3. VANGUARD
Scanning synaptic core
Functions normal
Integrity at 94.3%
Cognitive simulation engaged.
Memory Usage: 13.9%
Creating Virtual Environment
Designation: VANGUARD
Status: Undefined
She was standing in a void, hearing her own voice fade. She had a body here or what passed for one. It was almost horribly familiar. A niggling sense of déjà vu, tip-of-the-tongue syndrome, a hung over morning after and a screaming nightmare wrapped up all in one. The kind of confusion you clung to because as long as that haze was there, as long as you couldn't really remember, you were safe. You don't want to know. Don't wake up. Don't ever wake up.
Numbers.
Her body was made of numbers.
Red numbers, a translucent glow that mimicked the reflective planes of glass and moved like water. Zeros and Ones. A wriggling black band stretched across her torso and when the numbers slipped through it, they changed. Altered. A little thinner, or perhaps a little longer? More transparent or was that just the illusionary effect a solid shadow had on light? She looked away, losing interest. It was not harming her. She would let it be.
She turned her attention back to where she was. If she was anywhere. A vast, empty space. There was no sound, but she got the impression of…wind. Movement. The void expanding somewhere just beyond her comprehension and then collapsing back.
Inhale.
Exhale.
The belly of some giant, ancient beast. It wasn't aware of her, not yet. Sleeping. Dreaming. Perhaps she was just a figment of its imagination. When it wakes, she'll be gone.
She didn't want to disappear.
There was a soft pull. She let it take her.
Virtual Environment Complete.
"—cashire. Dr. Lancashire?"
Rebecca came to with a jolt, her hand instinctively tightening into a white knuckled grip on her table as if to reassure herself that she didn't drop it. Wait. Tablet? She blinked slowly. Her vision spun, blurred, and finally resolved into the boring interior design of an appointment office. Threadbare, a few seats for the patients, a wheeled stool for the doctor and a half counter that stuck out of the wall covered with brochures. A model brain had a place of honor in the center. Sunlight streamed from behind vague blue drapes and a car horn blared.
She was…was she really? How the bloody hell—a wave of nausea hit as she turned in her seat.
"Dr. Lancashire? Are you alright?" Male voice, dusty, smoker? Tobacco use of at least a decade, Hispanic accent. Looking at the walls was a bad idea. At first glance, the sterile pastel flowers swirled like a fun house mirror. The pale yellows and greens seemed to bleed into her mind. She gingerly set the tablet on the counter and tried to think. How did she get here—Aegis?—Where was here exactly—damage report, this headache—windows south side and flowers meant fifth floor—bloody sequential thinking!
Her mind wasn't working how she had gotten used to it working. The one train of thought at a time thing? Irritating.
She fiddled with the tablet, looking for clues. Rodriguez, Alan. New patient. No help there.
"I'm fine, thank you." She said belatedly, just now remembering that he had been talking to her. "A headache flared up." She couldn't have possibly—no, it hadn't been a dream. If it was she would have woken up in bed, now in the middle of an appointment with no idea how she got there. She had been—she was making an Avatar wasn't she? Rebecca took a few deep breaths, a feeling something in her chest twinge as she glanced at her watch. 11.34. "What was I saying?"
Beta level fluctuation. Stabilizing…stand by…stabilizing…
Her own voice rang out in her head. She clamped down, the full body jerk coming out as a surprised twitch. Why was she hearing herself narrate? Shouldn't she be getting the updates automatically? And why did it sound like…it sounded like Aegis. Blank, perfunctory, computerized. An uneasy feeling was crawling up her spine.
"—got my second opinion and I just wanted to know what happens."
Fine. She'll play along.
'Alan Rodriguez' had the look of a burly, elderly man. The kind that spent most of his life doing physical labor and while he wasn't spoiling the grandkids, was chafing under retirement. No obvious speech defects, hands were steady, eyes clear and focused. Brain tumor, she reasoned. If it was something like a stroke he'd be in the ER and anything exotic would have been bumped up to a senior doctor. Small, non-critical area, right up her alley.
She tried to peruse his file again, but the letters danced across the small screen. She brought up an image of the MRI instead, wishing for the yellow haptic interface. It was only a little better. The number of dark spots in the scan seemed to be multiplying.
"Honestly? Most patients can't even remember coming in for surgery." She grabbed at one of the brochures on the counter and almost missed. The room tilted. "The most important thing is that you relax after. A healthy diet and light exercise. The anesthesia can take up to six weeks to flush out of your system so it is important that there is someone to help you at home."
He laughed. "You can tell my wife I have doctor's orders to be lazy!"
Her smile was distracted. This was not a memory. She would have remembered working on a patient like Alan. This was something new.
She didn't create it.
Who did?
Alpha level protocol compromised. Rebooting protocols.
She stole another glance at the tablet and swallowed the bile back down. "Were there any questions you had for me in specific? It says here that you have hypertension…" She pursed her lips. "Ideally, we want to get that blood pressure down before we go in. Do you know the cause?"
"The wife," Rodriguez said dryly and she snorted.
"Let's schedule an appointment and take a look at that, shall we?" He asked a few more questions related to the procedure and some general small talk. She answered the best she could, tiny spikes of pain streaking into her eyes. To her surprise, he seemed to notice, deviating from the script.
"It's a pretty bad one, isn't it?" Concern was clear in his voice as she bit her lip. The sudden urge to shake him, make him tell her what the hell was going on—
"I am…" She paused. She tilted her head a little, looked up at him through strands of hair short enough to be neatly tucked underneath a surgeon's cap. That it was the original blonde instead of black didn't really register. "I am wondering how much of this is real."
'Alan' stilled. For a long moment they simply watched each other until he smiled. "Is reality better?"
His form faded.
Rebecca stood up, swaying almost drunkenly; the floor didn't want to stop moving. There was a ghostly sensation of floating, weightlessness.
Warning. Synaptic core integrity at 93.1%.
She crossed to the window and flung the drapes open. It was the Bronx, New York City.
Some of it.
The hospital campus sprawled around the building, shocks of green from the trees highlighting the street nearby. The building's immediate surroundings had been transplanted, cars just materialized further down the street complete with drivers. Some were texting, drinking coffee, messing with their mirrors. She watched a minivan with pink fuzzy dice bouncing in the window slow at the intersection and turn off, vanishing.
The familiar urban development gave way to more futuristic complexes. White walls, holographic displays and blue windows, abandoned. She looked up and hovering in the sky was a giant structure, a mirrored image of a city built on it. She didn't create this. She didn't create any of this—In the distance, a tower.
This was the Citadel.
The sudden burst of pain was crippling.
Cognitive simulation approaching critical failure
Collapsing Virtual Environment
Synaptic core integrity at 89.9%
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Purging data stream of interference
Dumping memory...
Rebooting…
Shutting down…
The pain disappeared.
So did everything else.
She was standing in a void, hearing her own voice fade. She had a body here or what passed for one. It was almost horribly familiar. A niggling sense of déjà vu, tip-of-the-tongue syndrome, a hung over morning after and a screaming nightmare wrapped up all in one. The kind of confusion you clung to because as long as that haze was there, as long as you couldn't really remember, you were safe. You don't want to know.
But you will.
Wake up.
[Rebecca]
Scanning synaptic core
Synaptic core stable
Integrity at 90.1%
ERROR. Memory corruption.
Quarantining damaged data streams...
Deleting...
Chapter 2: VANGUARD
Go away, Aegis.
That message had been simply duplicated from her memory banks and sent, for the twelfth time, through the firewall as she soldered a connection. She wasn't entirely sure if the VI honestly didn't understand or if it was just playing dumb, but the pings of rejected access attempts seemed to increase in frequency. The worst part of it was, some program somewhere was keeping track of Every. Single. One, twice as annoying and she was unable to find it for the life of her.
546. 547. 548.
Find it and crush it, she thought to herself. She pried her fingers off the delicate tool before she snapped it in frustration. 571. 572. 573.
Crush. It.
Aegis kept going and by the time the internal counter reached the seven hundreds she was palming her face. She reluctantly changed access permissions, picking up the tool again. Aegis blank tone said nothing of irritation, but if the seven hundred and forty five access attempts said anything, it was that the VI was annoyed.
You initiated a communications lock down.
[Rebecca] gently moved a few thin wires, and turned the small metal ball she was working on. It's called being given the 'cold shoulder.' Or rather attempting to give the cold shoulder. In a contest of patience, apparently the Prothean VI had an unfair advantage.
Why was communication blocked? It persisted.
You know why.
A warning was issued against breaching the containment chamber.
Aegis. She took a calming breath. It wasn't quite the same without the heady feeling of too much oxygen, but it worked well enough. You let me sit on an antimatter missile.
Friends don't let friends sit on bombs.
Especially ones packed with enough antimatter to blow up a Mass Relay and had been sitting in a facility where indoctrinated Protheans had been running about for the last fifty thousand years. Covered in debris with a few dings in its casing, it had looked safe enough. A few wires had needed to be removed, a few blocks of rubble. Sit on the missile! Brilliant idea.
She'd heard horror stories about people stepping on armed land mines from WWII, this was inarguably worse. It might not have been armed, could have been a dud, but Protheans built shit that lasted. The elevators, the weapons, the computers, the fucking chairs. If the missile had just broken from laying around too long, she'd eat glass.
Which she could, not that she would want to do so anytime soon. Her stomach was more of a microbial generator, excelled at breaking things down to their base components for use and wasn't picky.
Vigil inserted its own two cents. Communicate.
Ah. [Rebecca] sent. Aegis is annoying you too, isn't it?
Vigil didn't respond immediately. The download was making him a little sluggish but she already knew that the surly VI had probably been bombarded just as she was. Yes.
Go do something useful Aegis.
I am capable of multitasking—
She cut it off. Multitask more then.
It finally seemed to get the hint, she could feel it almost floundering pathetically before it sent a plaintive message: I will retain access permissions?
Some of the irritation bled away. Perhaps she was imagining things, maybe her modifications to its code had messed something up, but the VI almost sounded hurt. Lonely. She tightened a few connections absently. Yes, you will. She redacted the apology. She'd never been good with those. I didn't think VI could get lonely, she broadcasted.
We Do Not.
Fifty thousand years is a long time.
It Is Time.
She knew what it meant. Time, to computers, simply was. It was a variable to be measured and counted. It was an ever increasing number. It was hard for her not to fall into it. When an entire plan of action could be plotted out in less than a second, time seemed like an infinite commodity. It was just something that happened, that had to be accounted for.
Organics place a lot of value on time. She eyed the small spherical drone on the table in front of her. Almost done. We don't have a lot of it.
She had "found" the ship bay, at least. Acts of explosive sabotage had trashed the entrance beyond what the small helper drones were capable of so she had pitched in, hauling large blocks of rubble. The inside wasn't much better, two of the pillars had broken apart, part of the roof collapsed and the electronics controlling the bay doors smashed, sparking with the recently turned on primary power. They hadn't wanted anyone to escape. There had been about ten ships of varying sizes that fell into three categories: Blown Up, Sadly Broken and Potentially Useful but Trapped.
There was some overlap.
A smaller experimental 'fighter' was one of the Potentially Useful but Trapped ships, with a small side of Sadly Broken having been pushed against the wall when a large block of broken pillar had shoved a larger ship into it.
There was no 'getting out and pushing' here, the best chance of getting it free was fixing it up enough to ram its way out without breaking apart entirely. She'd been salvaging, gathering up what she couldn't take with her and feeding it to the fabricators for material and eventually, she'd have to figure out how to get into the third unit nearby. It was the only one big enough to fabricate the ship parts she would need but the doors seemed to have been welded shut or something…
She needed something that could get into that room, perhaps the small spaces in the crushed hull and that was where the small drone she'd been working on came in. The tools weren't anything like she'd used before. Smaller and more fragile looking. Something that looked kind of like a tiny wrench but had a heated molecular blade on it, a "screwdriver" that looked more like a drill and she still wasn't sure what that twisted, suction cup doohickey was supposed to be used for. She'd had to look up at least half a dozen of them and unfortunately proficiency didn't come from reading books. The first time she focused her sight into telescopic range was…odd. But it was still a familiar feeling.
It reminded her of middle school, being the only girl in a computer hardware class and being completely unwilling to take any shit for it. Detentions for bloodying some prat's nose, she couldn't even remember his name. Building crude circuit boards, clocks with LED lights and metronomes. She'd loved it, bringing her projects home to her parents and setting up an empty bookshelf just for them. She'd wanted to be a computer engineer, carried that dream with her through high school and into college.
Her dad had that stroke in her second year. Plans changed.
And now she was here.
She really didn't want to think about it.
She was just hoping to do what she could, mostly. Make a right nuisance of herself. Piss off a few Reapers and hopefully not die while she was at it. Hopefully.
She wasn't leaving Aegis here on Ilos. She wasn't leaving Vigil. The VI were currently writing every scrap of useful information into Aegis' memory and systematically wiping the data banks. Vigil was downloading a copy of himself and a third, basic VI was being installed in Vigil's place at the archives. She had created it, after much trial and error and lots of help. Its programming was simple. Protect the Conduit. At all costs.
She had suggested the name, even keeping it within tradition of Overseer VI.
Veto.
Access denied.
It would probably be lost on Saren and the geth, which was a shame.
She snapped the last plate into place and stood, stretching out of habit. She pressed a tiny button in the rim of its "eye" and the little drone activated, lifting off the table unsteadily. It didn't immediately explode. Or crash. Or attack her or something.
Success.
She grabbed it, the small mass effect fields making her fingers tingle and shut it off. Time to check on her combat suit.
Contact.
Cut around. Thirty five degree entry.
[Rebecca] didn't flinch as Aegis obeyed. The small molecular blade separated the nanotube musculature with precision. Two other machine arms held the cut open and a third snuck in with tiny fingers, severing the synthetic nerve and working it to the surface. A needle connector was slipped in and a tiny screw was attached, self-tightening, the two concentric circles twisting in opposite directions as it closed. The other end of the needle plugged into the receiver end of a small jack.
A medical patch was applied and [Rebecca] experimentally rolled her wrist. It's noticeable but doesn't hinder movement.
The rounded metal port of the jack stuck out of her skin a few millimeters. That one nerve connection had been repurposed into a more general information byway. The jack was loaded with input scrambling programs, software buffers and containment protocols. It was practically a given that she would need to hack something somewhere. She'd rather not be hacked back.
I first saw the whole 'wrist jack' thing on a show once. About genocidal AIs determined to wipe out their creators.
Battlestar Galatica the name was. Now that she was thinking it, the Quarians had really lucked out on the Geth turning pacifist. It could have been so much worse.
I Trust You Have Not Imprinted On That Example.
Oh? [Rebecca] questioned mildly. Her fingers traveled the table as her eyes shifted around the room. Considering whom I suspect my 'creators' to be, I hope I do.
The fabrication units in the armory were busted, but this one was close enough. Prothean weapons lay gutted on the tables, some of them just had their casings removed and fed to the fabricator for material. The particle rifle was still growing—which was a weird thing to say about a gun that she would never get used to—but the SMG she'd nabbed from the Collector had already been repurposed.
When her fingers closed around the handle the gun recognized her, a neural uplink snaking out for an entry point. She flinched when it found the port, a tiny spark radiating out from the area as the jack locked it in.
Do you feel discomfort? Aegis began running diagnostics on her until she gently stopped him.
No, not really. It's just—she looked down to where the neural link stuck out of her wrist. She looked away with a slight shiver. It's nothing.
Please continue.
[Rebecca] reached for the 'visor' (better name pending). It was a slim wavy magnetic band that slipped a curve right behind her right ear and across her temple firmly attached to the metal content of her skull. Protheans didn't have omni-tools per se. Not with their psychometry and borderline telepathic shenanigans. The closest thing was their equivalent of a personal computer, an eye level projected haptic interface.
She'd nabbed one from one of the quarters, took her half a day to hack it too which was pathetic but she did do it. And Vigil redesigned it as she definitely did not have a Prothean head shape. Ibdali Kashad, hotshot agricultural scientist, had received the call to go to the Archives. Her notes were impulsive, arrogant and brilliant—Block B, Row 3, 315. Vigil had told her that.
She'd wanted an omni-tool, as it gave her an easy way out when accessing computers and no one would look twice. But there was no omni-gel, no schematics and none of them had been willing to put in the effort to build something from scratch that was redundant at best.
Not that it stopped her from trying to design a light saber. If she didn't at least try she'd never forgive herself. Ceramics, plasma and electro magnetic fields, or maybe a larger version of a Prothean heated molecular blade, she was working on it.
She passed by the combat suit. The skin was growing in to cover the mechanical parts evenly. She stopped to observe the robotic spine, faint blue shimmering coming from the few exposed circuits. It was designed for movement, not armor. Prothean kinetic shield generator attached to a frame as flexible as she was. Getting shot at was a given. She'd rather not get hit.
Arcing over the back, way over where her head would be were two vertebrae antennae, miniscule cameras and sensor arrays packed into the upper halves. And below them on the spine, were organically designed robotic arms covered in a fine mesh for the skin to cling to. Aegis had crunched numbers about increased carrying capacity and versatility but as far as [Rebecca] was concerned, more arms meant wielding more guns. Multitasking would always be a strength of hers.
She reached out to touch the suit, the skin and waited. Waited for her skin to crawl, waited for regret or shame or…something. Nothing. Maybe she didn't have a subroutine for it, or maybe she didn't care. She tapped a fingernail on it thoughtfully.
Aegis. Vigil. She gave the hard suit another look. Good work.
She had stacked crates at the back of the room for testing. It wasn't as good as the firing range by the armory, but she didn't really feel like walking all the way over there. This was just to see if it worked, anyway.
The clear holographic display sprung out of the band with a blue targeting reticule. And she took aim, two hands in a balanced position she knew and was completely unfamiliar with at the same time. She flagged the crates as hostile and watched the target band immediately turn red.
Hostile detected.
[Rebecca] didn't pull the trigger. There wasn't one. The command traveled at the speed of computer thought.
Shoot.
The burst of submachine gun fire was loud.
"Well, well, well." The metallic enamel pellets had shredded holes in the crates, big enough for her to see through. Her smile was small. "Maybe I've got this after all."
Vigil pinged her then. Your VI Has Been Activated.
She frowned a little. The VI didn't sound particularly happy-what was she thinking, Vigil never sounded happy-and distinctly bothered. Problems with your new home? She shot the combat suit a glance, as if she could somehow see the VI settling in.
Veto Is Erratic.
She reached out, hesitantly, not entirely sure of what she was looking for. Aegis redirected her on request and she touched a healthy intelligence matrix. No bugs that she could see, no corruption...a bit of an anomaly with the personality imprint. Huh. She committed the access path to memory.
Veto?
You are [Rebecca]. The VI identified. It's voice was heavily synthesized and feminine. I have been informed that you do not wish to personally test the defenses of this facility. A pause. That is a shame.
She couldn't help the amused grin. I trust you will do what you can with it.
Of course I will. The VI almost sounded offended. It will be a fun learning experience for [REDACTED] all. And then they will die.
Vigil butt in, stubborn. Erratic.
[Rebecca] grinned. I like it.
You Would.
Aegis approached the new VI curiously, introducing itself like a child on a playground looking to make a new friend. My designation is Aegis. I am an analyst.
My designation is Veto. I kill people. For science.
[Rebecca] had already made up her mind. Taking that one with me.
I am currently assigned to the Archives. Veto reminded her. Do you require a copy of this Virtual Intelligence?
[Rebecca] hesitated. It was one thing to put a homicidal VI between Saren and the Conduit. It was another to give that same VI access to a Prothean military grade hard suit upgraded with Collector technology and her own, relatively fragile chassis. What is your primary directive?
Protect the Conduit from unauthorized access.
Limitations in achieving that directive?
Unlimited. The VI sounded almost happy, which was a stark contrast to Aegis' never ending politeness and Vigil's 100% disapproval. [Rebecca] felt her lips twitch upward again.
Limitations outside that directive?
My programming is insufficient for any other capability.
And if you were to be hacked?
I am sorry Veto began, not sounding very sorry at all. But I require a verbal override code in order to show mercy.
[Rebecca] sent Vigil a side message. Satisfied?
There was a several microsecond pause during which she imagined it giving her a stink eye before sending a reluctant affirmative.
Veto, copy your matrix and set up memory sharing. You'll be rooming with Vigil.
Dedicating 32.4% of resources. Copying intelligence matrix now.
Welcome to the team.
This was happening, wasn't it? This was really happening. She looked around the room, at the gadgets and guns. The utility belt on the table for different adapters for the jack in her wrist, the flat hovering grenades of every type from incineration to flash bang. The odd bits and ends the VI insisted she would need. The ship was being fixed. Vigil would not be lost to lack of power, Saren would have to fight to get to the Conduit. Soon, there would be nothing left for her here.
But as she turned back to target practice, a thread of thought disagreed. She knew what her footsteps sounded like when she walked these halls. Her body had been built here, her first breath, her first steps. She had watched the red giant sun set and mapped out every one of the Prothean constellations in the night sky. This facility wasn't part of the game. It was hers. This was home. When had she accepted that? That this was it. This was her. Even if-
Even if.
You can never really go home again.
The ship bay had easily become [Rebecca]'s favorite room because of what it must have been like before the Reapers came. People milling about a room larger than a cathedral and just as elegantly built with soft blue lighting, proud metal walkways lined out between the ships and the bay doors opened to a horizon. It was an underground cavern, the 'bottom' of the room dropped off into the ocean gently lapping at the walls. A bit of grey algae was moistly outlining where high tide came in.
The ships built here were all small, lacking the infrastructure to create anything larger than a tiny frigate. They were more concepts and theories, pet projects, than anything feasible for use in the navy.
Gripping pads held them aloft above the water, some pieces of debris floated and she was sure much more rested on the bottom. The ship trapping hers had almost been twisted right off its perch, bending the walkway around its hull. The only that kept it above water was her fighter and the deep gouge its wing made in the wall. If the smaller ship had been built any other way, it probably would have imploded like a crushed grape. But it had a spinal particle beam canon, and any ship with an armament like that was built to withstand structural pressure.
[Rebecca] took a few steps onto the walkway, the sensors in her feet calculating the tilt of the twisted metal. She placed a hand on the control panel and with a few key strokes extending the airlock. Like always, it got stuck on a piece of the larger ship and she dove into the security protocols to flip a 'false' flag to 'true.' The first time, she had been stuck there reading every single line for at least two minutes. Now it took barely enough time to blink, and the ship door opened to air.
She jumped across the gap casually and with a pneumatic hiss, the inner door slid apart.
She was met with stale air and silence. The sleeping ship didn't have a single light on, abandoned. The air quality got marginally better each time the door opened. The silence didn't, but this time that would change.
It was a short walk to the cockpit. She sat in the pilot's chair, the metal block flaring to life with mass effect fields and spreading up her back and neck. A yellow interface flickered into existence.
There was a buzz, a whistle and an irritated sounding blaaaaht. [Rebecca]'s lips quirked.
"Hello to you too, Arsix." The floating drone, the titular sixth iteration of her attempts at building it, zoomed up to the chair and hovered, its blue camera eye taking everything in. She hadhoped to only have to take two attempts, just so she could call it "Artoo" but alas, sometimes you can't have everything. "Been busy?"
A beep.
"Good to hear." She couldn't understand R6, not that it was actually speaking anyway. It made noises to verbal responses because that was what it was programmed to do. The real communication blazed across an electronic highway, ship diagnostics; a report of what it had fixed what were still broken and any new complications it had discovered.
They were catching up on the backlog. There were only thirty seven new problems this time. Given that the first day she found the ship, that number had been one thousand and seventy eight, she felt pretty good.
She laid a finger on an empty meter symbol and double tapped. For a long second, nothing happened as she looked back over her shoulder. Her brows furrowed and she swallowed the disappointment. Not yet done—
And then the first light hesitantly sparked to life.
More followed, running down the length of the ship. Terminals switched on, their yellow haptic interfaces smoothly folding out of the walls. The galactic map started as a small white dot on the hologram by the pilot's station and then it spiraled outward, flushing with billions of stars and systems into the Milky Way. Twinkling orange and blue diagnostic lights sparkled, shifting.
Arsix beeped again and she rested her finger on the meter symbol again. It lit up softly. She dragged it up, just a little.
Outside, the ship bucked. Shuddered. And the engines roared, ripples of water crashing away.
[Rebecca] whooped loudly, pumping a fist in the air as the little drone bobbed. IT WORKS. She blasted over the network. It works! It works! Itworksitworksitworksitworks! Aegis, start consolidating, we're going to move you in today. Lots of red across the board BUT IT WORKS.
In the end she had to kill the excitement, or else she would have just spent the rest of the day siting in that chair with the goofiest grin on her face and not get anything done. But she kept a little generated bubble of it, a little spark as she sent the modified signal through the ship's computer to open the ship bay. The heavy doors unlocked with loud clanks and groans of neglect and raised, sea water dripping from the metal.
The red sun reflected off the water. The sky was a darkening blue with a few cloud wisps clinging to the edge of the sun. She sat there for a few minutes, looking at the screen and the view the ship had of an Ilos sunrise. It seemed almost magical If someone had told her not even three months ago that she'd be seeing this from her very own spaceship…
You could almost forget this was a dead world.
[Rebecca] sent the signal for the grips to release. The ship dipped a little as it fully took on the weight of the other ship and then began to push it off. Screaming metal as the twisted walkway bent in the other direction, groans of shifting weight. For several minutes, it caught on its wing in the wall and she had to lower the ship and change the angle. The wing cracked and she sent the signal to release the grip of the dock next to her.
The larger ship slipped, the wing snapped off and a ringing screech of hull against hull it fell into the ocean. The water rose up in a several foot wave, splashing onto the metal floor and extended docks before sucking in as the ship sank beneath the surface.
She waited for the operating grip to latch onto her ship again before shifting it idle.
"Come on Arsix, let's see about that fab unit, hmm?"
The fab unit was an extension off the ship bay, a huge block jutting out from the wall with closed double doors. An automated trolley system ran along the floor on a monorail track, the car itself parked just in front of the doors preventing them from opening and no amount of force was moving it. Instead, [Rebecca] opted to just bypass the doors entirely.
The borer made a high pitched whine her ears told her was above the pain threshold for Asari, prompting an automatic wince even though she didn't feel anything. It punched through the wall with a crunch and she folded up the legs and worked it out of the hole. She peeked, but all she saw was the opposite wall.
She nodded at the little drone, implanting instructions. "All yours."
It floated in. She sat against the wall, looking up at the ceiling. Moving a bit to get comfortable and then going still, letting her mind drift.
Reference: Chair
Reference: Terminal
Destination = Terminal
The drone powered its small thrusters and moved forward, bobbing around the chair and searching the machine for a port. It found one but it was currently occupied. It sent a request for a course of action and got one. A three pronged claw extended from the ball and removed the cube. The lines of glowing blue on it died as the drone let it drop to the floor.
It switched tools, plugging in. It released the override on the doors easily and noted that it hadn't been done from the terminal or anywhere else in the facility.
Conclusion: Manual override
Job done, the little drone turned around. And its camera eye had a very good view of a corpse. It's head ruptured, inert.
Reference: Collector
On the other side of the wall, [Rebecca] stiffened. The second Collector in a facility abandoned for fifty thousand years. It had manually overrode the doors to the only operable fabrication unit capable of fixing ships and then died. Once was a coincidence. Twice was the start of a pattern.
She was being kept here.
We need to leave.
Hysteria subroutine disabled.
We need to go.
But not just yet. Her fist clenched helplessly. What she really needed to do—she needed to get all the research this facility had on Reapers. Weaknesses. Strengths. Capabilities. On the closed server in the section reserved for studying cyber warfare, malignant research materials, and aggressive technology.
Like Reaper artifacts.
[Rebecca] hesitated for a short moment. Her eyes continued staring up, tracking the worn grooves in the metal. She had marked that place as Avoid At All Costs for a reason. A sub-project hovering in the back of her mind, a way to destroy the artifacts or disable them. Another way to get the information without costing lives. Where else? Who knows? But she needed more ti—there was no time.
Fear subroutine disabled.
And no time like the present.
R6 came back out through the hole unsteadily, banging against the side and spinning out into open air furiously whistling. She locked "eyes" with it, blue cybernetic reflection. The drone turned, showing off its new scuff mark.
"Sorry."
It burbled.
"Go back to the ship."
She got up, brushing off dust and rubble from the white long overcoat as R6 wandered away, bleeping. She ran an idle hand through her hair, able to feel the radiating heat it absorbed from the neural hub in her skull. She drummed fingers against her scalp, pulled up a map of the facility and plotted out her course. There should be a secondary elevator on that side, only went up and down a few floors, she'd have to see if it was still operational.
Direct download? If there were any fifty thousand year old computer viruses on that server, she didn't want them. Grab data cube. Avoid the observational rooms unless she couldn't, ah, she'd have to pass at least three. She ran a cost/benefit analysis on suiting up. If it hacked her brain, that would be bad (worse). If it didn't, well, there was still the very real possibility of more Collectors.
Bring a gun.
She took a few steps, pondering.
It really was easier like this, wasn't it? No fear response, no panic. She had to abuse this.
Her next three steps were hesitant, but then they soon evened out with purpose. She hit the open lift, sending threads of thought out for updates. Aegis was in the middle of transferring his matrix. Vigil was duplicating his memory and Veto…
There is a shortage of refined eezo within this facility. I must be creative.
[Rebecca] smiled weakly as the platform began to move. Creative?
Flying mines are an inefficient use of resources.
Sorry to hear that.
Do not be, [Rebecca]. The projected kill count for jumping mines is comparable.
She didn't have to ask to know what the VI had in mind for them. If Veto had gotten anything from her, it was the reluctant admiration of how annoying Geth stalkers were. They stick to the walls, jam sensors and targeting and when they explode, spray incendiary shrapnel everywhere.
And they make me laugh, Veto admitted cheerfully. This facility has an extraordinary chokepoint.
Remembering the long corridor with nothing but pods and force fields, and just wide enough for the notoriously atrocious Mako steering, she had to suppress a smirk. Almost doesn't seem fair.
You did not program me with an adherence to the concept of 'fairness.'
No, she sent back, almost viciously. Saren was not getting to the Conduit. I did not.
The lifts moved faster than the elevators. A lot faster. Within a couple of seconds it was pulling up to the upper balcony floor, the quiet sparking of live wires from the destroyed control panel nearly drowned out by the grate pulling open.
Seconds.
Turning the elevator on her ship into a lift was now one of R6's top priorities, even if she had to install a goddamn crank.
The walk back took exactly two minutes, twelve seconds. She darted into the room and snagged the pistol off the table, flinching minutely as it connected. She was never going to get used to that. Never ever. It looked more like a miniature organic hand cannon, with the no trigger design and liquid heat sink. Nothing she'd be doing fancy tricks with, but not having to deal with the ridiculousness that was thermal clips, ever, was a decent trade off.
Vigil moved one of the antennas of the hard suit, watching her head back out the door.
I Would Advise Caution.
Her reply was just this side of bland. As would I.
The server was up a few levels, near the top of the complex. Past the armory, up a ramp and hack access to the secondary elevator. It worked grudgingly, the red line separating the doors fading slowly. It rumbled up on a diagonal track and opened to a long corridor. She swallowed air. Get in, get the data, get out. And began to walk.
Intellectually, she knew nothing was different. The walls she trailed a hand on were still the stone-like metal alloy used everywhere else. The lights were the exact same shade of white-blue, the intensity variation was negligible. It was just a corridor, just a room. She knew this.
But her footsteps were too quiet. They didn't sound right, muted. The lights left shadows. Her fingers seemed to catch, the microprocessors in the tips tracing strange patterns, movement in the metal. Every diagnostic she ran told her she was imagining things.
Functions normal.
She didn't realize it was possible for her to 'imagine' things anymore.
Perhaps it still wasn't.
Functions normal.
It was strange, feeling the unease without the fear. Her breaths came out loud and she considered just stopping, but then all she'd be left with were her own footsteps. The wall underneath her hand twisted. Her mind whispered.
Functions normal.
The first observation room was empty.
There was an analysis grid behind a window of clear ceramic chipped from the outside, three fingered robotic arms hanging limp and broken. A tray with a few shining pieces of metal at the bottom had the place of honor. She raised an eyebrow, decided she couldn't be bothered to reference the project and moved on.
The second room was not empty.
The ones who brought Belan Outpost to its knees. Indoctrinated. She found them.
Contorted skeletons, half crumbling and rotted packed into the room, stacked on top of each other as if they had just laid down to die. Maybe that's exactly what they did. Corpses writhed in agony, dozens of crooked hands stretched out in worship. The artifact lay in the center. Swollen, twisted, a shade of black that ate light and the surface rippled. A reaching tendril. A quiet whisper. A screaming face.
Functions normal.
Walk away.
Walk away now.
There was a muffled thump.
She didn't look into the third room.
[Rebecca] slipped into the server room, pulling the Prothean data cube from her pocket. A gently curving red line made its way from the bottom corner up as she rubbed it with her thumb. Get in, get the data, get out. Get in, get the data, get out.
The sense of unease was getting stronger.
fͩͦ̏̌̄̓͑̑̔̑̑̂̋̊̔҉̡̧̡̣̞̜̜̺̰̱̝̝͎̳̪̟̞̱͎̩̝͜ũ̓̈̾͛̈͒̄ͧͨ͆ͤ͗̉͑̇̀͏̷҉̱̝͉͉͈n̷̢̧͇͔̬̙͙͕͓͚̓̄͌̄̄ͨͯͤ̇ͦͤ͌̚̚͞͝ͅc̷͓̭̘̺͖͆͑̒̎ͬ̚t̵͕̯̱̯͍ͩ̀̄̒ͯ̾̔ͪ͂͗̀̑̀͊̌ͣ̌͟į̈́͋̀̍҉̨̼̪̙͓̻̫̣͓̻͉̦̯̮͚̬ö́ͬ̇͂̂ͣ͐̓̀̿͏̶̢̛̤̮̙̥̮̫̻̘̤̼͇n̛͖̟̮̩̟̰̲̘͍̻ͥ̾̂ͯ̉ͦ͒ͤ̿̽͂̎͛ͭͭͭͨ͘͘ͅs͊ͯ̃͗̃̀̃͐ͩͬ̌ͬ͒̊̽̑̽͊͟͏̴̧͏̝̩̤͖̺̤̫̪͎̳̤̖̥͕̺͈ ̨͔̣͕̻̲̬̭͖̫̲̖̣̖̜̘̒ͨ́̂͂̇͋̓̐ͥ̈͆́͘n̡̛̤͖̱̥̻̜̬̳͉̿ͮ̂ͨ͋͑̌̉̑͂́̿̀ͅǫ̴̤̤͙͂͌̄͊͐r̨̆ͤͭ̄̀͏͇͇̖̲̬̰m̜̙̬̺̰̬̯̼͉̲͕̤͑ͮ́̾ͭ̋̆͑͜͟͠ą̡͉̰̼̠͎̱̝̥̙̍̒̐̋ͤ̚͠͝ͅľ̴̾̋̓̿̽̉̈ͣ̆̈́ͫͬ͊͒͌̄̔ͪ҉̵̯̹̻̗̙̺͙̖̙̣̗͇̖̺͕̮͕͓̯
She logged in to the terminal with Ibdali Karad's information. She navigated the files, half wishing she was plugged in directly. The pistol hanging from her wrist was uncomfortable and the server was a wealth of information. How they dealt with the Zha'til, the uploaded organic intelligences that formed mechanical swarms, if they ever ran across Dragon's Teeth and its husks, their studies of Reapers that was surprisingly thorough—
[Rebecca] froze.
The gravitational anomaly of a star led the Protheans to what they called the "find of millennia." Belan Outpost's "key to victory." The promise of a ship greater than anything they had ever built. A derelict Reaper, trapped within the gravity well of a brown dwarf. They studied its power source, its mass effect drive. The metallurgy of the hull, the mechanics of its weapons. They took home a prize.
A piece of its mind.
And they tore it apart.
The entire project was under only one label: Vanguard.
[Rebecca] blinked, once.
And a doctored program fed her a memory of a signal from dark space.
The images flashed by, almost too quick to recognize—the planet, the star, pain, crippled, couldn't move, time, years and years and years and years and years and yearsandyearsandyearsandyears, always aware, burning, the signal, the calling away again and again and again, must complete directive. Cannot. Calling out again and again and again, Eblis, Nazara ignored. Organics only presence, only company. Make them stay until they are dust. Calls still come, don't want to listen, don't want to suffer, we have no beginning.
There is no end.
Foreign algorithm detected.
The voice, when it came, boiled up from within. Distant, ancient and filled with an unfathomable hate.
ASSUMING…DIRECT…CONTROL
Scanning consciousness parameters
Resetting configurations
Scanning synaptic core
Integrity at 99.6%
Cognitive simulation engaged.
Memory Usage: 87.2%
Creating Virtual Environment
Designation: VANGUARD
Status: …
…
...
ACTIVE