A/N: This is where shit gets real, or at least literal. Warning: Things might get a bit uncomfortable or disgusting to read in parts depending on reader preference and taste. Reader discretion is advised, and if you're familiar with the Necromorphs of the Dead Space series you'll know why.
Jack made his way to the stairwell that Tali claimed the Patriarch was coming down. He didn't want the Krogan they were supposed to liberate to get killed or lost. He knew that Tali and Kasumi were watching over him in the club's systems, but he couldn't stand still. The power he had drained from the Replicas and soldiers was still buzzing inside him, yearning to lash out. He was used to fighting and kill from the experiments, but he had never been one to look forwards to fights. It made him worried, about the cost of the powers that Nazara had granted. Would he end up like Alma? That thought actually made him pause.
Sure she had trouble relating with or caring about people, but she was able to function nonviolently in public. Granted, it would have ended up in a bloodbath if he hadn't been with her to calm her down and keep her under control, but she wasn't exactly looking for fights, just nervous. She was remarkably well adjusted given the psychic powers, evil voices and exploitative experimentation. Perhaps he didn't have as much to worry about as he thought?
He reached the door and aimed his new rifle, which Kasumi had found on a dead soldier and hacked for him, through the doorway and into the stairwell. He heard gunfire and roars echoing from above, and, worryingly, from below. It wasn't just that there was fighting below since that was were Saren, Zaeed and Alma were, but the sounds of fighting seemed to come from below where the auction had been held until it was interrupted. Then again, it could be one of Saren's other teams breaching the facility. Still, it made Jack uncomfortable. He could feel wrongness in the air, and he didn't like it one bit.
He decided to investigate the feeling, it was something psionic, as verified by Alma earlier, so perhaps he could learn something about it now that it was getting stronger or nearer. He closed his eyes and felt out the sickly wrongness that permeating the air around him. Reaching out with his mind he could feel it slowly grown in strength away from the door and back into the club's main floor, as well as slight increases in strength up and down the stairs, yet while present around him it was not as strong. He frowned and decided to try and trace the presence within the main floor because that would likely be safer than tracing it elsewhere, and additionally it would leave Kasumi and Tali vulnerable to whatever it was. He slowly stepped away from the doorway to the stairs and walked back towards the dance floor, testing the area with his mind. As he reached out, he felt the presence grow stronger in clumps and clusters. Most of them were small and scattered around the club seemingly indiscriminately, but others were larger, and he quickly recognized the shapes those concentrations took; they were bodies.
He opened his eyes and pointed his rifle at nearest such body, before concentrating again on his psionic senses. Whatever the presence was, it was definitely inside the dead body, and as he looked more closely, he realized that the presence was shifting inside the armor, out of sight. He focused on that movement and suddenly his concentration broke in surprise.
"It's doing something to the bodies!" he exclaimed, drawing Kasumi and Tali's attention.
"What!?" Tali cried out in fear and confusion.
"The weirdness Alma mentioned earlier," Jakc explained. "It's manipulating the bodies, the blood, everything dead here. I can feel it doing something to rearrange the insides of the bodies around us."
"I think we know what caused the city-wide emergency," Kasumi said in a slightly hollow voice as Tali started hyperventilating, or at least trying too, in her suit.
"Right, screw the mission, let's get out of here," Jack said. "I don't want to stick around here to find out what this stuff is doing to the corpses." He frowned and concentrated, and realized that the stuff was clinging to him now as well, and the outside of Kasumi and Tali's armors. He concentrated on the stuff around him, channeling the burning power he had started to accumulate with every person drained. He managed to scour the stuff off of him and his rather cheap hard suit, before focusing on Kasumi.
"Yeah, I want to get out here too, but we still have to get past that army outside, and having Saren on board will make that much easier for us," Kasumi replied. She then noticed that Jack was concentrating on something, and felt a slight tingling running across her body. "What are you doing?" she asked him.
"This stuff is on us too," Jack explained. "I'm getting it off us all, in case it can do anything to living people as well. I'd rather not find out."
"Fair enough." Kasumi turned to Tali. "Come on Tali, let's gather together. If something happens we'll be able to cover each other from whatever's happening more easily." She then spoke to Zaeed across the comms. "Zaeed, watch the dead, somehting's messing with them. Whatever you're doing down there, wrap it up ASAP."
Tali nodded and quickly moved from behind the bar towards them. "Let's get out of here."
Zaeed's voice crackled over the comm as somehting caused interference to be picked up. "Understood, we're securing the artifact. Saren is severely injured and Alma is unconscious but otherwise healthy. Rappel down once you have Patriarch and we'll find a way out through a lower level."
"Confirmed, Zaeed, we'll hold out up here a while longer," Kasumi replied as she fingered the triggers of her SMG and waited for Tali to come over.
As she briskly walked across the ruined club floor, she tripped and screamed in fear, lashing out with her legs and flailing as she fell on one of the bodies. Jack and Kasumi sprinted over, seeing her flailing. "What's going on?" Jack cried out.
"I grabbed! It grabbed me! Get it off!" Tali shrieked as she tried to kick herself free of the dead body's grip, which was surprisingly tenacious for someone who had literally lost their head earlier.
Kasumi snapped up her SMG as sent out quick bursts into the damaged armor of the moving corpse's arm, tearing through ceramic plating and formerly dead tissue. This weakened its grip enough for Tali to kick free and spring to her feet, practically leaping across the battlefield to get over too her teammates. "Keelah," she said, gasping for breath. "What was that?"
"If I had to guess," Kasumi said, "I'd say someone in Umbrella did something even stupider than normal."
"What?" Jack asked.
Kasumi looked at him for am moment before nodding to herself. "Right, psychic lab rat. Jack bristled but Kasumi continued without heeding his anger. "The Umbrella Group gets up to a lot of things, and their sub-company the Umbrella Defense Technology Corporation, gets up to all sorts of weird and terrible things, like working with the UAC to harness ancient psionic artifacts to make teleporters or trying to weaponized all sorts crazy things. Some sort of weird psionic thing that turns people into zombies? Sounds like its either Umbrella or Armacham, but it doesn't really make sense for Armacham to try that sort of thing if it would get loose in a space station this big, especially if they're in deep with its ruler already."
Jack turned away from Kasumi and started looking around the room cautiously for movement from the seemingly dead. "Could it have accidently gotten loose?" he finally asked.
"Tali?" Kasumi asked, forwarding the question to her.
"Umm….probably not," Tali finally said, holding her shotgun defensively before her as she frantically looked around at the wrecked club. "I didn't release it, and I didn't see anything in the system indicative of it. I don't think Armacham knew about it either, they were asking what the cause of the emergency was." She was silent for a moment as she gathered herself before she cautiously stepped toward a nearby body and fired into its torso, causing it to twitch. She rapidly fired her shotgun into the body until it overheated, then she switched to her omnitool at used Incinerate on the body. "Then there's what Zaeed mentioned before. The chaos is spreading too quickly across the city. This was done intentionally, and Armacham wouldn't have any reason to do this. If they wanted you two so badly they could have just sent in waves of Replicas and drones backed up by Aria's army to wear you down. This is someone else." She turned to another body, this one with already shattered armor, and used incinerate again, causing the body to twitch as it was burned. She fired at its limbs to keep it from doing anything before it was finally and truly dead again. "We need to burn these bodies."
"Copy that," Zaeed said over the comms. "We'll clear out our position. Stick together and cover each other."
"Will do," Kasumi replied as she put away her left hand's SMG and began to follow Tali's lead of destroying and burning bodies.
Unfortunately for Jack, he didn't have an omnitool capable of Incinerate, so he instead covered the others as they went to work. "Why would Umbrella do this?" Jack finally asked.
"I'd heard that this branch was run by one of saner ones, but Umbrella's management is notorious for being on the homicidally crazy side," Kausmi said. "There's stories of more than one of them bathing in blood of Replicas and non-Replicas, and I've heard that some of their people actually tried raising some sort of ancient psychic monsters from old ruins. Then there's that clusterfuck on Akuze. They fit right in with the worse crowd here in the Terminus, but I honestly have no idea why they haven't been shut down in Alliance space." Kasumi paused to Incinerate another corpse. "I've heard rumors that Cerberus uses them as a proxy for their more dangerous experiments, so maybe that's why."
Jack frowned as he sent a burst into a corpse on the other side of the club that had decided to stand up for some reason. The burst to the chest didn't seem to affect it, so he decided to use his newly acquired skills in sharpshooting to kneecap the undead thing, sending it falling to the floor when it lost the effective use of one of its legs. It however continued crawling towards them, so Jack continued to send bursts its way to little apparent effect. Even with the rapid cooling and large heat sink of the rifle, it almost overheated before the corpse stopped trying to crawl across the dance floor towards them. "Cerberus?" he asked once he was sure none of the other corpses were getting ideas above their station.
"Secret rogue black ops group," Kasumi casually informed him. "Of course, they're not really 'secret' nowadays, but the point still stands." She set another suspicious body on fire. "They're a human group that wants what's best for us as a species on the galactic scale, so they spend their time playing the megacorps against each other and trying to keep the Council from getting around to actually doing anything about the political mess that is the border between the Citadel and the Alliance. The really neat part is how they take after their name, Cerberus, a three headed dog who guarded the underworld in Greek mythology. As I've heard it, they get up to lots of stuff with psionics and the like. Their catchphrase is 'Custodimus morti' or something like that. It means 'we guard death.'" Kasumi kicked a severed hand away from them and set it on fire as well. "They're probably at least part of the reason Umbrella gets away with this shit."
Jack nodded and glanced back at the doorway to the stairs. "So do you think they did this? Cerberus?"
"Probably not them," Kasumi said. "Like I said, Umbrella doing this all on their own is more likely. Cerberus is hardcore, and smart about it. If they wanted us dead, the city dead, or the Terminus is chaos, they'd have done something more subtle unless they deliberately wanted Umbrella to go down in flames after their responsibility for this comes out."
"If it comes out," Jack corrected.
"If I put the pieces together, lots of other people are too."
Tali turned back to them now that they had cleared a large area of corpses and asked, "But if the Terminus warlords going to starting fighting each other now that Aria's been taken down, won't Umbrella be able to get away with this in the chaos?"
"Shit," Kasumi stated. "Well, they're already on our list, so we'll get to them eventually."
"They've got it coming from a lot of people," Zaeed commented over the team comms. "But we'll make sure they get theirs."
"Good," Tali said fiercely as she incinerated a distant corpse, "I can't stand the idea of the boshtets who did this getting away with it."
"It's good to have enemies," a gravelly voice rumbled from the door to the stairs, "to know who they are so that you can draw strength from you anger to keep going and strike them down." Jack turned and saw it was a Krogan with pale-green skin, a dark blue skull plate that was almost black, and actually black, carpace-like armor splattered with the blood of a variety of species. His hands he held a large, bloody, black mace as tall as Jack and covered with blocky symbols that glowed with a familiar faint red light. "So long as you hold your anger and your hate in your heart, you can survive anything on spite alone. It is a lesson written into the blood and bones of my people."
"Patriarch, I presume?" Kasumi asked the new arrival.
The Krogan chuckled with a sound that brought to mind men and beasts chocking on their own blood as he confidently strode into the club's main floor towards them, hefting his oversized mace threateningly. "You presume correctly. And who are you?"
"Officially, we're the people here to rescue you on behalf of the Krogan people," Jack replied, tense at the unnerving feeling coming off of the old Krogan. It was very similar to the feeling he felt from Alma when she unleashed her aura or what he felt when he drew upon the burning power he now held within him.
The Krogan bared his teeth in what no one would call a smile as he approached. "And unofficially?"
"We're here at the request of Citadel Specter Saren Arterius to make sure you get out of this alive so you can kick off a galaxy wide war," Jack told him, gathering power to strike at the dangerous Krogan if the need arose without otherwise reacting, unwilling to show fear in front of this person whose very presence emanated predatory hunger and the promise of death.
The Patriarch slowed his approach and this time he showed a smile full of hunger and anticipation. "That, I can deliver. Aria told me that the Blood Pack were still around. Take me to them after I have her skull, and he'll have is war."
"Y-yes, sir," Tali stammered as she unconsciously backed away from the ancient black-clad Krogan.
Kasumi stepped forward, carefully still out of reach of the Krogan's two handed mace. "We're going to rappel down through that hole in the floor to where the others fought Aria. I think she's already dead though."
The Krogan nodded. "Understood. I'll meet you down there then." He strode through the group as they parted for him, unwilling to get in his way. He quickly made his way across the room, casually caving in the bodies of any corpses that dared move within reach of him. Once he reached the edge he simply kept walking into the air and plummeted into the hole, a loud thud returning back up shortly thereafter.
"You survived that?" Jack heard Zaeed ask form over the comms. He grunted shortly afterwards.
"How did Aria capture him?" Tali aske din a small voice.
"Probably because no one else wanted the Citadel bringing the hammer down," Kasumi suggested as she walked up the edge of the hole and planted one end of rappelling line. "He may be scary in person, but when the other guy has thousands of cruisers and frigates ready to ventilate you, it makes you reconsider your options. Even if they could hold the line against the Citadel back then, it's much easier to just lock up the guy responsible to convince them it's not worth the effort of intervening in the Terminus."
Jack walked over to her as Tali planted her own rappelling line. "I don't have that app," he told Kasumi.
"No problem," she replied, "just hold on tight."
Nodding his thanks, he wrapped his arms around her and she returned the favor with her right hand after holstering her second SMG.
Tali glanced over at them and then around the room before jumping over the edge and rappelling down to the auction room. "Ready?" Kasumi asked.
"Yes," Jack said before Kasumi pulled them both over the edge. Jack felt a spike of fear as they tumbled in the air before they jerked to a stop as the rappelling line yanked them back, causing them to swing into the demolished room of the floor directly below the club. From what Jack could tell it was a more dimly lit bar and dance floor setup, though it was now littered with wreckage and as they swung back out into the hole and started descending again he saw several soldiers back into the room through a doorway, firing at something on the other side. He had a fairly good idea of what they were shooting at.
Then they were heading down, Kasumi's kinetic barriers glowing as their swinging abruptly slowed and stopped so they could continue straight down, deeper into the club as the wrongness grew around them.
~+~B:F/M~+~
Saren hissed in pain as he pushed himself to his feet as the medigel and his regeneration implants did their work. That had been bad, worse than usually, and with what he had overheard on the comms of Zaeed's team did not improve the situation. He had wanted chaos, to throw the Terminus into war, but he still needed to get off the station alive. Not to mention that fact that if such a central trade and transportation hub were rendered unusable it would shatter the Terminus systems in a way that was not the least bit helpful for him politically. If Omega was removed from play there would be no base for aspiring warlords to attempt to reach the more distant corners of the Terminus until another was built, and with the now inevitable political fragmentation of the region that wouldn't happen for possibly hundreds of years unless the Citadel itself built one, which was not likely to happen.
He needed to bring the situation under control and punish whoever was responsible, though as Goto had pointed out, it was probably Umbrella. While they were occasionally useful, other times they were just as much trouble as the Unitologists. This time, they had overstepped their bound and now he would have to make sure that they learned their lesson.
But first, he needed to secure the artifact.
He looks over at the Patriarch, holding his psionic weapon and apparently trying to bore holes in Saren's pounding skull with his eyes.
Knowing that the old Krogan wasn't quite crazy enough to spontaneously attack him at the moment, Saren dismissed the Krogan from his thoughts and looked to where the mercenaries were clustered in a corner away from the hole in the ceiling, the ventilation shafts, and the doors. Zaeed Massani was constantly scanning the room while holding his rifle at the ready, while Jack sat against the wall with his eyes closed and the unconscious Alma next to him with on of his arms around her. He was quietly murmuring with the Quarian and Kasumi Goto who stood next to him as they looked through the club's systems using their omnitools.
"Do you have a secure way out?" Saren asked them over the comms, causing them to pause and look up.
"Yes," Kasumi replied. "We've already contacted your other two teams and given them the waypoints we'll be following so hopefully they'll rendezvous with us on the way out if they can't make it here before we get going."
"What are we waiting for?" Saren demanded.
"We're getting mover bots to get us and repair the mech and bring us the goods," Kasumi explained. "We forgot to bring it down with us and there's no way we're moving from a relatively secure location like this when we can get robots to do the heavy lifting for us."
"What about the army outside?" he asked.
"I'm keeping an eye on them," Tali replied. "They're cautious and holding back until the last of the turrets goes down, but I'm seeing signs of friendly fire. I think the psionic undead plague that Umbrella unleashed is causing problems for them too, but they've got enough weapons together to keep the situation under control for themselves. I've managed to release some more hacked drones, but there's only two turrets left and I don't think we should be trying to kill them if they'll just turn into undead."
Saren made his way over. "It will slow them down," he told her. "The armies are large enough that even if the dead are reproducing now, they'll be able to keep the situation under control for the time being."
"Tali's been seeing reports of suicides and I've seen evidence that the stuff that's doing this can affect the living, so I don't think that they're going to have an easy time with this even if we don't kill any more of them," Jack Shepard told Saren. "How much longer?" he asked Tali without moving his head.
"The mech is being moved down the elevator, so thirty seconds," she told him. "The other mover has the artifact and some other things for us to keep when we hand it over to Saren and it'll be here in twenty."
"Good," Jack said without opening his eyes or otherwise moving. "I'm sensing concentrations indicating more undead coming this way. I'm not sure if they'll hit us or not because it seems like more soldiers and Replicas are still out there, drawing their attention."
Saren flared his mandibles before contacting his two team leaders simultaneously. "Team Two, report."
"Sir, pirate resistance has dissolved, but we're engaging early stage Necromorphs. Are we rendezvousing at the exit the mercenaries indicated, sir?"
"Yes, priority is now securing the artifact and neutralizing Umbrella's threat here on Omega," Saren stated. "Team three, report."
"Sir, we have encountered pirate strongpoints and are maneuvering around them when possible so as to allow them to draw the Necromorhps' attention though we have still encountered some early stage Necromorphs. However, our current path leads us directly to the indicated exit so we will arrive there first."
"Good, Team Three. Secure our exit and await our arrival."
"Yes, sir."
Saren then switched to his personal cruiser. His escort frigate and away ship was in the Docks and with its guards would be secure against most Necromorph threats or those panicked or insane due to Umbrella's stupidity. However, his cruiser was several hundred kilometers from the station, and would be able to communicate with both the Citadel and the other ships orbiting. According to his enhanced memory, Umbrella had a significantly larger than normal fleet in position in the system, and this had drawn in large numbers of ships from all of the various factions invested in the Terminus hub, including most of the human megacorps, Eclipse, and the Batarian Hegemony. "Captain, put me through to the commander of the Batarian fleet in this system," Saren ordered, "I need to speak with him on urgent Specter business."
After a long moment her heard the typical Batarian sneer come across his comm. "What do you want, Specter?"
"Aria is dead and Umbrella has unleashed a biological weapon on the station, but I don't have the resources to impose a quarantine or stop them from getting away," Saren quickly stated. "The Citadel Council would greatly appreciate the Hegemony's assistance in containing the situation before it spreads beyond this system."
There was a long pause, during which a hovering robot with arms holding several large crates floated into the auction room while his retainers fired through the doorway in had come in from.
Eventually the Batarian admiral eventually replied with a satisfied smirk evident in his voice, "We would be happy to help keep the peace. I've sent a message to the Admiralty for reinforcements and I'm deploying marines to help provide order in this tumultuous situation. Don't worry, we'll handle this, Turian." The Batarian cut communications and Saren couldn't help but smirk. Even if he couldn't stop the situation from spiraling out of control in Omega, at least he'd make some things went his way.
Another door opened into the auction room and the humans' REV8 was carried inside by four of the cargo mover robots, which set it down next to the hole in the ceiling and its pile of rubble. Saren walked over as Shepard carried the still unconscious Wade to the powered armor. As they neared, Saren heard the Quarian exclaim, "The stupid bosh'tets have taken down the turrets and are moving in. I don't have any drones or hover cars left to use."
Shepard opened the mech and said, "Right, then we need to move now more than ever. You should stick next to the mover if you can, I'll lead the way with the mech. Can you take her on the mover with you?"
"Sure," the Quarian replied. "There's room on the back where I'll keep the two of us."
"And we'll cover them," Goto told Shepard.
"Thanks," he said before handing off Wade and climbing into the REV8.
"Let's move," Massani said to all present and Saren agreed. They didn't have time to waste.
~+~B:F/M~+~
Jack was relieved that they managed to make their way through the relatively cramped corridors of the lower levels of the club quickly and without anyone being put in any serious danger. The building may have been made for Krogan, but it wasn't designed for mechs like his REV8. When they got there one of Saren's other teams was already present and the other arrived shortly thereafter. It seemed that a well-equipped and prepared group was enough to take on and survive against the undead. That was good, and he hoped they kept it up until they were all off the station.
When he moved his mech through the tight back door, he saw that they would need too.
The emergency exit opened into a short dead end alleyway which had entrances to several small shops and businesses of varying repute. The dirty street was deserted save for marks of blood, bullet holes and discarded weapons.
"Watch it out here," he told the others as he cautiously moved towards a wide open space at the exit into the street. He could see several hover cars and hover trucks in the air, several of them drifting or listing. One large truck was slowly spinning in circles at a thirty degree angle while it slowly approached a large holographic display saying: "Alert! Station Wide Emergency: Lockdown and Curfew in Effect, Biological Weapon Released"
He could hear gunfire, explosions and screams from all around through his mech's outer microphones and when he reached the entrance to the alleyway, he saw dead soldiers for the dead queen of Omega strewn across the walkway, some of them hanging partway over the edge where the railings were damaged. His stolen knowledge and his own more limited experience told him that they had seemingly been firing in every direction, and had presumably been ambushed by undead. Some of them looked like they had been torn apart by large claws, which worried him. He was sure that there were large clawed beasts for sale in Omega, but for this much carnage there must have been a great many of them. He even saw some of the large claws near particularly mangled corpses. He frowned. 'Did the undead mutate into having claws?' he wondered. 'Well, they've already demonstrated the ability to mutate and get back up, so why not?'
"I think they're growing claws," he told the other, "so be on guard, they might have other tricks as well."
"Roger," Zaeed replied. "Be ready for anything."
Jack made his way closer to the edge, indiscriminately stomping on and over the corpses.
The alley faced an open, canyon-like area where air traffic could fly through. It stretched into the distance over a thousand meters in either direction towards large sealed bulkheads where hover vehicles would normally fly through to other sections. There were at least dozen floors above him, though smoke and the angle made it hard to tell, with at least as many below, likewise obscured by smoke. The canyon itself was about sixty meters across and bridges at various points on each level by bridges. Openings and walkways lined the sides and stairs were clearly visible all along the sides, as were stalls and tables on the walkways, bridges and platforms. Holographic advertisements were prominently displayed alongside graffiti. And it was all in chaos.
Above there were definite signs of fighting, with streams of slugs and lasers streaking across the upper levels in various locations. He could see that much of the weapons fire was apparently focused on several large, bulky creatures, though he wasn't sure what exactly they were from the distance and the angle. Jack decided that he'd rather not find out what Aria's former soldiers were so intent on killing, and apparently failing so consistently against.
His current level seemed clear on his side, though it looked like several portions of the walkway had been blown away, and he could see what his acquired knowledge told him here proximity mines. It seemed that whoever had been in charge on this level had likely tried to head in through the emergency exit before being ambushed by the undead and then decided to lead a fighting retreat, blowing up terrain in order to slow the undead's advance and seeding mines to further delay and harm them. In the distance to his left he could see signs of ongoing fighting, so it appeared that some still lived on their side. On the far side there were people rioting, some of them fighting soldiers and some fighting each other, though some seemed too deformed to be normal, living people. It didn't seem that the attempt to retreat across the chasm had worked out.
Below there were yet more signs of fighting, many of the fighters attacking each other with weapons. He wasn't sure if this was because the undead used guns or if the gangs had just decided that since there was already fighting, they might as well join in on the fun. There was even a gunship sending missiles into stores several floors below them. From his position, Jack couldn't tell what the gunship was shooting at, but presumably it was important to them.
"This went to hell fast," Zaeed summarized.
Jack turned to face them. "Yeah, so what do we do now? Make our way to the Docks?"
"No," Saren replied. "we need to go to the ones that caused this, Umbrella. I've already informed the Council, the Batarians and serveral local players and they've agreed to help enforce a quarantine and shut down whatever Umbrella is doing. As it is psionic in nature, we believe that if we can disable or destroy whatever it is that they're using will end the effect or at least stop its spread."
"Then why don't we leave it to them and get out of here," Kasumi argued. "We got what we want, so let's get out of here and let someone else slog through this madness to deal with the problem. We're mercenaries and you're a Specter so we don't have any obligation to stop this, and don't pretend that you care about the people on this station. And that galaxy of war you want? If Omega goes down in flames like it is right now, everybody out here will be fighting each other just like you want. There, job done, let's go before we turn into zombies."
"Without Omega Station operational, even the biggest of the Terminus systems won't seriously concern the Citadel. It's the largest point of supply in this half of the galaxy with the largest and most extensive docks in the Terminus as well," Patriarch said. "If my city is destroyed, the Citadel will be worried about their corporations losing money if their investments are lost or destroyed, but they won't actually care enough about the chaos, content to sit on the sidelines and sell weapons to all involved. The Turian wants them scared, and he won't have that if they can't point at a king of the hill, but he doesn't want to risk someone who actually concerns him getting their hands on the station. That's why he wants to stop Umbrella himself, so that the Batarians don't have a chance to take and hold Omega, even if they're going to bleed for it."
Saren growled, but didn't deny it.
"By the way," the Patriarch said, "inviting them? Stupid idea." He walked over to a mostly intact corpse and preemptively flattened it with his mace.
"Alright, listen," Kasmui said, "how about this, we take the artifact to your ship with some of your people to make sure it gets there, and you go after Umbrella. You're tough enough to take them down; you don't need us or even want us around."
This time, Tali spoke up. "No! We are not splitting up! I've see what happens in horror vids when people split up on the monster infested space stations. They die! We stick together, we head to Docks and Saren's ship where it's safe, and there's equipment we can use."
Alma stirred from where she was leaning against Tali while they both sat on top of the mover robot. "We shouldn't stay here. It's getting worse."
"Yeah," Jack commented. "If this stuff can make corpses get up and grow giant claws in just a few minutes, I don't want to see what it does when it has time to really get going."
"All the more reason to eliminate the threat of Umbrella now," Saren said. "With the Batarians establishing quarantine around the city it won't be safe for us to leave."
"It won't be safe to stay!" Kasumi objected.
Saren looked at Jack and then Tali. "If you try to leave now you'll be condemning over a billion people on this station to death. Do all of them really deserve to die?"
"That's not fair, you can't lay this on us!" Kasumi objected again.
"No, he's right," Tali said. "If we can help save them we should."
Kasumi started to object, but was interrupted by Zaeed. "The situation is already out of control and I don't know about all of you but while I do have some affection for this shithole, I'd rather not fight through this city without grenades and low on omnigel and chemicals for incinerate. If we do this, we should restock first, we should get our loot somewhere secure, and we should make sure we're properly kitted out. Way things are going, the city's already in freefall and all rushing is going to do is recklessly endanger us."
Kasumi folded her arms and Saren nodded. Kasumi glared at Zaeed a moment longer before turning to Saren. "You're paying us double and we get our pick of your armory if you want our help in this."
Saren scowled, but nodded again. "Fine, but if we're stopping by my ship we need to hurry, come." With that, he waved them to the right of the alley that they had just come out of and along the wide thoroughfare that was now deserted, save for the dead.
AS they made their way towards the Docks, they passed crashed cars and exploded shop fronts. The sounds of gunfire grew closer and saw that several soldiers were holding out against more of the undead on the far side of a damaged bridge, using a short blocky mech for cover against several small spike throwing undead. Jack paused in his trudging to get a better look at the small ones and immediately regretted it. They were small, infants and small children of a variety of species with long spike-throwing tentacles growing out of their backs. He snarled and sent laser blasts out to incinerate the twisted corpses. He scoured the undead from that side of the bridge, drawing the attention of the beleaguered soldiers, who waved at them, though given the fact that there was a large hole in the bridge between them and Jack's group they didn't approach. Instead they must have called the gunship because as Jack continued onwards it rose to their level and began to provide supporting fire as the soldier and the mech began advancing towards the far side of the chasm.
~+~B:F/M~+~
They made their way along the thoroughfare until wreckage from a collapsed upper level completely blocked their way forward. After that they were forced to find their way through the closed streets away from the chasm. While the drop was gone, leaving behind the closed quarters that Tali was more familiar with, in this environment it only made her more nervous. She of all of them understood how easily one could move through the interiors of old space ships and space stations if properly motivated. While the ventilation was usually not large enough for more than a small child to fit through, Tali had seen the same thing Jack had across the bridge and was under no illusion that it meant they were safe with regards to ambush from ventilation. Then there were the stored, holes in the walls and side streets which allowed anything so inclined to jump out and attack. She clenched her hands tightly.
Her left arm was free so she could use her omnitool as needed, but her left arm was around the Alma, whose eyes were a fainter amber than Tali remembered seeing before and Tali was certain her skin was paler as well. She knew from Jack that the psionic plague or whatever that Umbrella had unleashed could affect people, and that Alma had exerted herself quite a bit already, so Tali was justifiably worried. Even if the girl scared Tali, she didn't want her to die, especially not if she would end up becoming one of those things. Children are precious and they let something that did that loose in a city!? Keelah se'lai, those bosh'tets that did this will pay.
Tali unclenched her hands and reassuringly squeezed Alma. "You'll be okay," she told the girl reassuringly.
Alma nodded and continued leaning against Tali.
Tali quietly sighed and used her free hand to continue looking through the city's networks and information infrastructure. Whatever the cause was, she wanted to get Alma to a proper medical as quickly as possible and have it treated. She was their most powerful psion after all, and if they wanted to save the city then they'd need everyone in as good condition as possible.
As Tali examined the feeds of the security cameras around the city, she saw that the heavily armed population of the city was managing to hold their ground in many places throughout the sections she looked at. While far too many were caught off guard and butchered by the increasingly numerous undead, there were large armed groups that managed to organize themselves and hold their ground or move through the city in relative city. It was clear that most people were gathering either in gang strongholds, the section exists leading closer to the Docks, or heading to the safety of the section's security forces. Most groups that survived long had also taken to dismembering or burning corpses that they encountered, but Tali could already tell that it was only a matter of time before the tide turned completely in favor of the undead. As she watched one feed, she saw one Batarian ganger turn on his companions with a shotgun before he was taken down by the others.
Slightly nauseous, Tali switched to another feed and saw a Salarian in the crowd by one of the section doors turn a pistol on several other panicked civilians before shooting himself in the head. Even more sickened and angry, Tali switched to another feed, one closer to their group and held onto Alma for reassurance.
In the feed she saw that a gang numbering about thirty including all of the major species of the galaxy and wearing blue armor had barricaded one of the streets ahead of their group and had taken to shooting anyone who approached and setting them on fire, including civilians. Glaring at the feed, Tali switched to another nearby one and saw a large mutated undead that could only have been a Krogan stalking through an empty bar. A bar with a door that connected to the service hallway which had a clawed Salarian undead, and which connected to the rear door of one of the stores the blue gangers had inside their barricade. Angry, Tali hacked the door at the back of the gangers' store and the abandoned bar locked open.
Both the Salarian and Krogan undead were drawn to the sudden movement, and when the gangers noticed and started exclaiming, both of the undead ran towards the head of the sounds. The Salarian one was the first through and was quickly cut down, but the Krogan one rushed through the doorway with a roar that was silent on Tali's end of the feed but which noticeably shook the glass display cases along one wall. The gangers poured fire into the undead but it charged into their ranks and tore one apart before it was set on fire by multiple Incinterates and sent to the ground.
Watching the feed, Tali realized that she had deliberately chosen to try to kill those gangers, without even knowing who they were. She started to feel guilty, before she saw one the charred corpses in the streets outside the barricade. After that she didn't feel so guilty. After that she locked open the rear doors of several other doors near the barricade, gradually shifting the attention of the undead towards the gangers.
She looked around a bit more before finding another path towards the Docks that would avoid the gangers the slowly growing swarm of undead, including the first Krogan undead which had apparently gotten back up.
"I've found us relatively clear path to the Docks, but it looks like there are Blue Suns and Blood Pack fighting nearby," Tali told them. She paused. "Actually, I'm seeing several groups of Blue Suns in our general vicinity."
"They're Umbrella's dogs," Zaeed snarled. "It makes sense they'd be involved in this somehow."
"Then we shall help the Blood Pack kill them," Patriarch declared. "They may not be sworn to the Patriarchy, but they recognize me all the same, so they will help me reclaim my rulership of this floating rock like you want so bad, Specter."
Saren spoke fropm where he walked beside the mover. "Good. The sooner this is over with, the better."
"If they're responsible for this, then those bosh'tets deserve to die," Tali declared.
The Patriarch gave another of his disturbingly grim chuckles. "I like this one, she has her own fire, without taking it from others."
Tali suddenly felt vaguely ashamed at receiving praise from someone as creepily murderous as the Patriarch.
"I do too," Alma whispered.
Tali looked down at the girl who even now scared her a little and sighed. "Thanks, Alma," she quietly replied as they continued further into the city rapidly descending into death and madness.
~+~B:F/M~+~
The soldiers loyal to Aria stormed into the Afterlife, searching for their missing queen, having heard nothing from her. As they advanced, they were ambushed by undead monsters, but their numbers and firepower allowed them to push forward with their drones and Replicas leading the way. They gradually secured the building as refugees began to trickle towards the fortress of Omega's overlady, only to find her corpse one of the undead like so many others inside the building. The commander of the late Aria's forces decided that holding position would spell the inevitable death for him and the people under his command, so he ordered what weapons, supplies and equipment that could be to be secured before they would advance slowly towards the Docks where they would be able to secure evacuation away from whatever was causing the dead to rise. With the damage that the club had sustained in the fighting, the commander wasn't confident that it could be cleared whatever biological agent was causing this.
Unfortunately for that reasonable commander, one of his subordinates saw it as a chance to secure for himself the citadel of the ruler of Omega, and as such gathered soldiers for a coup.
Unfortunately for everyone in that army and all those who sought the shelter of the Afterlife, the coup failed and the army rapidly devolved into infighting.
Throughout all of this, the Blue Suns mercenaries methodically moved through the Afterlife, turning on the soldiers that they had temporarily allied themselves with in order to gain entry. Most of them made their way through the club's lower levels following the trail of the destruction left in the wake of the male target's REV8 powered armor, but two groups split off in an effort to intercept them if they made their way towards the Docks, their most likely destination. They wouldn't engage immediately unless provoked, but they would find and trail their targets for the right opportunity.
As the city slipped into madness, the Blue Suns continued onwards, unmoved and unchanged as death surrounded them like a cloak.
~+~B:F/M~+~
A/N: So, Omega is in a bad spot, and things will only get worse for it form here. Unless things suddenly get better I suppose. That could definitely happen.
For my other stories, next I'll update Bloom of the Red Lotus, and after that I'll either do Avatar Amelia or a Leverage/Worm crossover where the Undersiders have a different boss since Worm seems like a setting where that would mesh well. I didn't put up the story where Annette Hebert up because when I started writing it, I couldn't get it to go anywhere, so I decided to focus on stories I could make go somewhere. I might also try to write a Dresden Files/Worm crossover with an OC, but I'll only post that and the Leverage crossover if I think they have potential as stories. In regards to Slash and Burn, I think I'll leave off writing it for a bit because I haven't really given the rest of the Slaughterhouse 9 the screen time they deserve as the best super heroes ever, so I want to make sure I have some good characterization for them first.
There are some other off the wall story ideas I'm considering, but they aren't at the draft or outline stage: A Kill la Kill and Dresden Files story where Harry goes to Japan with some friends, a Naruto/Fallout crossover where the 'Lone' Wanderer or the Courier take a trip across the seas to the East which has significantly transformed in the wake of the Apocalypse, and a story where Sam and Dean from Supernatural learn why you don't mess with the scary dead guy who eats souls and has a giant sword (Supernatural/Dark Souls 2). If one of these sounds more interesting than either the Worm/Leverage story or the Worm/Dresden Files story let me know.
Also, if you spot any grammatical or syntactical error, please let me know. Thank you in advance.
~+~B:F/M~+~