Hello there,
If you enjoy my stories, you can read up to 15 chapters in advance per story on my Patreon page / patreon.com/Samael61.
If you like how Shepard is a total genius badass, you should check Arrival : Ruptures to enjoy more of the same.
—
Hagalaz
The Shadow Broker's Lair
The first thing Shepard did was to shoot the Shadow Broker's shield emitter and weapon before slapping him to the other end of the room with his biotics, which turned into a sort of game where they used the yahg as an oversized biotic ball.
Beaten and tired, the Shadow Broker met his end at Liara's hand, the asari bringing down the power generator at the ceiling and annihilating the yahg entirely.
Feron was saved, and the team had nothing to do but go through the Shadow Broker's database, while Liara posed as the new broker, ordering Tela Vasir to stand down first thing.
"What the hell is this?!" Jack, who wondered what kind of dirt the Shadow Broker had on Cerberus, was going through the files when she found a dossier of her own.
One that detailed how Cerberus had kidnapped her, telling her mother that she had died while the body was beyond recognition, and taken her away.
And the doctor's name was there too, along with his location.
She was going to kill him.
"Shepard, I need a ride to Eden Prime. I am going to rip someone's heart out." Jack slammed her glowing hand on the console.
"Sure, let's just wrap up things here."
—
"Goddess, it was the salarians." Liara rubbed her head. Once again, the salarians had done something they should not have.
"What?"
"They cloned you to see if a clone could be as good as you, but upon failing, they sold the body to the Shadow Broker. Put on some armor, expose the body to the vacuum, and the Collectors could not tell it apart from the real you." She explained just how the Shadow Broker fooled the Collectors into believing he had Shepard's body.
Shepard's nostrils widened. "Salarians, huh? I guess I should have expected it." A warning to the STG was in order.
"How are you doing?" He, however, had more important matters, such as Liara, who was emotionally drained by the whole rollercoaster of action and danger.
"I am glad we rescued Feron and that the Broker is dead. I suppose I can rest now, while taking over his network." This was too valuable to just give up, and she could help Shepard prepare against the Reapers better with this much power at her disposal.
Shepard grinned. "Great, now I need a tiny favor from you."
—
Phoenix Passing
Typhon System
Aite
Leaving Liara to handle the rest of the network with Feron assisting her, Shepard ordered a course for Aite to deal with the supposedly VI breakout.
If you bought Cerberus' bullshit, of course.
A man named Gavin Archer informed them of the situation as Shepard, Garrus, and Grunt fought the geth through the base to reach the controls and retract the transmission dish to prevent the VI from uploading itself out of the planet.
The controls were hacked, however, stopping the team from retracting the dish, and they had to manually do it.
—
"Arriving at dish access." The automated system announced as they left the tram.
Garrus, who was watching ahead with his scope for danger, stood down, seeing nothing on the coast. "What do you think the Cerberus was actually doing here?"
"Something way over their heads, as usual." It was getting really repetitive with just how much Cerberus was fucking up their operations.
"Attention: Satellite broadcast window is opening soon. All uploaded data must be approved by your department supervisor."
"And there is our cue to hurry."
The geth, however, were entrenched in the dish as well, firing at them across the catwalks, but three shots at once finished them off.
The rogue VI blared a sound akin to digitalized screams before heavy weapon-carrying geth units came out of the door on the next platform, and a rocket impacted the guard railing.
"Garrus, get the door." Shepard ordered, punctuated by two laser bolts going through the headlights of two geth.
Garrus got the door open in a matter of seconds, laying cover fire. "Get in."
More geth units were waiting inside, opening fire without hesitation and with coordination only a synthetic mind could provide.
Grunt's shotgun forced the synthetics into cover, while Shepard and the krogan moved forward, and Garrus followed behind to shoot any that peeked out of cover.
A shot flew by, going through a cloaked geth that was sneaking up on Grunt. "Watch out for cloaked hostiles."
The ground level was narrow and offered too much cover for a fast cleanup, and it was time to take the high ground.
"Garrus, Grunt, up the stairs; we are hitting them from above." They moved as one, mowing the geth below while moving up to the dish.
"You need to destroy the support struts now. They have their own capacitors; try blowing them up."
Shepard exposed the capacitor, shooting it after moving away from the estimated explosion radius.
The whole dish shook, causing the team to lose their balance, while the geth were fine, firing rockets at them, almost drowning out the sound of the howling VI.
"Warning: Structural integrity of the dish has been compromised."
"Fighting on a dish we are trying to bring down? You always take us to the most interesting places."
"This is fun." Grunt charged at one of the geth with his signature warcry, slamming the synthetic to the ground.
Garrus threw a grenade right underneath the prime unit surrounded by rocket launches and pyros, causing an explosion that shook the structurally weakening dish.
The second and third capacitors were destroyed, and the dish was coming down entirely.
"Run." Shepard ordered, making for the edge of the dish to jump down to the platform leading to it.
Grunt went first, then Garrus, and finally, Shepard jumped, safely landing on safe ground.
"Hah! I love this." Grunt exclaimed, watching the giant dish go down in fire and noise.
"Over here." The annoying voice of the Cerberus researcher came as the man was running to them.
He considered shooting the man, claiming he was startled, but put it aside for now. "How bad did you screw up this time?"
"Really bad. This way, commander, I'll explain."
—
"Thank you, Commander Shepard. You bought us time, and with you here, I am sure we can contain this situation." Because if it were anyone else, Gavin would not be so sure of their odds.
"We are listening."
"This is Project Overlord. An attempt to gain influence over the geth by interfacing a human mind with a VI. The results have been… less than satisfactory." Shepard crossed his arms as the scientist downplayed the catastrophe this dumb project had caused.
"No shit, Sherlock. The human mind cannot handle the amount of sensory input a synthetic collective can expose it to." Whatever made the researchers believe otherwise, Shepard didn't know, but he would definitely send those morons back to school.
Garrus, who had just put another body in a bag, commented. "Which means your test subject went mad because of it and is trying to kill everything that hurt it."
Gavin's brother, David, had apparently volunteered for the project—knowing Cerberus, he wasn't likely told everything, if anything at all—and as Shepard said, could not handle the connection.
Now, David was in the Atlas Station under lockdown, and he had to override it from the Prometheus and Vulcan Stations.
Vulcan Station was a geothermal plant powering the entire project, while Prometheus was a crashed geth ship that Cerberus was using for the experiments.
The entire reason behind the project was to create a figurehead to control the geth, winning a possible war without casualties.
Dumbasses.
—
Shepard took Tali and Jacob to the Prometheus Station, leaving the rest of the team behind as the Hammerhead was too small.
The damn thing, unlike his MAKO, did not have a laser cannon, and the generators powering the shield protecting the geth ship also had shields.
"Jacob, drive. I am going to the roof."
"Wait, what?" Tali tried to stop him, but it was too late.
Shepard opened the hatch, using his biotics to pull himself up and activating his mag boots, standing at the top of the Hammerhead with Jacob's minigun, and opened fire on the generator shields.
The laser bolts did the Hammerhead's job in seconds, passing through the shields and tearing through the generators, though it wasn't easy with Jacob's wild driving to avoid the geth cannon.
Once the generators were gone, the ship and the cannon were left without protection, and the explosive bolts of the minigun found their new target. Shepard especially targeted the barrel, and one shot went straight inside it, and the explosion tore the cannon to scrap parts.
—
Inside the ship, there were a lot of geth units in stasis, protected with heavy shields—the perfect trap.
Of course, the laser bolts went through the shields once more, and the synthetics were neutralized without firing a single shot.
This was way easier than the cannon.
—
Vulcan Station was like a puzzle game. You had to carefully time your jumps, use the environment, and overall, be patient.
Inside the base, there were no geth, but plenty of LOKIs and a single YMIR that weren't a challenge.
Amusingly, one final LOKI unit was trying to destroy the override console to no effect, resorting to kicks when its pistol didn't produce any results. Tali shot one arm off, while Shepard shot the other, and Jacob took the legs, leaving the still-functioning unit on the ground.
The VI retreated from the LOKI after that.
—
Atlas Station
Once inside the station, the parts Gavin did not tell them about became clear. His brother was autistic and great with numbers, and they assumed his mind would be able to handle the connection.
Which failed spectacularly.
There were no enemies in the station until the team came across a particularly annoying elevator where VI, or David, had messed with the programming, making it so the elevator would not arrive unless called with a specific order.
Shepard just hacked through the system and forced the elevator up.
Once the geth cut through the door, Tali threw a device inside, which let out a whine before the geth inside were burned by the EMP.
"Nice." He complimented his girlfriend.
"Thanks."
The elevator ride was bumpy, thanks to David's out-of-control mind, and it ended when the platform slammed to the ground, rattling but not harming the team.
Shooting some stationary Geth and finding the button to shut this whole mess down, Shepard warned the team to be ready.
The VI, however, made one last attempt and hacked into Shepard's omni-tool and spread to the entire system of his armor, showing him memories of the experiments and forcing him towards a door.
The adaptive firewalls of his systems quickly overcame the intense assault, forcing the VI out, which left with a howl that rang in Shepard's ear.
"This way."
Following the trail left by the VI, Shepard managed to figure out what it was trying to do.
"Ancestors, it was trying to force you to view the virtual space and overload your mind." Tali analyzed the data from Shepard's omni-tool, fascinated that the humans had created a hybrid intelligence capable of doing something like this.
Jacob chuckled. "Wrong person to try that on."
"Get ready; if it wants to fight in virtual space, we'll fight and beat it there." And with several commands, the world turned green.
—
Through the corridors turned a synthetic horror; through the visors, Shepard and co. saw how the experiment turned David Archer mad with each passing day, from the connection merely making things loud to fully overwhelming the autistic mind, all the while David calculated square roots to protect his mind.
The geth units controlled by the hybrid intelligence attacked them at every turn, desperately trying to protect the corrupted mind in control. Whenever the units were defeated, a green flash virtualizing the link to the VI getting broken was produced.
The control center, where Shepard could see the faint outline of a human inside, was found down an elevator, and the hybrid mind tried to upload itself to his ship. The visors showed which connection point David was trying to use, and they simply severed the cables.
One last shot to the green shell, and it disappeared.
The howls they heard across the three stations finally made sense without the synthetic parts.
It was David, screaming for it to stop.
Naked and tied to the machine with cables going through his arms and inside his mouth, and forceps keeping his eyes forcibly open, the young man was stripped of his dignity, and Shepard cursed himself for not coming sooner.
"Quiet. Please, make it stop."
"Easy, David, I am here; everything will be fine."
"Wait, Commande—" Shepard heard Gavin's voice from the elevator, and biotics covered the man, stopping him dead cold.
Shepard slowly closed his open hand to a fist, and the biotic field began to crush Gavin Archer, who, unlike his brother, was unable to scream as his bones were shattered, piercing through flesh and vital organs. With one last squeeze, Gavin was turned to a sphere of flesh, blood, and bones jutting out.
"Joker, call the Grissom Academy. I need them to pick someone up."
"Help me get him down."
—
David was separated from the machines keeping him awake and tied up, passing out immediately, and was taken to the Normandy so Doctor Chakwas could look after him.
There was a somber air on the ship, having seen just what kind of a state a young man like David was reduced to.
"How is he?" Shepard asked, looking at the young man who was sleeping peacefully on the bed.
The medical report, however, was less than hopeful. "His body is on the verge of giving up. There is neurological scarring, the implants turned David's flesh to a pincushion, and I can't even begin to consider the mental trauma. You said his brother did it to him?"
"Yes."
Chakwas put down the datapad, taking out a bottle of brandy and pouring a glass for both. "Nothing could make him pay for this." Not even Shepard's brutal execution.
Draining the glass in one go, she took the datapad again. "I am keeping him sedated for now and on medication until Grissom Academy comes for pickup. He will need surgery, both for the physical trauma and the scars, but I know they will help him to the best of their abilities if David pulls through." The most important part of helping someone was that they had to want it; otherwise, it was more often than not futile.
Karin Chakwas had seen a lot in her career, but this was something new.
"Joker, open fire on the bases; I want everything gone." So no one could have any clues on how to repeat this nightmare, because somewhere, someone definitely would.
"Aye aye, Commander."
Shepard decided he hated this planet.