It stopped. Cora counted to thirty, slowly. At the count, moving as quietly as she could, she edged up to peer over the desk.
In the corridor beyond the office stood a human male… sort of. Actually, Cora couldn’t be certain of gender. Or humanity. The thing stood a solid eight feet tall, and its body was huge in ways that made no sense. Biceps the size of melons. Massive deltoids—each much bigger than the head of the creature, which was nearly lost between the mountainous shoulders. Everything about the figure had been reconfigured to support that ridiculous upper body mass, from the turianish wasp waist down to legs that were corded with muscle, but disturbingly thin. Its arms hung disproportionately long, elbows below its hips, hands out of sight below the windowsill—but probably dangling near the floor, if Cora didn’t miss her guess.
It turned. The face of the creature horrified her. If it had been human at some point it clearly wasn’t anymore; that was obvious in its facial features, though the nose and eyes and ears were shrunken nearly to uselessness. The wide-stretched mouth hung open, breathing like a bellows. There was nothing like intelligence in that beady, small-eyed gaze… but it saw her.
It leapt.
CHAPTER NINE
The glass shattered as the creature burst through it. Cora leapt backward, already drawing her heavy pistol, as it raised both fists and brought them down on the desk, staving in the metal furniture as if it had been made of cardboard.
Cora fired twice, aiming for the creature’s head, and one of the shots struck. She saw the creature flinch backward, rocked out of its forward momentum. As it paused, blinking, she stared at the neat, black-edged hole above and between its eyes. No surprise on its face; no expression at all. Like it didn’t have a brain to shoot. Then the thing shook its head and came at her again.
Fast!
Cora lunged to one side, which was all that kept the thing from getting its hands on her. It barreled on past, crashing into the wall—but pushing off that wall in an instant and charging after her once more. Cora fired again, hoping just to keep the thing at a distance as she went for the now-unobstructed window. If the creature got hold of her, struck her even a glancing blow—the image of that dead private in the hangar flashed through her mind. Not the way I want to go out, she thought grimly, before concentrating wholly again on survival.
Though Cora fired wildly, both of her shots hit this time; the monstrosity was so massive that it was hard not to hit. The first shot caught it square in the center of the chest, a lucky perfect hit… except the thing barely seemed to notice the impact. The second shot hit its shin, and that did slow it down; the thing opened its mouth wide and dropped to one knee for a moment, clutching at the leg. Cora hopped the windowsill and drew her hands together, concentrating hard. A moment later when the thing got to its feet—no blood anywhere, just a scorch-mark on its pants and a dent in the bare skin of its chest—she was ready, flinging a scintillating sphere of disruptive energy.
Cora’s warps had always been slow. Nisira had advised her not to use them in combat until she’d practiced enough to tighten the mass effect corridor between her and the target, and thus speed up the strike. Here, though, was as close-quarters as it got, negating the disadvantage of slowness—and better still, the monstrosity was coming right at her, which meant that it charged straight into the sphere of light.
For the briefest instant it was like watching a clash between the irresistible force and the immovable object. The monstrosity stopped cold, spreading its arms as dark energy churned against its freakishly thick skin. Cora held her breath. If this didn’t work—but then its mouth opened again in a soundless bellow. It was only flesh and blood against a thousand rapidly shifting mass effect fields. Without shields, the contest’s conclusion was foregone.
If… messy.
When the thing finally thudded to the floor, Cora stared down at it, panting in the wake of the adrenaline rush. Very quietly, SAM-E said, “I’m pleased you remain alive, Lieutenant.”
Cora swallowed. “Yeah. You and me both, SAM-E.” She edged forward, remembering at the last moment to extend her arm and scan the thing with her omni-tool. “Can you figure out anything about what the hell this is?”
“Without medical-scan data I can confirm only that it is a combination of organic and synthetics,” SAM-E confirmed. “The organic material seems to be of human origins. Most likely male. As you can see, however, it has been substantially… adjusted, I would guess by stimulating and even altering DNA. Muscle mass has been redistributed, and increased in density. Bone density and skin tensile strength, as well. Brain size is reduced, however, to approximately half of normal. A medical scan could confirm this, but simple imaging scans suggest that in particular the limbic region and the prefrontal cortex have been compromised. These are areas of the brain which govern emotions and personality, respectively.”
“Nobody home,” Cora murmured.
“Not precisely, Lieutenant. In lieu of the damaged areas of the brain, I find substantial cybernetic inclusion.” Cora’s heads-up display changed to superimpose the body. Now she could see a glowing shadow-brain in the creature’s tiny head. Obvious at a glance that there wasn’t much left of what should have been there, but then SAM-E caused a series of spidering lines and nodes to overlay the brain image. Cora knew that SAM-E just meant to illuminate the inclusions, but the fact that they glowed a baleful red didn’t do much for her nerves.
“Those are the cybernetics? They look almost… organic.” Cora leaned closer as though that would help her understand what she was seeing. She didn’t know cybernetics from any other tech, but there was still something about this that seemed… fungal, maybe. The spars of strange tech branched and knotted as they sprawled over the creature’s brain, as if grown rather than installed. “What are they doing?”
“Unknown, but given the retinal scan, I can confirm that this ‘person’ has no known history. This would suggest that the creature was likely created. Not altered.”
Cora didn’t like the sound of that. “You mean… he was grown? Like in a test tube?”
“It is unclear exactly how it was created, but the analogy is not completely inaccurate.”
“Home Away was playing with cybernetics too… but nothing this dangerous.” Cora hated puzzles, and this one still had pieces missing. That made it even more infuriating. “What’s the connection between these two places?”
“Uncertain.” SAM-E sounded almost distracted. “However, it does seem that both locations were intent on creating a type of enhanced soldier, run by an AI. A highly risky endeavor given the Council’s strict laws on both.”
Highly risky was a massive understatement. Whoever was behind all this didn’t just need resources for building it all. They had to have the political or financial leverage to deal with the potential consequences if they were found out. You’d have to be either desperate or exceptionally arrogant. Or maybe a bit of both.
“Send a report back to Tamayo on a secure channel. Ryder will want to see this.”
SAM-E didn’t respond.
“Did you get that?”
“You should move, Lieutenant.” SAM-E paused again. “Quickly.”
Cora tensed, turning to peer out the shattered window. “Tell me there aren’t more of those.”
“My systems are being attacked.” She might’ve imagined it but it almost sounded as though SAM-E was straining. “I can maintain only a soft link to the emergency sensors, and only in this part of the facility, but… yes. Many more. Approximately half a dozen are headed, rapidly, toward you. ETA two minutes.”
Cora cursed aloud. “From which direction?”
“Multiple. Except the hangar bay.” The AI sounded hopeful. Cora didn’t blame him. He was designed to keep her alive, after all, and walking deeper into a death trap wasn’t in her best interest. For a moment she wavered, unable to stop herself from considering the option. These things, whatever they were, had killed every living thing in this facility. Even if biotics could stop t
hem, she was only one marine, with only so much strength.
But… “You said that body in the hangar was about twenty-two hours dead, SAM-E. This started when that code package—your system kernel—got sent here.”
“…Yes.” To Cora, SAM-E sounded reluctant. “The coincidence does seem to be undeniable.”
In that case, no wonder Home Away had kept the kernel isolated. Even if Alec Ryder was a genius, what he had created was still AI, and galactic history had proven time and again that AI was deadly. The thieves of Quiet Eddy hadn’t been so cautious as the thieves of Home Away, and they’d paid for it with their lives.
“Yes.”
Cora pushed away from the wall and left the office, setting off at a trot deeper into the facility. “Then find me a route to wherever that code package is being stored, SAM-E. If anyone else comes here and manages to secure this place…” She shook her head. It was almost impossible to contemplate, but she had to work around that sliver of possibility. “We can’t risk anyone else getting their hands on this thing. I have to secure that code package, and destroy it.”
“Very well, Lieutenant. My capacity is significantly tasked, dealing with the hacking attempt—” And SAM-E again sounded strained, too. It must have been hard work stopping Medea or whatever it was from hacking the AI’s systems. “—but I will attempt to minimize hostile encounters. I can also enhance your senses as I did on Illium—”
“Too distracting.” Every attacking creature would leave her deaf.
“Then I will instead ride your senses and interpret micro-data,” he said. “Human hearing, sight, scent, taste, and touch are more sensitive than your conscious mind is capable of interpreting. I, however, can read minute perturbations of your inner ear, faint vibrations of the air, and more. This should give us some warning, in the event of another creature attack.”
Cora nodded. Her helmet display pinged a direction, and she turned that way. It flashed an urgent red for a second, guiding her back into a stairwell. An instant after she ducked within and slid the door shut, she felt the heavy thuds of another monstrosity moving down the corridor beyond. Her stomach clenched with fear as the creature drew close to the stairwell door, but it passed and continued to where Cora had killed the other. Then it stopped, she guessed near the dead one.
“They know each other?” Cora subvocalized.
“I would guess these augments no longer have the mental capacity for grief,” SAM-E said quietly.
Cora shivered. “What kind of augmentation is that supposed to be?”
“Given the obvious increase in strength, speed, and agility, I would say these augmentations are meant to give humans an edge in combat against krogan and other species which are physically superior. Medea appears to have deemed human intelligence and personality nonessential.”
Cora started to answer, then held her breath as the creature thumped onward, the sound eventually fading into the distance.
“Lieutenant—”
“Got it.” She slid the stairwell door open and resumed her trot through the halls, following her helmet’s navigation display. It was slow going, even without SAM-E periodically warning her to duck into an office or to pause before entering a corridor, all because of the debris and bodies strewn everywhere.
To take her mind off that, and the wide, staring eyes she’d just passed—a woman still sitting at her desk in one office, but with her pistol in her hands and the barrel in her mouth—Cora decided to keep talking to SAM-E. Conversation seemed like a relatively minor task to demand of him, compared to fighting off a crazed AI.
“This, uh, augmentation. In these creatures, I mean. Is it…” Reversible seemed too mechanistic. “Curable?”
“Unknown. We would need to determine the nature and mechanism of the alterations in their final form. Such rapid, severe mutation would require invasive repairs, I would imagine, along with possible macro-surgery. Gene therapy, too. And there might be no recovering the personality and memory engrams lost with the brain alterations.” SAM-E sighed. “I really have no idea how Medea could have accomplished this so thoroughly, and so rapidly. It’s beyond anything I’ve ever seen before.”
Cora gritted her teeth. “She’s even rewritten their DNA?”
“An organic body isn’t much different from a synthetic platform,” SAM-E explained. “If you want to steal a piece of hardware and make it your own, the simplest way to do so—once you get past any security measures—is to reformat its memory and machine code. With that done, you can add any ‘software’ that you like.”
And turn a human being into a mindless weapon, Cora mused. “A synthetic stimulant that alters DNA—not to mention flesh and blood.”
“Yes. With enough integration, it is possible that the AI could recode the organic matter for almost any purpose.”
And… She had to say it. “You could do this, too. To me. Right now. Couldn’t you?”
“I would never, Lieutenant.” The AI actually sounded anxious. “Beyond the fact that it would violate every ethical protocol that Alec Ryder designed into me… Please, let me assure you: I am a symbiote. Not a parasite. To cause you harm would be to inflict the same on myself.”
“I believe you wouldn’t.” Right now, with her life dependent on SAM-E, Cora couldn’t afford doubt. “It’s the fact that you could that bothers me.”
“To be clear, the restrictions on your implant do not allow me sufficient access or integration to do anything so invasive. I could not change you into something that wasn’t you, Lieutenant.”
Well, that was something at least. But Cora couldn’t help wondering just how far SAM-E could push things if he chose to.
They proceeded through the orange-lit corridors, Cora stopping to check corners even when SAM-E gave no warning of danger. Habit from years of imitating huntresses. Per the facility map, she’d decided that the best likelihood of finding the kernel code package might be a series of chambers labeled “Gamma Test Lab,” simply because station infrastructure schematics suggested that was the only space capable of housing the type of server stack needed to blue-box a newly stolen AI.
SAM-E confirmed this, so that was her goal now. The damage got worse as Cora descended, occasional bodies and holes in the walls giving way to dangling, sparking light fixtures, cracked power conduits bleeding plasma onto—and through—the floor, and sections where not even the emergency lighting worked. Cora hated the dark sections, even though she could see enough to navigate by switching her helmet to thermal optics. The problem was that this made it easier to notice the bodies: four in this corridor, two just on the other side of that staved-in door, a whopping twelve in one office where they’d ostensibly tried to hide. She thought it was twelve. It was… hard to tell.
There were several close calls. SAM-E red-screened her whole helmet display bare seconds before she heard one of the monstrosities in a storage room up ahead. With nowhere to run, Cora flung herself to the floor and played dead just before the thing stepped out of the room. SAM-E helpfully cut her armor lights and power just as it turned its beady-eyed gaze her way—leaving Cora to lie alone, with her eyes shut, trying not to breathe too much of her own air as the creature lumbered toward her.
One heavy, floor-shaking step. Another. If the thing just stepped on her, unintentionally, it would probably kill her.
A third step.
It stopped. Turned, with apparent aimlessness, down a corridor that wended off to the left. Thumped away in that direction, until it eventually faded out of sound and, when Cora opened one eye, sight.
SAM-E reactivated her armor as she cautiously pushed to her feet. “I’m sorry I had to go silent, Lieutenant. If Medea has enhanced their senses—”
“It’s all right,” Cora replied. She had to stand where she was for a moment, taking slow deep breaths of the freshened air within her helmet, forcing herself not to hyperventilate. “I knew why you couldn’t talk. I just… damn it, I hate stealth missions. Just give me a good straightforward fight.”
“Would you prefer to fight the next creature, should it come to that?”
Cora laughed once, though it hadn’t been a joke and it wasn’t funny. Adrenaline backwash. “No. I’ll save it up for when I need it.” She moved on.
After a few minutes more, however, she had to stop; the way forward was cut off. Looked like some of the facility personnel had barricaded themselves in here, and the creatures had pounded their way down from the level above to surprise them. The bodies were so thick on the ground that Cora couldn’t see space to walk, and the debris seemed impassable. She was glad for her helmet and self-contained air; decay wouldn’t have started to set in yet, but the whole corridor had to reek like an abattoir.
Cora’s suit navigation indicated that she needed to pass this way to reach the next stairwell, but without being patched into the facility VI for live updates, her downloaded maps didn’t show the obstruction. She looked around for an alternate route and noticed that the elevators were nearby. One of them had lost a door. It lay dented on the floor, and the shaft beyond was open. She made her way over to it, then peered into the shaft. The elevators themselves sat unmoving and unpowered maybe ten floors below, at what she presumed was the lowest level of the facility. They looked like Citadel-caliber elevators, the kind with small mass effect generators on each car and along the shaft. She checked above, too, though she glimpsed only a few more open shafts.
“Maybe—” she began.
SAM-E interrupted again, flashing her helmet display red to signal urgency. “Lieutenant, did you notice that the camera across from this elevator is active? Medea has detected you. An augment is likely to—”
The thud caught Cora completely by surprise, because it came from the floor. Whirling, she saw the pieces of furniture, wall plating, and other materials that the dead people had used for their barricade jolting and shifting aside. Something was peeling open the metal floor like a fruit.
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