The massive, reinforced steel blast doors of Research Base Aite hissed shut behind the squad, the pneumatic seals locking with a finality that vibrated through the soles of Arthur Cousland's armored boots. The immediate cessation of the howling surface winds left a heavy, oppressive silence in its wake, broken only by the hum of the Blood Dragon armor encasing Arthur's frame and the ambient, flickering lights of the reception atrium.
"Attention all personnel," a sterile, automated female voice echoed from hidden speakers embedded in the vaulted ceiling. "Please proceed to the security desk to log your arrival and submit all firearms for mandatory inspection and safekeeping. Failure to comply will result in immediate disciplinary action."
Zero let out a short, sharp laugh, the sound biting through the tension. She rested her massive shotgun over her shoulder, her dark eyes scanning the room. "I don't think anyone is coming to take our coats, Boss."
She was right. The security desk was a shattered ruin of plasteel and shattered glass. Dried pools of blood stained the polished floorboards, leading in erratic, smeared trails toward the darkness of the lower levels. Papers, datapads, and the discarded remnants of standard-issue Cerberus sidearms littered the area. There were no bodies, a fact that set Arthur's teeth on edge. Raptures typically left carnage; they did not tidy up their kills.
"Weapons hot," Arthur ordered, his voice projected through the external speakers of his silver helmet, deep and metallic. He raised his left arm, the Omni-blade emitter pulsing with a faint, dormant orange glow. "Keep tight formation. We're heading down."
They moved past the ruined security checkpoint, descending a wide, spiraling ramp that plunged deeper into the subterranean facility. The air grew colder the further they went, carrying the distinct, metallic scent of ozone and leaking coolant. Kasumi took the vanguard, her form shimmering and vanishing into optical camouflage as she scouted ahead, leaving only the faintest displacement of air in her wake. Shepard and Ash covered the rear, their movements precise and synchronized, while Arthur and Zero held the center.
As they reached the bottom of the ramp, the corridor opened into a wide staging area. Against the far wall, a bank of heavy-duty security monitors suddenly flared to life, banishing the gloom with harsh, blue light.
Arthur snapped his N7-Typhoon toward the screens, but instead of a security feed, the monitors displayed the frantic, sweat-drenched face of a human scientist. The man's lab coat was stained with grease and what looked like dried blood. He was hunched over a terminal, his eyes darting wildly toward something off-camera.
"To whoever just triggered the surface airlock... if you're Cerberus, if you're Central Command, it doesn't matter," the man gasped, his voice crackling through the degraded audio feed. "I'm Dr. Archer. I'm the lead systems architect here. I've barricaded myself in the secondary server room on the far side of the facility, but I don't know how long the blast doors will hold. There are Raptures everywhere. But they aren't acting on their own network."
Archer leaned closer to the camera, his face a mask of pure terror. "The VI... Project Overlord. It didn't just break containment. It learned. It evolved. It seized the neural routing protocols of the captive Raptures and overwrote their base programming. It's using them as a physical extension of its own code. And it's not stopping here."
Arthur narrowed his eyes beneath his red visor. "What's its objective, Doctor?"
Archer blinked, startled that the feed was two-way. "Commander? Thank the Goddess. It's trying to transmit itself. The facility houses a high-gain orbital communication dish, designed to penetrate the surface interference. The VI is aligning the dish right now. If it broadcasts its source code to any active electronic node in the world... the Ark, the Outpost, anywhere... it will infect everything. It will turn every automated defense and every networked Rapture into a coordinated hive mind under its direct control. You have to stop the transmission."
The transmission abruptly cut to static.
"Well, that puts a clock on things," Shepard noted grimly, checking the thermal clip in her heavy pistol. "Where is the dish control?"
Kasumi flickered back into the visible spectrum beside a heavy set of double doors to their right. "Terminal here says the primary control room is just through these doors. But the biometric locks are scrambled."
"Stand back," Zero purred. She didn't bother with hacking. She stepped up to the blast doors, her hands flaring with dark, violent blue biotic energy. She slammed her palms against the steel. The metal groaned, warped inward under the immense gravitational pressure, and then violently blew off its hinges, clattering into the dark room beyond.
Arthur stepped through the ruined doorway, panning his rifle across the room. It was an elevated control center, dominated by a massive glass window that looked out into a cavernous, empty silo where the communication dish was housed. The room was empty of hostiles. On the central console, a datapad was blinking persistently.
Arthur picked it up. It was an audio log from Archer, recorded hours ago. He tapped play.
*"The dish is moving. I can't stop it from the server room. If anyone finds this, the manual override is the only option. Retract the dish into the silo. The VI needs line-of-sight to the satellites to broadcast. Retract it, and the signal dies in the bedrock."*
Arthur dropped the pad and moved to the massive, physical lever on the central console marked with yellow warning tape. He gripped it, the servos in his Cerberus prosthetic whining as he threw his weight backward. The heavy lever slammed into the downward position.
Beyond the glass, the massive gears of the dish groaned. Slowly, the titanic structure began to lower into the subterranean silo.
Then, the facility shuddered.
The speakers in the control room crackled to life. Two distinct voices bled through the audio feed simultaneously, layering over one another in a horrifying duet.
"System Error. Manual override detected," the sterile, automated facility voice chimed.
Beneath it, a grinding, digital screech vibrated through the air, sounding like a chorus of dying Raptures. It was a language of static, aggression, and pure synthetic hatred.
Through the glass, the dish violently jolted to a halt. The gears screamed as they reversed direction, pushing the antenna back toward the open surface hatch.
Arthur's comms crackled. "Commander!" Archer's voice was panicked. "The VI felt that! It just severed the physical relays to the control room. It's overriding the retraction!"
"I can see that, Doctor," Arthur replied coldly. "Give me a solution."
"You have to destroy the antenna physically!" Archer yelled. "You need to get inside the dish housing. There's a subterranean tram on the lower level that connects the administrative wing to the dish silo. Take the tram, get inside, and blow the primary transmitter to hell!"
Behind them, the heavy security doors that led back to the staging area suddenly slammed shut with a deafening crash. A heavy locking mechanism engaged.
"We're boxed in," Ash reported, her sniper rifle trained on the sealed door.
"Not entirely," Shepard pointed to the opposite end of the control room. Another door hissed open, revealing a dark, descending corridor. "The VI is trying to funnel us. It wants us to play its game."
"Let's go disappoint it," Arthur said, taking the lead.
They moved swiftly down the corridor, the emergency lighting flickering erratically overhead. The dual voices continued to assault them over the PA system. The VI's unintelligible, screeching static grew louder, while the computer calmly announced, "Warning. Rapture activity detected. All non-combat personnel are to remain at their designated stations until an all-clear is given by Cerberus security."
They reached the end of the corridor, stopping before a wide, automatic door labeled *MESS HALL - TRAM ACCESS BEYOND*.
Arthur nodded to Shepard, who took position on the left flank, while Ash took the right. Arthur and Zero stood dead center. He kicked the door release.
The doors slid open, revealing a massive cafeteria. Overturned tables, shattered food dispensers, and ripped metal chairs created a maze of improvised barricades.
"Welcome to the Mess Hall," the computer voice chirped cheerfully overhead. "Today's special is egg salad."
Zero let out a loud snort, shaking her head. "Egg salad? Truly, a fate worse than death."
But the humor died instantly as the darkness within the mess hall shifted. From behind the overturned tables and from the ruined kitchens, dozens of mechanical forms rose. They were Raptures, but something was deeply wrong with them. Their glowing optical sensors and exposed neural cores, typically a vibrant, angry red, were pulsing with a sickly, luminescent green. The VI's signature.
"Contact!" Shepard barked, immediately diving behind the thick metal frame of the doorway and opening fire.
Arthur and Zero stepped directly into the threshold, becoming a unified wall of violence. The first wave was comprised entirely of Ant-class Raptures, small, scuttling machines that relied on overwhelming numbers. They poured over the barricades like a metallic flood.
Arthur's N7-Typhoon roared to life, the heavy assault rifle spitting a continuous stream of armor-piercing rounds. The high-caliber bullets tore through the Ants, shattering their green cores and sending them sparking to the floor. Beside him, Zero moved with terrifying grace. She fired her shotgun one-handed, the immense recoil absorbed effortlessly by her Nikke physiology, while her free hand hurled spheres of biotic singularity into the swarm, crushing three or four Ants at a time into floating, twisted balls of scrap.
"You know," Zero yelled over the deafening gunfire, a wicked grin spreading across her face, "this really reminds me of our Valentine's date, Boss!"
Arthur severed a leaping Ant in half with a backhand swing of his Omni-blade, the orange plasma sizzling against the metal. He chuckled, the sound dark and thrilled. "I recall taking you to the Outpost salvage zone to shoot strays, Zero. Not fighting for our lives in a Cerberus black site."
"I told you I loved live targets!" she purred, stepping forward out of cover entirely to blast another wave. "Though I expect a much better dinner than egg salad when we get home."
"Keep the chatter clear, you two!" Shepard yelled, though Arthur could hear the faint amusement in her voice. "Wave two incoming! Wallers!"
Heavy, reinforced Raptures lumbered out from the kitchen area. These Waller types projected overlapping, hexagonal energy shields that absorbed Arthur's Typhoon rounds, the bullets ricocheting harmlessly into the ceiling.
"Kasumi!" Arthur barked.
"On it, Boss!" Kasumi's voice came from the rear. She didn't fire a weapon. Instead, she raised her wrist, her Omnitool glowing blindingly bright. She executed a localized system overload. A pulse of invisible data washed over the mess hall, short-circuiting the Wallers' shield emitters. The green barriers flickered and died.
"Light 'em up!" Ash roared from the right flank, unleashing a torrent of explosive rounds from her assault rifle. The unshielded Wallers staggered and detonated under the combined firepower of Ash and Shepard, their heavy chassis collapsing into the ruined tables.
"Don't get comfortable!" Arthur warned as the facility shuddered again.
The third wave breached through the far wall of the mess hall, tearing down the plasteel paneling to reveal four Scimitar-class Raptures. They were massive, four-legged monstrosities, their broad backs mounted with multi-tube rocket cannons. Their green optical sensors locked onto the squad.
"Rockets! Cover!" Shepard screamed.
The Scimitars unleashed a volley. Arthur didn't retreat. He stepped in front of Zero, bracing his goddesium legs against the floor, and overcharged the kinetic barriers of his Blood Dragon armor. The rockets slammed into his shields, the concussive force blooming into brilliant explosions that washed over him. His shields held, flaring bright purple before failing, but the armor's thick plating absorbed the rest of the shrapnel.
"My turn," Zero snarled. She utilized a biotic charge, her body becoming a blur of blue energy as she launched herself across the mess hall, instantly closing the distance. She slammed into the lead Scimitar with the force of a freight train, her momentum shattering its front legs. Before it could recover, she shoved the barrel of her shotgun directly into its green core and pulled the trigger, blowing the machine to pieces.
Arthur charged forward to support her, his Omni-blade extending to its maximum length. He slid beneath a volley of machine-gun fire from the second Scimitar, using his prosthetic legs to propel himself upward in a gravity-defying leap. He landed squarely on the Rapture's back, driving the searing plasma blade straight down through its armor plating and into its central processing unit. The machine shrieked in that horrifying, dual-layered VI voice before going dead.
Ash and Shepard took down the third with coordinated sniper fire, blowing out its sensory arrays before disabling its weapon mounts. The final Scimitar, realizing it was outmatched, attempted to retreat toward the tram doors, its heavy legs scrambling for purchase on the slick floor.
Kasumi materialized out of thin air directly in its path. She didn't shoot. She merely pressed her glowing Omnitool against its leg joint, initiating a catastrophic feedback loop. The Rapture froze, jittered violently, and then collapsed as its internal systems fried themselves.
The mess hall fell silent, save for the crackle of burning circuitry and the heavy breathing of the squad.
Zero strolled back over to Arthur, stepping over the smoldering wreckage. She reached out, running a hand over the scorch marks on his silver chest plate. "You took a hit for me, Boss. How romantic."
Arthur deactivated his Omni-blade, letting his hand rest briefly on her waist. "I can't have my vanguard getting scratched up before we hit the main event. You good?"
"Never better," she breathed, her eyes dark and hungry.
"Area secure," Shepard reported, stepping out from behind the doorframe. She looked at the smoking remains of the green-cored Raptures. "That VI is learning our tactics. It tried to pin us with the Wallers and bombard us with the Scimitars. It's not just a virus. It's a tactician."
"Then we need to move faster than it can plan," Arthur said, turning his attention to the heavy blast doors at the far end of the cafeteria. Above them, a faded sign read *TRAM STATION - SILO ACCESS*.
He walked over and slammed his fist onto the door controls. The doors ground open, revealing a long, dark tunnel and the sleek, bullet-shaped chassis of the subterranean tram waiting silently on the tracks. The green emergency lights flickering inside the tram car made it look like the belly of a mechanical beast.
Arthur reloaded his N7-Typhoon, the heavy click echoing in the quiet station. "Alright, Shepherds. Next stop, the dish silo. Let's go pull the plug on this thing."