The cool metal gleamed in the ship's lighting. The air conditioning systems dispersed air saturated with antiseptics throughout the infirmary ward. The sound of the last prothean's breathing was lost in the rustle of medical equipment.
The warrior was in a medically induced sleep, shuddering from a sticky nightmare that dragged him into the past. Born in war and seeing nothing but it, he returned in his sleepy dreams to that eternal battlefield, where the prize was the survival of a once mighty race.
This continued for several hours. It seemed that life was about to leave Javik, but the instruments registered a weak pulse that steadily continued to form an unstoppable rhythm of a fiery engine.
At some point, the equipment beeped, noting an increased heart rate, and the warrior woke up with a jolt. Disoriented, he jerked, falling from his steel bed onto the ribbed floor of the ward.
His lungs burned, trying to draw in the suddenly thick air. Javik didn't understand where he was. The prothean remembered only the pain and humiliation that came to him after the cryosleep. The subsequent nightmare confused him even more.
Realizing that he was not on the battlefield and that his life was not in danger, the last warrior of the fallen empire pulled himself together. He held his breath, only to exhale calmly a few moments later.
"Inhale. Exhale." Ordinary breathing exercises calmed the surge of hormones in his blood, restoring his peace of mind.
Only after fully coming to his senses did Javik begin to analyze the situation. He was clearly on a ship. Apparently, in the medical bay. The prothean did not recognize the instruments, but even a savage could have understood their medical purpose by their appearance, in his opinion.
An attempt to stand brought a pulling pain from old bruises. "It wasn't a delusion," he calmly stated, remembering the crowd of women who had beaten him. "The galaxy has become an even crazier place."
After loosening his stiff and aching body, the last warrior of the empire brought himself into relative order. He examined the room again, finding no clues as to who had patched him up, and grimaced as he ran his hands over the surfaces, hoping to get information that way. To Javik's surprise, the gift of every prothean felt nothing, not even traces of machines.
He was torn from his repeated examination by the sound of an opening door, which resisted his manipulations. With a single fluid movement, the prothean turned towards the source of the sound, assuming a defensive stance. He was no longer as helpless as he had been after cryosleep...
"As expected," Javik thought, slowly raising his hands. The muzzle of the pistol pointed at him was a rather eloquent argument for behaving cautiously.
Before him was a short humanoid in a gray jumpsuit with unfamiliar insignia.
"I haven't heard of such a species," the warrior of the empire examined the primitive humanoid female. "Asari are prettier. Skin carved as if from stone... a silicon life form? Possibly."
Seeing that Javik was not in a hurry to do anything foolish, the female extended her hand, without removing or shifting her weapon. In a dim flash, handcuffs, similar to those used against biotic species during the empire, seemed to crawl out of nowhere on her palm.
Before the prothean could be surprised, the shackles rose into the air without any biotic glow, flew a few meters, and fell at the warrior's feet.
"Either she's a very skilled biotic, or not a biotic at all and this is some kind of savage trick," he realized what they wanted from him, and Javik picked up the handcuffs, securing them under the watchful gaze of slightly glowing eyes.
As soon as the shackles snapped shut with a loud click, the humanoid relaxed almost imperceptibly, but did not lose her vigilance. With a gesture of her free hand and a movement of her eyes, she ordered the prothean to exit.
Once again mentally lamenting the primitiveness of the current cycle's races, the shard of the empire slowly left its prison. The dwarf, not intending to turn her back on the warrior, took a step back, letting the escorted prisoner pass.
Exiting the ward, the prothean looked around, barely moving his head, which was allowed by the placement of his four eyes. To his taste, the interior of the ship or void base was pleasantly ascetic. Even at first glance, everything looked practical and functional, except for the two statues on the sides...
"Not statues," he corrected himself as the two snake-like behemoths frozen on either side of the door stirred, with a barely audible creak of scales on metal.
"Females dominate this cycle," a thought flashed in his mind as he looked closer at the snakes. The presence of something resembling mammary glands, common in some species in his cycle, was discernible under the armor with the naked eye.
Only after this did the short female deign to turn her back to him, but he had no desire to attack. The presence of many hands on the snakes and a large number of weapons, for both close and long-range combat, did not add to this desire. So Javik had no choice but to follow the stone-like female. He was a helpless hostage of the situation, who could only watch and think.
The rooms... of the ship, with a layout too familiar to the prothean, were kept in white-aluminum colors, with splashes of warm-colored inserts, only emphasizing the asceticism and functionality. The slight emptiness of the compartments diluted the pomp and scale, suggesting to the prisoner that the race that built this ship was clearly not short on resources. The abundance of red banners and many obvious motivational posters, done in a style that was unusual but beautiful for the prothean, showed the patriotic mood of the crew.
The escorts themselves were a thing unto themselves. Despite their external dissimilarity, they were too similar. The warrior saw a commonality of movement, only slightly shaded by physiology, with unnatural synchronicity. This unnaturalness and silence, along with the absence of other crew members, had a suppressive effect on Javik. "A machine. The ship, they are one big, precise machine!"
The walk through the ship was short. The convoy commander stopped near another door. A device attached to her head stirred its antennas, causing the automation to awaken, opening the entrance to the room. Silently, with a gesture of her hand, she ordered the last of her kind to enter.
Another gesture, and the prisoner plopped onto a chair. A tug of invisible force made him straighten his arms. With a clatter of links, a short chain attached itself to his shackles, pulling his wrists, preventing him from lifting them high above the metal table.
Javik's legs felt the restraints, screwed to the floor, slip out with a slight hum, pulling his legs to the legs of the chair. Only after the warrior was bound and could not move freely did the convoy leave the room, clearly intended for interrogation.
Left alone, he tried to break free, tugging at the shackles, but they not only didn't yield, but also pricked him back with a weak electric shock. The warrior could only wait for his fate. As he thought, if they treated him, they wouldn't kill him. At least, not right away...
Lost in unhappy thoughts, Javik flinched when the interrogation room door opened, and the last soldier of the fallen empire very much hoped that the primitives hadn't seen this moment of weakness. Two entered the room. "Humans," the name of the race surfaced in the prothean's mind.
One looked wiry. Recalling that these primitives had facial hair on their males, the warrior identified him as a man. Clad in a gray jumpsuit with metal inserts. Even without a weapon, he projected a threat into the surrounding space, and his keen, appraising gaze revealed him to be an experienced soldier who had seen a lot.
The second entrant was a female of the same primitive species. Javik mentally shivered, meeting her gaze. Even outwardly prim, he unerringly identified her as a counter-intelligence officer...
The humans exchanged glances. As the prothean could judge by their expressions, a short, silent conversation took place between them, after which the man uttered only one word, as if reinforcing something. The language was guttural, but melodious. Even without understanding, the last of his kind felt the sharpness of the words and their extreme informativeness, which could be interpreted in various ways.
The female tilted her head to the side, as if asking her compatriot, "Are you serious?" To which the male merely nodded, confirming the soldier's guess, granting him some relief from predictability.
With a sigh, the female raised her hand and began to shake it, repeating the male's gesture. A second later, they formed figures with their fingers, at which the counter-intelligence officer merely grimaced, uttering a word with the most condescending intonation possible.
She approached the prothean, standing so he could see her, and began to deliberately and slowly roll up her uniform sleeve. Exposing her forearm, she clenched and unclenched her gloved hand. A light crimson liquid began to pour from the center of her palm, thick even in appearance, quickly absorbing the exposed white skin. After waiting for it to completely absorb the bare area, the female extended her hand to Javik so that he could touch it.
Understanding what they wanted from him, the prothean touched the limb encased in liquid, expecting a bout of discomfort that occurred when reading information, but the data stream was not only structured, but he couldn't extract anything more than a language. The female, however, grimaced, showing that the information transfer was not the most pleasant process for her.
Quickly withdrawing her hand, she joined the male, sitting on the other side of the table from Javik. After a pause, the male asked the warrior of the empire:
"Do you understand?" to which the prisoner merely nodded, not rushing to speak.
"Name, rank, unit," the human demanded.
"Javik, garrison commander, planetary defense forces," he replied dryly, trying out the new language.
"For what purpose were you placed in cryosleep?" the female chimed in.
"To survive the Harvest and take revenge!" the warrior's words held a challenge. "You don't even imagine..."
"We do," the male interrupted her coldly. "We've seen the ruins, the scoured planets, and the ghosts of other races lost in space. Moreover, even before the Harvest, the Reapers tried to manipulate us. Unsuccessfully. I'm interested..."
The warrior paused and delivered a moral blow: "And what did you expect?" his words struck like an electric shock.
"Revenge..." the prothean didn't feel confident in his assertion.
"And you seriously believed they wouldn't find you?" the female bombarded him with a question. "But they found you, and didn't finish you off because you weren't a threat."
"Lies!!!" Javik flinched in rage.
The male merely snorted at his attempts.
"You were defeated. Erased. Not a trace of your empire remains. You are its last fragment," the female delivered another blow, bringing the proud warrior to his knees, crushing him spiritually. "No one else survived."
"Moreover," the male picked up, continuing to shake Javik's soul. "Your people are hated by the races of this cycle. For their arrogance. For their consumerist attitude. For their experiments."
"We gave you the opportunity to resist..."
"You were saving your own skin. Realizing you couldn't defeat them, you decided to hide behind others. Cowards. Is that your honor?" the female plunged a knife into his pride. "And hypocrites. Didn't you say that if there was someone more capable than you, you would submit to him? But you died clinging to your prejudices."
"And without understanding anything," the male took up the task again. "You didn't even understand how, why, or why they do it. Your empire didn't even know, the Citadel isn't the only one, and the relay network is much wider. Know that you were destroyed by ancient machines, not considered a threat, simply to solve an equation that their logic could not solve. We are just an experiment without beginning or end to them."
"There are far more of them than you were shown," the female finished him off completely.
The prothean didn't know what to answer. He was broken, crushed. Javik felt that everything he heard was the truth.
"Then what do you want from me?" he found the strength to ask, the last of his kind.
"Information," was the obvious answer. "We will give you the opportunity to take revenge and help revive your species. For us, it's easy."
"In exchange for submission?" the warrior threw back with sarcasm and defiance, hinting that he was being interrogated by hypocrites just like them.
"Who needs you?" the female trampled on his pride. "You will be free to do whatever you want. For us, freedom of choice is a priority."
"Our war has not yet begun, but it is close. The count is in days. And, unlike you, we will go to the end," the male sealed it. "If necessary, we will even blow up the galaxy, but we will get to their throats..."
"Won't it break?" Miranda, a little tired, asked Shep, reinforcing her question with a mental image of everything she thought.
Although as a CERBERUS investigator she understood the necessity, and although she almost never showed emotions in front of strangers, it didn't mean she was a cold block of ice incapable of empathy.
"It's better than sparing him. We've brought him up to speed, rid him of illusions... essentially, we've already given him everything he wanted. You understand, there's no other way," the operative replied, sending his thoughts.
Shep's image in the "Collective" radiated frank fatigue, sadness, and determination.
"For some reason, they don't listen to us otherwise," the girl replied, showing a picture of the Citadel, also tired.
"But there's no need to repeat ourselves," Shep decided to cheer up his comrade a little. "Garrus took the revelation much worse. That's who had his template broken. Alright, I'm off to the comms node. Will you prepare a report for the superiors?"
The girl, who wanted to say one thing, merely nodded in response, watching her friend's back down the corridor.
"Should I book you a bed in the infirmary right away?" the ship's AI asked sarcastically, for whom the previous scene of an argument between Miranda and her friend was no secret.
"Susie, eavesdropping is not good," Miranda said helplessly. "And it won't help. You know Risa..."
"She's worried about you," the artificial intelligence replied calmly. "Besides, I am too, as I am about everyone on this ship."
"It was noticeable," she sent Susie a snippet of her memory about how close a cat's claws had come to her eye.
"We all need a guiding push sometimes," the synthetic personality commented philosophically. "Your case is not the most advanced, unlike Javik's. At least you are not held captive by your delusions and you understand. Even Garrus, who watched your lecture disguised as an interrogation, is more rigid."
"That's small comfort..."
The liquid gurgled dully, disappearing down the turian's throat. Rex, from whom the potential death row inmate had taken his mug, was about to count the bones of the impudent one, but only clicked his tongue, seeing how the drink had evaporated in one gulp.
Garrus wiped away the tears that welled up (the light cocktail was only in the krogan's understanding), grabbing a pickled cucumber from the plate. To the cheerful crunch of a snack that was disgusting to any Hierarchy native, who recognized only tomatoes among vegetables, the C-Sec officer cut through the strong aftertaste. Only after the brine had washed over his burning esophagus could he breathe.
"Listen, bone-ass, it's like you saw how much the asari maiden had before you..." the seasoned krogan began good-naturedly.
"Go to hell, comrade," the turian snapped back without any fuss, interrupting the behemoth, making him think for a moment whether it was worth breaking the bones of the descendant of proud birds and then wiping the deck with them, giving him a convenient floor cloth form factor.
But Rex was too well-mannered, and no one found out what he was thinking. So the krogan simply decided to ignore this act of sacrilege, but not forget it. The old mercenary from the turian would still have plenty of canned goods, but the aroused curiosity demanded satisfaction.
"Now I'm curious," he got closer. "What made the proud legionary of the Hierarchy and a Citadel security officer brazenly steal booze from a krogan? If it were someone younger, you wouldn't be alive by now."
"You don't understand!"
"Did the facts about the Reapers get to you that much?" Seeing how nervously Garrus jumped, Rex realized he had guessed right. "Everyone knows about that! Right, Ralph?"
Wulfhednar, who had decided to have dinner in the mess hall, growled upon hearing this and, offended, slammed his tray proudly and left. He disliked being compared to dogs, who had once betrayed people out of cowardice.
"See," Rex ignored the offense, knowing perfectly well the reasonable dog's forgiving nature, and thus, in a not very elegant way, removed the extra ears.
"So you too!" the turian flared up.
"Naturally!" the krogan enjoyed the impudent bastard's bewilderment.
"And how?!" Garrus asked, pouring all the pain of an offended soul into his question.
"Upside down," the former mercenary cut off. "What, found yourself a hysteric? What? Saw a thresher and peed your suit? Relax! They haven't even started the Harvest yet..."
"But..."
"Just relax!" Rex waved his hand. "They don't give a damn that you're running around like a madman right now! You shouldn't either. Better go get some beer from the campus, it'll calm you down."
"Maybe I should hug him?" the naga, one of two on the ship, asked, slithering into the cabin.
"Our guest needs to relax, not be strangled by your rings," the behemoth grimaced, remembering how the affectionate snake had successfully seized the moment, almost squeezing the poor krogan like a tube of paste out of excess emotion. "Besides, he doesn't hug men! Right, Garrus?"
"He's a man?!" the turian forgot about his shock, feeling more and more acutely that he had ended up in a madhouse on a walk, pointing at the naga.
"Naturally!" the hug lover didn't understand. "Can't you see? My chest is bigger!!!"
"Eggs," the mercenary corrected him, enjoying his revenge, deriving a perverse pleasure from the turian's drawn face.
"Ugh! That's rude! It's testicles!" the naga, offended in his best feelings, exclaimed, crossing all six arms on his chest.
"Okay," Garrus raised his hands in a stopping gesture. "I'm going for beer before I completely lose my mind..."
"...you know, I really want a drink right now," Shep could only reply, processing what he had heard. "It's not every day that an asari matriarch asks me to put her only daughter in prison."
"You should know that different times require radical solutions," Benezia said with a sigh. "Although I have taken your story into account, Lieutenant Colonel, it does not fundamentally change the situation. My daughter needs not only a disciplinary lesson, but also protection, which the reliable walls of your prisons provide. Compared to the republican ones, they can even be considered a boarding school. If you find it distasteful to fulfill my small request, then perhaps you can assist in obtaining political refugee status for Liara?"
"Is it that bad for you?" the human asked, massaging his temples.
"You don't imagine even a tenth," the thousand-year-old matriarch squeezed out tiredly. "Alas, over the last hundred years, my influence has weakened, not without the help of your country. No! Don't think so. I'm not offended. Many of us have seen where the snobbery of our entire race leads. The fall of all our principles from a single blow perfectly shows the erroneousness of the postulate that we are exceptional... You have taught us a good lesson, which in the long run would have benefited us, but we don't have time to wait for the current generation to change. Our world has little time left."
"Reapers," the lieutenant colonel nodded affirmatively.
"Precisely," the matriarch confirmed. "Only after climbing to the top of my society did I learn this unsightly secret. This secret will also kill me. Literally in a couple of minutes, after our conversation ends. So, I have nothing left to lose, confirming what your intelligence already knows."
"Perhaps..."
"No," Benezia shook her head. "This cannot be changed. If I could make a deal with other matriarchs, then I fear the Ghost will catch up unequivocally. Trying to renegotiate the terms will only prolong the agony. And I'll say right away, he has nothing to do with the council, it's just that my death is beneficial to all parties."
"However much I sympathize with you, but politics..." the human began, but the asari interrupted him.
"I understand, so the payment for saving my daughter will be information. There is a working, fully functional Prothean beacon on Thessia. It was the secret of all our achievements. In addition to this... when the time comes, my followers will help you act in the midst of chaos."
Shepard loosened his collar.
"Alright," he said. "That's definitely enough, but you didn't have to say it. I'm a monster, but not a child executioner."
"You are too hard on yourself, Lieutenant Colonel," the asari smiled sadly, disconnecting.
"Ugh, stupid!!!" Risa couldn't hold back.
The cat, with its tail fluffed up, jumped to the wall and hit it with its head with all its might. Feeling a false sense of relief, she hit it again and again...
"Miranda and the commander?" the asari, this time female, asked the cat affirmatively, casting a critical glance at the oil painting.
"Uh-huh! And the topic of relationships, in particular. Why are they all so stupid?!" Risa howled, who hadn't left the annoying story to chance and decided to follow Miranda...
"Move..." the snake replied with a sigh, also hitting her head against the bulkhead. "Why are the men of my species so dense?!"
"They're all like that," the cat retorted.
Both ladies sighed and simultaneously hit the bulkhead.
"Oh!" a voice, overly cheerful, exclaimed behind them. "A competition! I call dibs on breaking through the bulkhead with my head first! If not, I'll drink three barrels of beer!!! If I win, then six!!!"
Freya, who came to the noise, rammed the partition with her iron forehead with all her might, leaving a noticeable dent. The two ladies sighed again, realizing the futility of existence, and began to beat themselves with renewed vigor.
A head in a Quarian helmet, sticking out of the ventilation, slowly retracted back. To avoid trouble. Quarians and contagion are incompatible!
"...therefore, Commander, I strongly recommend giving the crew a rest," Suzie finished her speech, turning off the pre-recorded, soundless broadcast from the corridor and the company's cabin.
"Alright!" Shepard agreed without argument, already feeling his own temper boiling. "What's on the calendar?"
"Oh-oh-oh, right. Drinking without a reason is alcoholism!" the artificial personality teased the human, bringing up the calendar. "In a couple of hours, it's the autumn harvest festival. Pumpkin festivities!"
"You know that the festival of sweets and horror won't go according to plan?" Shepard said thoughtfully.
"Oh, no!" the AI exclaimed affectedly, mentally marveling at the commander's intuition.
Seeing the crew's moral burnout, the artificial intelligence decided to relieve the tension, while also having fun at the expense of the overly serious organics. Especially, according to her plan, one overly impudent pilot was supposed to get it...