by Cole Price
I nodded, reached out to lay a hand along his cheek, let my mind fall into an increasingly familiar meditative state. It only took a few moments for me to verify his mental condition. “No sign of an echo, love. You’re clean.”
“Good. Let’s go.”
We disembarked: Shepard, Javik, and me. Almost at once we heard the sound of Reaper forces, trying to force their way into the T-GES facility.
“Scouting party,” said Shepard quietly.
“That sounds larger than the term scouting party would suggest,” I muttered.
Two marauders and a brute turned toward us as we rode a lift down to the main floor. One of Javik’s grenades and my singularity disposed of the marauders. The brute took a few moments of combined weapons fire, followed by Shepard’s flash-charge and a nova-blast. We had a moment of panic when a second brute pelted down a flight of stairs at us, but after we executed a fighting retreat for a few moments, that one too succumbed to a bone-breaking vanguard’s charge.
“There’s the front door,” said Shepard.
“I wonder what we will find here,” said Javik. “The miners are doubtless barricaded inside, awaiting their doom.”
I hacked the lock. We passed through a short airlock corridor, opened a second door . . .
“Welcome to T-GES Mineral Works. All guests must sign in at Reception.”
The reception office held perhaps eight or nine mining engineers and technicians, all of them human, and no sign of panic at all. We stopped just inside the second door, spotting an engineer walking calmly with a cup of coffee, two more conferring quietly over a datapad, a cluster of three close at hand and conversing in low tones.
The conversation stopped the moment the miners saw us. Two male engineers stared at us, unblinking, their gaze calmly assessing our presence. The third human, a female, slowly turned to stare at us as well.
Shepard waved for their attention. “Excuse me . . .”
“You shouldn’t be here,” said the woman, her voice completely without inflection. The stares continued.
Shepard frowned.
“No reaction to a heavily armed party,” muttered Javik. “No reaction to the presence of an asari, or of a Prothean whom none of these have seen before.”
“No reaction to the presence of Reapers outside their front door,” I agreed.
“Come on,” said Shepard.
We found our way to an administrative desk. The two male humans behind it ignored us.
“I’m Commander Shepard, with the Alliance.”
Two pairs of eyes rose to stare at him. No other reaction.
“Were you aware that there were Reaper forces attacking your front door?”
“Are they still there?” one of them asked, in that same flat voice.
“No, we’ve taken care of them for now. I’m sure they’ll be back, though.”
“I see. That will be all.” Both men turned back to their work.
Shepard waited for a moment, his frown growing deeper.
I noticed a call button on the wall nearby: Assistance. On a hunch, I stepped forward and pressed it. A low musical tone sounded.
“Yes. Welcome to T-GES Mineral Works. How can we help you?”
“Yes. For the tour, please sign in.”
“You don’t seem too worried about the Reapers,” said Shepard. “Do you know something I don’t?”
“T-GES Mineral Works is a small to mid-level supplier of tungsten to the galaxy.”
Shepard shook his head. “That’s not what I meant.”
“Are you familiar with the applications of tungsten?”
“I’m looking for a researcher named Dr. Alexandre Garneau,” said Shepard, starting to lose his patience. “He would have arrived within the last couple of weeks. If he’s here, I need to speak with him.”
“We have no Dr. Garneau.”
“Do you need to see a doctor?”
“No. I’m fine.” Shepard leaned on the counter. “How about if I just go in and look around a bit?”
“No.” The first man’s eyes slid to the side. “The access elevator is broken.”
I followed his glance, seeing lift doors a few meters away. The control panel shone red, indicating that the doors were indeed broken. I could also see an engineer stepping away from the doors, still holding the tool with which he had apparently broken them.
“And now we’re done,” said the man, still with no intonation in his voice. “Step away.”
“Step away,” agreed the second man. “You don’t belong here.”
“Commander, something is very wrong here,” murmured Javik.
“Yeah, I’m getting that feeling.” Shepard turned away from the reception desk. “Come on. Let’s look around, see if we can get into the rest of the facility. Carefully.”
This turned out to present little challenge. So long as we didn’t interfere with any of the miners, they tended to go about their own business. They often stopped to stare at us as we passed, issuing cryptic warnings. Sometimes they closed doors or shut down computer consoles to conceal their work. They did nothing to prevent us from moving around. We had no trouble repairing the access elevator, or exploring the main level of the facility once it functioned again.
“What kind of work are they doing here?” I wondered after a time.
“They are carrying out mining operations,” said Javik, “but they also pursue all manner of research that has nothing to do with resource extraction.”
“Biology, genetics, population dynamics.” Shepard shook his head, confused. “They’re talking about a lot of weaponized applications, too.”
“This is an isolated facility,” Javik observed. “Could these engineers be doing unauthorized work on behalf of some third party? For political or ideological reasons, or for pay?”
“Their manner is not at all normal. I would almost suspect indoctrination, but . . .” I trailed off, not sure how to put what I felt into words.
“This doesn’t feel like indoctrination,” said Shepard. “They’re intelligent enough. There’s no sign they’re getting burnt out or reduced to mindlessness, like the scientists we saw on Virmire. They’re just flat.”
Eventually we found an unguarded security console, and managed to gain partial access. I hacked my way through the system, finding evidence of what had happened to Dr. Garneau. He had arrived a little over a week before, interacted peacefully with the miners. Then, quite suddenly, he had become involved in some kind of “altercation” in the mines, sustaining serious injuries. The security system claimed he was currently undergoing treatment in the facility’s medical bay.
We made our way back through the corridors, reaching the medical bay. The miners had secured that door well, but eventually we found a security code that permitted access. Inside, the medical bay stood quiet and apparently abandoned, only a single turian orderly sitting in an office close to the door. We moved down the hall, looking into treatment rooms on either side.
“Here,” said Javik, peering through a window into a darkened room. All of us could see a human-shaped figure lying on a medical bed, the sheets pulled up to cover his face. “Is this the human we are looking for?”
“I hope not,” I said, “or we’ve hit a dead end.”
Shepard glanced around, and picked up a datapad sitting on a nearby gurney.
“This belonged to Garneau,” he said. “Looks like a whole string of messages that didn’t get sent back to Dr. Bryson.” He tapped at the pad . . .
“Bryson, this is Garneau. I’ve had to go into hiding, and I need you to come get me. I found another one of those artifacts here. They’re more important than we realized. It’s in the mines. That’s where I’ll be. Something is very wrong here. Please hurry.”
“An artifact?” I wondered. “Like the crystal sphere we saw back in Garret’s lab? Dr. Garneau recovered that one as well.”
Thump. A sound, from another darkened treatment room behind us. We turned to see a shadowed figure, standing just behind another window. A male hu
man, leaning heavily on a railing, looking exhausted.
“If you are looking for Garneau, you have found him,” he said through an intercom. “I am Dr. Garneau.”
Shepard strode across the corridor to face the man. “I’m Commander Shepard, with the Alliance. My associates are Dr. T’Soni and Javik. Are you all right?”
“Yes. Only I’m trapped in here.”
“What’s been going on here?”
“I was doing my research. Until the incident.”
“The miners attacked you,” Shepard guessed.
“It’s true. But now, aside from my confinement, I’m fine.”
My eyes narrowed as I watched and listened to Garneau.
He doesn’t sound quite like the others. There’s almost no inflection in his voice either, but it sounds like the effects of fatigue or injury.
“Dr. Bryson’s research led us to you,” Shepard continued.
Silence for a moment. Garneau raised his face, not quite high enough to look directly at us. “Bryson sent you?”
“I’m sorry, Doctor. He’s dead. Killed by his assistant.”
“I see.”
No emotional reaction to the news.
“Doctor, I need you to tell me everything you’ve found about the Leviathan. Bryson seemed to think it killed a Reaper.”
Garneau stepped back, leaned against the medical bed from which he had arisen. He shook his head wearily. “It’s a myth. A dead end.”
He is lying, I was suddenly very sure. I touched Shepard for just a moment, caught his eye silently, and stepped forward with a question of my own. “In your call to Dr. Bryson, you mentioned an artifact.”
“I did?” Silence. “No.”
Shepard frowned, seeing it as well now. “Yes, Doctor, you did. But now we have Reaper forces attacking this facility, so it’s time I got you out of there. We’ll grab the artifact and go.”
“Reapers,” said Garneau, some emotion coloring his voice for the first time. “The darkness must not be breached.”
Shepard stepped up to the window, set a hand on it to peer closely at the man. “The darkness?”
Garneau leaped forward, his fists thumping on the glass. His voice fell a good two octaves, a sudden contra-bass rumble with deep resonance. “Why do you pursue me?”
“Doctor?”
“Leave the artifact. You will not take what is mine!”
“He is not himself,” observed Javik. “This is not Garneau we are talking to.”
Goddess. Is it Leviathan, speaking through Garneau’s mind?
“You,” said Shepard, apparently reaching the same wild surmise. “You killed a Reaper. I need your help!”
“You bring only death.”
Force erupted from the human, like a biotic explosion but unaccompanied by any light or electrical discharge. The basso-profundo noise was terrifyingly loud, forcing all of us to clap our hands to our auditory organs. Glass shattered and flew out at us, and we recoiled to protect our faces from the flying shards.
I heard the thud of boots on the floor. I glanced up and saw Garneau out in the corridor with us, turning to flee.
“Leave this place!” he shouted as he ran.
Shepard recovered first, breaking into a sprint to follow him, down a corridor toward a transit station that led to the mines. Javik and I followed, seconds behind him.
Darkness. Something cut the power to our section, forcing doors closed between us and our quarry.
“Come on,” Shepard shouted desperately. “He’s getting away!”
It took us a few moments to find an access ladder, leading around the blocked corridor sections and up to the roof of the facility. When we emerged, we could see a human figure in the distance, hurrying away from us. Garneau, heading for the mines.
We also saw a great flying creature, a Reaper support platform called a harvester, heading in the same direction. It dropped off a flying wedge of husks to pursue the fleeing human on foot.
“Looks like we’re not the only ones heading that way,” said Shepard as he ran.
“Perhaps. We are the only ones who will come out alive,” said Javik.
For once, the husks paid no attention to us. I had only an instant to think about that, and then we sprinted forward, Shepard leading a charge to shatter the husks before they could reach their target.
We moved across the roof, trying madly to catch up with Garneau. A series of red fireballs erupted through the kinetic barrier above, slamming down among the intricacies of the roof ahead of us. Marauders, two swollen rachni ravagers, and . . .
For the first time, I heard it.
A high-pitched, wailing screech. Worse, far worse, than the great horn-blast of a Reaper in battle. A hellish noise to bypass my sense of hearing, speak to ancient terrors, turn my guts to sludge and my bones to water.
Oh Goddess, what is that?
“Asari! Do not falter!”
Two of them: tall, brimming with biotic power, seeming almost to float as they moved slowly along. Female in shape, but horribly distorted, gross bloated stomachs and sagging breasts and the faces of ancient decayed hags. Eyes glowing with malice. Mouths opening to emit still more of those horrible screams. Asari crests crowning their misshapen heads.
Asari. Taken by the Reapers. Twisted into mockeries of my people’s natural beauty and grace. Transformed into living weapons.
I screamed, but even in the midst of horror I could see my little Shuriken would be no use at all. I put it away, brandished my fists instead, began to hurl warp after biotic warp. Shepard and Javik followed my lead. We fought to tear down biotic barriers as strong as granite.
Somehow we survived the battle that followed, dealt with those two abominations and all the lesser creatures that followed them. One of the twisted asari almost made it to our position, got close enough to reach out for me with taloned hands, but then Shepard flash-charged in from the side and broke the thing. One final scream seared my nerves as the coiled energies in its flesh consumed its corpse.
“Oh Goddess.” I turned to one side and was violently sick.
“Liara. Come on, we’ve got to get moving.” Shepard’s hands supported me, lifted me back to my feet, even though I could feel them trembling as well.
Only Javik remained apparently unmoved. “You must steel yourself against such things, asari. You will see far worse if you are determined to fight Reapers.”
“I know.” I stared wildly into my bondmate’s eyes. “Shepard, I want you to promise me something.”
“Anything, love.”
“If the Reapers ever capture me, if they ever look like they’re about to overrun us, I want you to put a bullet in my brain. Before they turn me into anything like that.”
Grimly, Shepard nodded in complete agreement.
With the asari-things down, the remaining Reaper troops put up little resistance. A few more minutes brought us to the entrance to the active mines. We forced the door and hurried downward, hearing the groaning noise of more husks ahead of us.
“Garneau!” Shepard shouted. “Where are you?”
We found an open space, what must once have been an active mine face. Now it resembled a broad amphitheater, the floor sloping down into the center from all sides. In the center I saw a massive stone outcropping, with a great crystal sphere embedded close to its tip.
“The darkness cannot be breached.”
The sphere resembled the one in Garret’s lab, but this one glowed and shimmered, so bright that it lit up the entire vast space. I could almost feel its emanations, like a deep hum, bypassing my auditory organs to reach directly into my brain.
Garneau had climbed up on the rock outcropping, backing up frantically toward the artifact. A dozen husks clambered across the floor and up the lowest slopes of the outcropping, cornering Garneau, moments from tearing him to shreds.
Shepard shouted and leaped to the attack, Javik and me right behind him. Husks began to go down under our gunfire.
One husk leaped upward, menaci
ng Garneau, so close that Shepard couldn’t get a clear shot.
“Move!”
Garneau glanced in our direction.
“Turn back!” he shouted, in the deep bass voice I had begun to attribute to Leviathan’s influence. Then he opened one hand to reveal a detonator. His thumb came down on the trigger.
An explosion tore through the space, the shock knocking all three of us off our feet, deafening us.
By the time the echoes fell silent and we rose to our feet once more, the entire top of the outcropping was simply gone. So were the husks, Garneau, and the artifact.
“Damn it,” muttered Shepard, moving down toward the outcropping to see if anything remained.
Javik saw something else, slinging his weapon on his back and rushing across the floor. I saw him kneel, bending over a human body. I followed him.
“Who is that?” I asked, watching as the Prothean rolled the body onto its back. A male human, clearly several days dead, a datapad still clutched in one hand.
“Rrrh,” said Javik, picking up the datapad and quickly scanning its stored files. “Commander, come quickly. You will want to see this.”
“What’ve you got?”
“That human was not the one called Garneau – this one is. And he’s been dead for some time.”
Shepard frowned. “The one we talked to, he was pretending to be Garneau?”
“It makes sense,” I said, kneeling to examine the dead man. “If this is Garneau, he must have come here looking for Leviathan. He found the artifact in this mine. The miners reacted violently. Killed him. They must have known someone would come looking for him, so one of them took his place to misdirect us.”
“Hmm.” Shepard looked around, folding his arms and shaking his head in disgust. “Let’s review the bidding. Leviathan can take control of Hadley on the Citadel, and have him kill Bryson. It can also take control of this whole colony, and have the miners do all kinds of odd research. And when an outsider turns up, it has them kill him too.”
“Like indoctrination,” I said, standing up again. “But not quite the same.”
“No.” Shepard suddenly frowned, as if a thought had struck him. “Liara. Check me. Now.”
I hesitated, but then reached out to take his hand. Entering the mental state for a light joining seemed more difficult under such stressful circumstances, but after a few moments I managed it. Our minds slipped close together . . .
