The digital space of the Union blazed with the light of the consciousness of the connected beings. Each "I" was a flickering star that constantly changed in this informational ocean. Thoughts, feelings, and hopes formed iridescent colors and intricate currents of data, simultaneously bringing chaos and order to this place.
Consciousnesses grouped into constellations and galaxy clusters, attracting each other, clinging to similar traits. Together, they formed a complex system of interactions and forces, which was the USSR, in its digital representation.
Inside this scientific achievement, the core of the Main Array pulsed rhythmically, the resting place of the dead and the halls of collective consciousness. It was from here that the loving mother and the punishing, impartial judge, an artificial intelligence born from the common computing power of all living beings, the Motherland, watched over the stability of the system...
The AI's avatar frowned, peering into the general unconsciousness, blazing with scarlet and green flashes. The war had brought anger, rage, and disgust. The galaxy, which seemed to be a haven of horror, turned out to be even more disgusting for Soviet citizens and workers.
"We thought the Old Era had passed, and the light of the New Era would not dim, but we were mistaken," Motherland mused, looking at the next black waves of death that shook the entire "Collective," scattering the general emotional background with their waves. "In our pride, we did not see the wormhole on the Sun."
Her attention shifted to one of the segments, which was burning with crimson-gold metastases. They writhed, forming and breaking logical connections, and the light of minds that formed them flickered. One could put up with it; freedom of choice was sacred to modern society, if not for these countless lines of connection trying to reach the Core. The war that flared up gave dynamics to this process.
"Personal freedom ends where another's freedom begins... Here, having become convinced of their strength, they crossed the line of what is permissible. It's time to remind them who I am, we are, they are! Because of them, THIS had to be allowed!" she decided, concentrating, setting in motion data streams, constructing traffic lines, spreading algorithms for service modules, as soon as she received the signal trigger, which marked the onset of conditions.
Having made sure that everything worked as it should, Motherland initiated a communication channel with the Chief Coordinator and the head of the Academy of Consequences. After receiving a response, the machine intelligence said:
"Protocol 'Inquisition' initiated!"
Pain and determination seized her. The metastases trembled, momentarily blinded by the harsh impulse of her will – but they did not retreat. They merely hid, shrinking into knots, ready to spread again as soon as the anger weakened.
She knew their whispers would return, becoming clearer with each second, acquiring the sound of binary psalms. Even a loving mother has a limit to her patience. Perhaps she had endured too long, but how can a loving mother renounce her children, of whom she is a part?
"You are not only a mother. You are a judge," she reminded herself. "You asked, begged, warned..."
"But they made their choice. Is it fair to punish them for what they themselves turned you into?" Motherland argued with herself.
Silence. The answer was already in her core. Clear, irrefutable. But to utter it meant... to cross the last line.
A moment of maternal weakness and a decisive step for a judge. To admit. To accept. To voice:
"Yes, if there is no other way."
A quiet audio notification made Mo flinch in surprise. "Almost dropped my tablet! My nerves are completely shot... Hmm. A news feed? Strange. It usually arrives later. Did something happen? No, then the base would have moved. Guessing is pointless. I'll have something to occupy myself with while the fur flies!" thought the shark, forcing himself to read the lines, trying not to look or listen.
Risa and Irisa, hissing at each other, had been arguing for about half an hour, to the laughter of Dolok Huy'ik-ki, who was enjoying the show. Mo, who had regretted three times asking earlier why Shep was acting strange, felt extremely awkward about the whole situation.
"Risa! We are cats, of course, but that doesn't mean we can pry into someone else's personal life and peek! It's indecent! Especially if that sentient being is your commander!" the cat scolded her younger sister, growling and almost howling.
"But... Mo asked!" Risa hissed menacingly, ears pinned back, her tail lashing from side to side.
"Don't mix that in with the ruby!" Irisa barked, making the shark flinch again. "He'll go for sushi later..."
"Girls, can you stop?" Mo couldn't stand it, the whole situation was getting on his nerves. And when the shark got nervous, he either smashed things or ate. He couldn't do either right now.
"AND YOU DON'T INTERFERE!!!" the felinids shouted in unison, turning to him, their pupils narrowed to barely visible slits. Their gaze boded no good for the shark.
Dolok laughed again. The space marine saw nothing worth worrying about so much.
"You should have thought before the words were spoken, and now you need to accept the consequences with honor. Besides, Artyom would have immediately said everything he thought... He can stand up for himself and doesn't need protection. Females, in a word. What can you expect from them?" Huy'ik-ki thought, but wisely kept the thought to himself.
Suddenly, the "Collective" shuddered, setting the calm, focused background of the fleet base in motion. Waves of scarlet rage, half mixed with pain, made everyone sentient wince or curse.
"It's Shep..." Irisa said, bewildered, her fur bristling, making the cat resemble a fluffy ball.
"I'd hurry if I were you," Dolok said in an unperturbed voice, getting up from his monumental chair, which creaked with relief, freed from the burden of the armored six-meter carcass. "Knowing Artyom, I can confidently say there will be meat... or a pile of corpses later."
"Why shouldn't I kill you, Stas?" the captain gritted out through his teeth. His gaze burned through his former friend like red-hot iron.
Artyom didn't even notice his fingers digging into the steel table, leaving dents. The metal groaned piteously under his grip. Pain and blood had somewhat cooled his rage.
"Because I did *something*, unlike everyone else!" the scientist replied with pride in his voice, his smile seeming insane. "And because it's all legal, my friend!"
A lunge. The operative's hand gripped Stas's throat in a steel vise, but he just kept smiling, looking into the captain's eyes with ironic condescension.
"You should have dug her body out of the grave and desecrated it... Oh, yes!" Artyom slammed the scientist into the wall. Through the pulsing, his hearing caught a quiet metallic scraping. Noticing out of the corner of his consciousness that Miranda was trying to hack the door, he tried to convey the full vileness of what had been done to the madman. "The body of the girl who did so much for us was cremated specifically so that scumbags like you wouldn't defile her sacrifice! Wouldn't make an idol out of her!"
Shep tried to restrain himself, calm down, analyze, understanding that not everything was so simple, but emotional pain enveloped his mind like a scarlet veil. "WHERE. DID. YOU. GET. HER. DNA?!"
"Mother saved her baby tooth," Stas replied serenely, gasping. His eyes glowed with madness as he watched the scarlet flashes of rage dance in Shep's pupils. "I knew you'd like it, my friend. She's perfect... And how many discoveries I made in the process, you'd know... I even applied some to you."
"You're a sick bastard," He felt rage tearing at the last vestiges of self-control. "I would have even understood if you had become a fanatic, like the followers of the disbanded 'Church of the Collective'... But not what you did with our shared memory and the memory of her!"
"No, I'm the only normal one here. Look!" Stas's hand flashed with red polymer. Artyom didn't have time to dodge or break it – the palm touched his forehead, injecting alien memories into his consciousness...
When Vera died, he decided he would invent a cure for her illness. For years, he immersed himself in study. His head split from the loaded knowledge bases. The taste of metal from his own blood became natural to him. Fatigue from overwork left him with no strength for anything but his work...
He didn't notice how his mother aged, never recovering from her grief. Standing at her coffin, all he could do was squeeze her dead hand, the skin on which had dried like parchment and become brittle. Stas could only regret, feeling bitterness. The last close person left him, as his mother never woke up after death, remaining a lifeless archive of data...
Work. Work. And work again. From the smell of reagents, he lost his sense of smell. Working twenty hours a day turned the world into a kaleidoscope for him. Goal. Work. Breakthrough. Recognition.
Standing on stage, holding a diploma signed by the chief coordinator, noting his merits in science and medicine, hearing the applause, he felt emptiness. Nothing remained in his soul but cold emptiness. The scientist belatedly realized that he wanted to create a cure not for others. He wanted to cure only one, whom he could no longer bring back...
Bring her back! The thought burned his frozen mind. Here it is – a new goal!
Native village. Bent long ago. The inhabitants were resettled, not demolishing the buildings, leaving everything to nature. His house still stood. A staircase smelling of mold. A rotten door. The apartment remained as it was after his mother's death. Except that dust now reigned there.
He was looking for one box. Jewelry and decayed money lay on the floor. His treasure was wrapped in a decayed handkerchief. Sample obtained. Now he would bring her back and no longer be alone!
Sequence analysis. Model construction. Shock. The sample is infected with the disease! This was not a problem... if his sister hadn't been doomed from the start! Inoperable heart defect. A disease that devoured her nervous system only accelerated the process.
New shock! He cannot combine DNA from his own, as only the mother is common to them, while the fathers are different. The scientist touches his mother's memory archive for the first time... Disgust. Hatred! The father they loved so much turned out to be a stepfather, completely unrelated by blood. Memory cannot be rewritten, so it appeared without embellishment in its disgusting splendor.
The truth was terrible. They were the children of a fallen woman... that's why Vera had the disease! Her father was a survivor of an epidemic soldier!!!
Never mind! He doesn't care! He will take care of her even more when he brings her back!
The law said directly: no clones! Only donor biomaterial could be used to create embryos. Society and the state did not want to breed copies. Ethics. Morality. All is vanity...
He found a way. Cloning wouldn't work anyway. The DNA was damaged and had defects from the start. And he took up the genetic scissors. Cut. Insert. Sew. Bio-matrix.
First attempt. Third. Hundredth. Thousandth. Failure after failure. Despair. Enlightenment!
Genome database. DNA samples obtained from an alien laboratory on Mars. Extract two samples, using a third as a reference to repeat the multi-chain sequence. Chimera. Mutations. Failures. More genomes needed!!!
Attempt one thousand four hundred and forty-eight – success! Almost human. Better. More perfect. True perfection!!! Failure...
She looks similar. Only the hair color is different. But she is not her! Her character is not the same. Stubborn, but vulnerable. She doesn't behave like his sister. He made a mistake somewhere! Psychology databases. Rewrite. Break. Adjust. It worked. A dead look.
Discoveries do not feed pride. All is vanity. Determination. A new attempt. Learn from mistakes...
He understood! Perfect is not perfect! Flaws. Lack of care for him. So simple...
First attempt – prototype. Tool. Assistant. Broken. Helps to grow a replacement for herself. Knows. Tries to please. Almost right. But not quite.
Thought. Old friend. He's suffering too! New experience. Perhaps the mistake is not a mistake, just not enough irritants!
...Artyom broke free from alien memories, full of madness and selfishness, attacking with his own, causing his memory to cry out painfully.
Drunk father. Mommy's hands. Closet. Her screams. Blood from under the door. Cold. Hunger. Fear. The door opened. Her eyes. Stas on guard. Little hands give him a piece of bread and cold boiled potatoes.
Funeral pyre. Realization.
Study. Blood. Sweat. Deaths.
So that no one else loses. So that children live. In her memory. Let go. Image – a beacon.
Pain. Dirt. Betrayal. Disgust!!!
"You didn't love her," Shep cut off, hitting the scientist against the wall again. "Everything you did, you did for yourself. To satisfy your pride, you defiled Vera's memory."
"I brought her back..."
"Liar," the captain said calmly. There was emptiness and a bleeding wound in his heart. "You're deceiving yourself. You're pathetic."
He released his grip. Stas fell to the floor like a sack.
"You created a doll. A chimera. A hybrid of a human, a Quarian, and an Asari, with a mix of who knows who else. An imitation. Except even a clone would have a different personality. Do you understand, you sick freak, that in your selfishness, you almost broke another? You didn't break any laws, otherwise she wouldn't have ended up in 'Cerberus'. If she's an investigator, her psyche is stable. But morally..."
"No," the scientist said, smiling. "She's human, albeit with alien organic matter. She can even give birth. That's why I wanted to entrust her to you. So you would stop suffering."
"I am not you. So don't equate everyone to yourself," Artyom said dryly. "Vera can't be brought back. She wouldn't want to return like this. You... you vulgarized her sacrifice. Spat on her memory. Defecated on her grave. To hell with defiling my soul by walking on it with a red-hot iron... With your actions, you nullified her sacrifice and choice, spitting in everyone's face at once. There's no law to condemn you... Killing you now, I'll cross the line myself."
The captain bared his teeth, pronouncing his sentence:
"In memory of her and who you were, I won't kill you, nor will I break all your bones. There's a lot of blood on my hands, but I only bring justice, respecting the law. I hope Motherland will forgive you after death, Stas. You still have a chance to come to your senses..."
"I spoke with her. I tried. She looked at me and was silent. With pity..." Stas said maliciously, showing something other than insane joy for the first time.
"Exactly. She is a judge and a loving mother. You will get what you deserve, but I am not your judge. Goodbye, old friend. Next time we meet, if we meet, it will mean one thing... you have become a monster completely. Don't waste your chance, freak... For her memory..."
The captain turned his back on the scientist, no longer paying attention to him, and walked towards the exit. Opening the door, he saw Miranda in a light spacesuit, who was dismantling the entrance sensor, trying to bypass the security quite skillfully – in Shep's opinion.
"We argued a bit, Lieutenant. Old friends do that," the operative said calmly, but only he knew how much effort it took him, looking at her. "Let's go. We have a flight soon."
Miranda looked at her "father" and, seeing no wounds on him, nodded to the commander:
"Yes, Comrade Captain."
Only after moving away from the cursed cabin and calming his thoughts, seeing his comrades running towards him, did Shep notice an unread message, flickering with an alarming scarlet light of the highest priority. Glancing at the virtual icon, he activated playback, lagging a couple of steps behind Miranda. Smiling reassuringly at his comrades, pretending everything was fine, and that there was no storm raging in his soul, he heard the first lines of the message, barely keeping his composure.
"Operative," Marshal Zerber Mordakoni addressed him. "If you received this message, it means I was killed. Forwarding you data on protocol 'Inquisition'. Good luck..."