finally cleared and his senses returned to him, he could recognize the form of an exposed-skull-asari-Remnant punching him repeatedly with a blue-reddish fist. He blocked her next punch with his elbow, bringing the barrel of the shotgun to her bust and pulling the trigger. She was sent flying off him as the point black shoot made a hole in her chest all the way through her back. Blue reddish energy enveloped her once more as she floated back to her feet with effortless motion, her face a grotesque picture of exposed bones and dark blood as she stared daggers at him before raising her arms and levitating four crates in the room.

A carnage shot made its way out of the barrel, hitting exploding against her form but doing nothing to stop the telekinetic assault of the crates that were thrown at him with deadly intent. His reflexes kicked in once again as he dashed out of the range of crates as they tried and failed to hit the blurring form of the psychic soldier jumping behind a pillar in the far corner of the room, right in time to dodge the crate aimed at his head. The red around the corner of his vision dissipated as he stopped to catch his breath, patting himself up and feeling satisfied with the fact he was still with 3 grenades ready for use. The visor of his helmet beeped in red warning displaying the icon of his shotgun, its meaning clear enough as it is. Gears started to turn inside his head on how he could buy himself some time with only the help of his pistol, but the glimpse of what was unmistakably his assault rifle lying on the ground ready for the taking gave him another idea.

He slided for it, letting the slow-mo carry him forward and discharge some well placed shots that were completely absorbed by the aura around the Remnant who retaliated with another telekinetic assault of crates, crates that got turn into scraps once them collided against the wall in their failed attempt to hit psychic soldier. More shoots got completely ignored by her barrier and yet again he dodged with ease as she sent another crate his way, only this time it was followed by a strange string of concussive red energy fields following the crate in a narrow path. And yet despite evading its trajectory the psychic soldier felt himself getting violently knocked to the side by it regardless, viciously hitting the console at the center of the room. Rising back to his feet, he patted the dust off his armor before cracking his neck and giving the Remnant a condescending look.

"The whole "tossing me around" deal simply isn't gonna cut it, you know."

"YOU…MAY…JEST…" Her dead face was already so disfigured by his relentless assault that she was not even bothering herself with moving her lips to sync with her psychic transmitted words. Blue-reddish intensified around her as she started to float high in the air without taking her swollen eyes from him. "BUT… THE KINDEST… FATE… THAT AWAITS YOU…. IS… TO JOIN… MY ARMY…"

"Sure." He adopted a more relaxed posture, leaning against the holographic console behind him as he allowed one of his hands to let go of the rifle in favor of subtly grabbing a grenade and placing it on it. "Do you guys have by any chance a dental plan? I am kind of a believer when it comes to taking care of yourself."

"YOUR… MOCKERY… IS… MEANINGLESS…." Her aura dissipated completely and he almost started shooting at her again before she forced her mangled face to face the ceiling and open her cut mount. Part of him expected another psychic scream, but nothing came out. Instead he could feel the entire atmosphere of the room shift as strangely enough began to concentrate itself around her. "NOW… YOU… DIE!"

A scream was what he was waiting for and a scream was what she gave, overcharged by that sams blue-reddish psychic energy that violently imploded through the room and behind. Although completely harmless to him in comparison to, it expanded so far behind that room that he simply couldn't misunderstand its meaning. The cocky smile on the Remnant beaten face and the sounds of swarm of bodies desperately trying to converge from all directions to their location was a give away clear enough away of what was coming and yet despite this he couldn't help it but smirk, even when the first squads of dead krogan and turians wielding flame throwers, missile, and grenade launchers stormed into the room. With a simple gesture of his arm, the grenade placed at the console detonated and the dreadful atmosphere of the room got flooded with red lights and smoke that soon submerged the entire room. A reddish biotic attack collided with the spot where the psychic soldier was standing just a second ago, finding nothing but air and metal much to the Remnant's frustration who find herself incapable of doing anything but watch as the room descended into a spiral of chaos when her puppets started to shoot aimless through the smoke in hopes of hitting the unseen force unloading a rainstorm of bullets at them with military precision

Her attempt at overwhelming the trespasser with sheer numbers alone proved to be more trouble backfired tremendously than the Remnant could have anticipated as she found herself forced to watch from her floating position her horde struggling and stumbling among themselves. They were not restrained by the imperfections of the living, fear, hesitation, the bloodlust that could cloud the judgment of many in the middle of a battle, it was all gone and completely replaced by simple obedience, obedience that drove them to shoot blindly through the smoke in hopes of fulfilling the command pulsing through their psychic strings: kill. She didn't realize that the empty shells following her will would perish in the pursuit of doing so until her army of the dead started to collapse due to the tremendous amount of friendly fire caused by the blindness of the room pushing them further and further to the brink of falling apart.

She doubted that the trespasser was even bothering firing at her puppets anymore, the damage he instigated them into causing themselves was proving to be far too efficient. What remained of her rational part not yet consumed by the pain started to consider ordering them to cease firing completely… at least until she was forced to focus on biotically deflecting a missile launched from the smoke below, sending the projectile flying aimlessly towards the opposite direction only to have a carnage shot exploding against her floating form right after. She grunted inhumanely before throwing a warp at where she saw the carnage shoot originating, the result was a grenade detonating against her back in retaliation, almost knocking her down from the air due to the absence of her psychic defenses. It was followed by another that she deflected and then another that caught her in the face, and then one more that she angrily forced back to with her biotics before letting her psychic aura burn alongside her barrier as she focused all the memories, all the hatred burning inside her dead heart into her hands, creating two singularities of pure fiery rage that she threw into the air.

She didn't expect a missile getting fired at a supernatural speed at her two orbs who had barely reached the air, detonating them and creating an explosive effect powerful enough to break her barrier and send her crashing against the ground below. She hit a crate with a thud before rising back to her feet with a small biotic blast, only to be hit by the messy spiral of friendly fire released by her disorganized puppets. She was half way of mentally ordering them to stop firing before she felt herself being tackled to the ground by something blurry and dead bent on squeezing out what remained of her life.

The Remnant recognized the form of the trespasser, pressing the barrel of his into her mouth the jaw as she prepared to unleash a psychic scream. Joe smashed the trigger, round after round of mass accelerator piercing the back of her head to no avail as the Remnant refused to die and sent him flying off her with a biotic throw to the chest. The psychic soldier gave her no quarter, shrugging off the biotic attack and tangling her again to the ground, this time not fast enough to stop the mutated dead asari to psychically scream at the top of her lungs and flood his world with pain. The pain though was not enough to stop him from hitting her in the face and wrap his fingers around her throat, squeezing viciously to the point where she could feel his gloved fingers piercing her rotten flesh and reaching the bone of her neck. Fury burned in her dead eyes as his intention became clear and she put all her efforts into rushing her puppets to her aid.

The sea of puppets were about to drown the psychic soldier until he finally managed to rip the head of the puppet master with a visceral scream. The army of the dead one second away from turning him into a bloody mess fell to the ground as the strings controlling their bodies disappeared alongside the psychic essence controlling the now decapitated body below him. He gave the now ex puppets a glance before focusing on the head in his hand, an expression of pure rage decorating its features. He allowed a chuckle to come out of his throat before tossing the head aside and collapsing on the floor alongside the piles of dead bodies.


The second assault by the horde had commenced sooner than any of them could have anticipated and almost brought the Sons to the brink of complete annihilation until suddenly all the puppets dropped dead. Seeing an opportunity, Nyreen began the assault, putting the weakened slavers out of commission and effectively removing the last antagonistic force in that district blocking the way of any survivors still alive. With everyone finally free to leave the memory of all the horrors that had transpired behind, he hadn't seen any of them ever since and part of him was genuinely but pleasantly surprised to find his partner by circumstances still waiting for him at the residential complex. One walk through the labyrinthic mess of corridors later and they were back at there this small time nightmare had started, but this time with an indecisive quarian engineer just silently staring at what should be her ride out of this nightmare and yet… she hadn't boarded it. Even when all the other former slaves gave them both hugs of goodbye and departed in their respective shuttles provided by the queen of this rock, Tali didn't board hers.

Not bothering to suppress the heavy sigh that escaped his lungs he started walking towards her. He didn't realize how much she was zoning out until it took a poke at her arm for the engineer to notice his presence, causing her to jump briefly. "Got a relentless mind there kitten?"

"You could say that." She glanced at him and then back at the ship before letting out a deep breath. "It wasn't until we were out of harm's way and I found myself here that I realized… I have no clue on what to do next. We had a plan, we had a route to follow, but all of that was… torn to pieces. Truth be told, I am completely lost on how to progress from here."

"Your pilgrimage." He echoed his own thoughts, recalling their talk amidst some noodles and a rundown on a pirate's computer. "You never told me exactly what you are supposed to bring back home."

"Anything that will show to any potential captains of mine that I will not be a burden. Food or fuel, vital technology, knowledge… or even a vessel."

"So what if we just squeezed a few credits out of our pocket and set you out with a nice cargo of that flavor pasta of yours? Food is the fastest way to win the hearts of a crew back where I came from."

"If only…" Tali gave the sky above something akin to a longing look before glancing at him, her mercury orbs looked tired behind the mask. "I'm afraid my social standard will force me to be a little more thorough than most when it comes to finding a suitable gift."

Social standard huh. Joe gave her a curious glance but decided on not asking about it. It was only now after all the chaos was gone and they were about to go their separate ways that realization set in that he knew as much about her as she knew about him on a personal level… basic to practically nothing. He smiled, counting it as a major victory. A well placed barrier between their worlds would prevent his partner by circumstance from flooding in the sea of corpses on his tail and that made him feel satisfied for the first time since he arrived in this world. "We can always go out of our way and hijack a ship if you want."

She chuckled, shaking her head before giving him a slightly more warm look. "That's kind, even if illegal, but you don't need to worry yourself. I will figure something out along the way. Besides this is more than just searching for a gift, it is also about learning along the way and after what I saw here today… I guess there is much that I still have to learn about this galaxy."

Joe fought the word to pinch the bridge of his nose in a small act of frustration before saying. "You will have a easier time-"

"If I don't try to think about it. Yeah, you said that before." Tali moved her hand to grab her elbow area in a gesture that he already started to associate with her being uncomfortable or nervous. "But in the end… I can't just forget, can't I? Not after what I lost here."

"Mourn the ones you lost, but don't try to lift the stones surrounding their corpses or you might disturb something far more twisted."

"But… there are no stones?"

At that Joe laughed, genuine and sincere before giving her one last fond look. One year working alone, living in the shadows and then going into the eye of storm with nothing but himself and his guns. He didn't think he could actually enjoy working with someone again, he didn't think a small part of him would ever be reluctant to watch said someone go. "Tali Zorah… you just take care of yourself out there okay?"

"Esu se'lai."

It was all that was said between the two of them and after giving him one long look almost as if committing his face to the memory, Tali finally turned away and boarded the shuttle. Joe stayed there for a while, watching as the space vehicle left the docks and bolted towards the darkness of space and what he hoped would be a brighter future for his quarian companion. He instinctively reached for his pocket to grab a cigar, only for the sturdiness of the armor reminded him once again of where he was and as he watched the empty spot where her shuttle was just a moment ago… realization started to settle in.

The last thing binding him to his path of carnage was gone. There were no more crooked corps to hunt down, no relatives to protect and no new found friends along the way to help… he was done. Stuffed inside a piece of sci-fi technology, completely clueless on what to do with himself in such an abnormal world and without a single idea on how said world works… but he was free. And with the drums of the Afterlife beating in the distance his next stop looked obvious enough.

I need a drink