Chapter 1

Release

Citadel, Factory District

1 year after the Reaper War

Lieutenant Commander Ashley Williams stood crouched down behind a shipping container, hidden by the cover of the shadows. Sneaking wasn't exactly her forte, but after only a year of being a Spectre, she had learned that it had its uses.

Thankfully, the opposition she was currently facing wasn't exactly alert. She snuck a quick peek around the corner of her container and saw a group of miserable looking workers, human and alien alike, lifting large crates and moving them into a shady looking warehouse.

Overseeing them was a trio of guards dressed in dark blue armor with a white of paint drawn in artistic designs for decoration; Blue Suns, two human, one Batarian.

She ducked back behind her corner and pressed the contact button on the tactical com in her ear.

"Commander Bailey, do you read me?"

"I read you L.C, what's your status?" asked a rough elderly voice,

"The tip I got from that rat was spot on, if this isn't the Red Sand operation we're looking for, it's something just as crooked," she replied,

"Understood, do what you have to do to shut down the operation, as long as I can call the case closed, it's your call," replied the Commander.

"Copy that, call you back when it's over," just as the L.C ended her call, she heard footsteps. She whipped around just in time to see the Batarian guard coming around the corner.

His four eyes spotted her, "hey! Who the hell are-"

Before he could react she grabbed his rifle by the barrel and pulled his face into her fist. The blow staggered the mercenary long enough for her to deliver a knee to his belly, followed by an elbow to the back, causing him to fall to the ground and allow her to finish him with a boot the back of the head.

With the guard's head smashed against the pavement, Ash turned her attention to the remaining two, still chatting with each other while watching the workers.

Unholstering her M-5 Phalanx handgun from her hip, she quickly burst out from her cover and fired two shots in quick succession. Both guards caught a bullet between their eyes and died instantly. The workers immediately dropped their work, one of them dropped the box they were carrying and spilled out its contents: Red Sand.

Keeping her weapon up, she walked her way towards them.

"Please don't kill us," pleaded one of them,

"We'll see," she replied, turning to the entrance which was currently locked she asked, "can any of you get that door open?"

"Uh, I can," said one, a Turian. Ash nodded for him to do so, the Turian walked over to the door and pressed a few buttons on the electronic lock before the holographic symbol turned to an open green.

"Alright, you can all go now," she said, they quickly went, obviously not wanting to be caught in the crossfire of the inevitable fire fight.

Ashley walked up to the door, hid herself to the side, and pressed the button for open.

"Jones! What the hell was that noise, you better not be taking shots at the drones-", the man's sentence was suddenly cut off when Ashley put a bullet in the back of his knee. He screamed and would have fallen to the floor if she hadn't caught him from the back by his neck and forced him to stand up.

"What! Who the hell are you," growled the merc as she dragged him through the door.

Ashley didn't respond, instead opting to keep silent as she entered the main complex. It was a huge room, full of dozens upon dozens of crates, all most likely filled with illegal goods. It was also full of Blue Suns soldiers, a group of which immediately spotted her.

Making sure her meat shield was providing ample protection, she aimed her sidearm and opened fire. Two went down immediately, both taking two shots. The remaining three were lucky and dove for cover before returning fire.

Obviously they had no regard for their comrade's life, because his body was immediately riddled with bullets. Ashley managed to drop another soldier before dumping her human shield and rolling to cover behind a crate.

The element of surprise no longer on her side, she decided it was time to bring out the big guns. Holstering her Phalanx, she reached onto her back and brought out her Revenant Assault rifle. It was a big gun with fully automatic fire and 60 rounds of pure destruction.

The Spectre leaned out of cover and fired a quick suppressive burst. The rounds clipped one of the Suns while the other wisely ducked back down.

Another group of soldiers came down a ramp from the side to aid their allies. Ashley quickly squeezed out an expertly sustained stream of fire that tore through their incoming ranks. When she let go of the trigger, only three of the dozen that had come still remained. But that still left her with four healthy targets and one wounded.

She checked her Revenant, 20 rounds left.

The Suns returned fire and forced her to duck back.

"Keep her suppressed!" she heard one yell, "you two, flank that bitch!"

'Thanks for the heads up genius,' she thought to herself, moving to the other side of the crate she easily spotted the two flankers.

When it was safe, she popped up and sprayed them with automatic fire. Both dropped like rocks with their blood staining the ground.

Three more

Ejecting her thermal clip and slapping in a new one she took a quick peak over her cover. She saw that the remaining three were advancing on her position, the one at point was a Turian and was using what she recognized as tech armor.

No problem, she unclipped a frag grenade from her waist and tossed it perfectly at the Turian's feet.

"Oh shit!" she heard, followed by a loud explosion. Taking her chance, Ash burst out from cover to finish the survivors. The Turian had amazingly survived along with the human that had been trailing the back. The one in the middle was now a large stain and the remaining two were horribly disoriented.

She killed them both with a quick burst and moved on.

Going up the ramp that the Blue Suns reinforcements had come down, she found herself overlooking the rest of the warehouse.

Almost immediately she came under fire from the remaining mercenaries.

Ducking behind a stack of boxes, Ash put away her Revenant, exchanging it in favor of her Viper Sniper rifle. Leaning out she took quick aim and fired a few quick shots, each of which took down a hostile.

To her right she spotted a group of Suns attempting a flanking maneuver, but what really caught her attention was the Pyro in the back. A smile touched her lips as an idea came to her mind, taking careful aim she shot a round right into the Pyro's fuel tank.

The main instantly combusted into a ball of flames that rolled over the men surrounding him, taking care of the whole lot.

"God damn it she's tearing us apart! Bring in the mechs!"

Mechs?

Taking another peak out from her cover, Ash saw the remaining dozen or so Blue Suns retreat further into the maze of crates. A moment later she learned why.

A transport carrier hovering over the crates came up to the bottom of her ramp and dropped off something large and heavy, the object began to shift itself until it was finally in a more recognizable form. It was a YMIR Mech, heavy armor and a mechanical juggernaut.

"Oh boy," she muttered, these things were always a pain in the ass. But it was nothing she couldn't handle, using her Omni-tool, she switched her weapon's to use Disruptor Ammo.

Switching back to her Revenant, she burst out of cover just as the mech fired a rocket at the box of crates. The round exploded behind her, destroying the crates. As she ran, Ashley fired her weapon with the best accuracy that running could afford.

The electrically charged rounds struck the bone white machine but it still managed to turn to her and return fire. Its machine gun's rounds clipped her, but the damage was mostly absorbed by her shields, allowing her to find new cover behind a large crate.

Arming another grenade, she tossed it and landed the explosive just in front of the machine. The explosion temporarily stunned it, allowing for Ashley to pop out and spray a steady stream of bullets on the mech's central processor, or head.

Her rounds must have eventually hit home, because the robot gave a final jerk before toppling to the floor and exploding.

Breathing a harsh stream of air through her nose, Ashley moved a wayward strand of hair back into place and moved on.

( #%) (#*%&)(*#%& )#(&*%)( #*&%)(* #&%)& #)%& #%&) #%&)

Mars, Colony of New Hope

It had been only a year after the defeat of the Reapers, when the Human Spectre Shepard, had saved the entire Galaxy from a threat that many had believed to be just a fairytail. But despite all opposition and adversity, despite all the death and destruction, she had built the Crucible, she had united the races, and she had destroyed the Reapers.

Now, it was us to those that remained to rebuild from the ashes and restart. But with most of the Mass Relays still inoperable, it would be some time before the Galaxy was back to what it once was. Some of them had been repaired quickly due to being less damaged than others. Almost all planets had repaired the relays to the Citadel, but still, some worlds remained disconnected.

For this reason, Mars was used by the Alliance to house the refugees that could not remain on Earth. Thus, came the Colony of New Hope, appropriately named for being the first new colony established after the War.

As it would happen, the colony would flourish into something quite large for a place that had only been around for a little over twelve months. Even more, it would turn out that the colony had been built right above a horde of what is now known to be Reaper technology.

After experts verified that nothing in the cache was able to indoctrinate, it was cleared for studying by all races.

Of course, you cannot tell the world that you have a vault of gold and not expect thieves to try and steal it.

Alison held in her hand what she and the team had come to believe was the weapon wielded by one of the foot soldiers of the Reaper army known as a Cannibal. She had been prying into it with a set of tools ranging from a fine comb brush to a pair of tweezers, trying to figure out how it worked.

As best she could tell, the thing was to be grafted onto the soldier's arm surgically and would have been very hard to remove if could at all.

She sighed, such a fascinating piece of equipment. This was why she loved her job so much, this was why she was willing to put up with having to work 100ft beneath the surface of the planet, this was why she put up with working in these strange maze like, ribbed tunnels that the Reapers for whatever reason had decided to hide their technology in.

For the seventh time that day, she examined their surroundings. It was dark, save for the artificial light around them. But the tunnels were also humid and musty, in addition they were also incredibly large. Strangest of all, they looked like a across between something mechanical and something organic.

"Talk about commitment to your job," she said to herself,

"What was that?"

Alison turned to see her boss, Dr. Smith, standing next to her.

"Oh, nothing sir, just wondering," she replied, "this tech is just so fascinating"

"I suppose it is, I especially wonder what's behind that," she said, pointing to the object of her fascination: the vault.

The vault as it had been so cleverly named, was in essence a very large door protecting something, what they didn't know. All they did know was that the door so far had been resistant to any sort of opening method that they had tried. This involved hacking, electrical shocks, and explosives, nothing so far had been able to get the door opened.

But that was alright with Alison, because the door itself was fascinating. It was decorated with the strangest designs, what looked like the skull of something with an elongated head and a pair of vicious snappers was carved into the metal of the door. There was also something that looked akin to some sort of spider then below that was what looked like a weird pod type thing.

Most of the scientist believed it to be some sort of life stage drawing. Though Alison found it hard to believe that the reapers would be interested in something organic, after all didn't they want to destroy all that was organic?

A loud thundering sound echoed down the tunnel, dragging Alison from her thoughts.

"Ugh, did Thomas short out the laser drill again?" cried Dr. Smith, when no response came he sighed again and went up towards the source of the noise.

Alison shook her head with a small amount of amusement. That amusement was instantly banished when the sound of gunfire rattled through the tunnel.

Alison's eyes went back to the tunnel Dr. Smith came down and saw the man himself backing out of the tunnel, followed by a group of men clad in bone white armor. Dr. Smith looked like he was about to say something, whatever it was meant nothing as he was suddenly gunned down in cold blood.

Alison screamed as did many of her coworkers.

"Everybody settle down!" roared the lead man, firing his weapon into the air, "nobody does anything stupid and nobody dies!"

Everybody immediately quieted down, the men in white turned their attention to the vault. The one in charge walked right up to the door and took a moment to examine it. After a few seconds, the man's eyes finally rested on a single tile of the right side of the door.

With a small pop, his armored glove came off revealing his bare hand. Alison strained her eyes and much to her horror the man's hand was definitely not normal. It looked very much like the hand of those husks the Reapers had employed during their invasion on Earth. Pale, lifeless, and grafted with strange wire like veins.

He touched his mutated hand to a tile on the door and immediately the whole thing seemed to spring to life. The door began to slid itself out of the way with a loud groan, the tunnel itself reverberated with the motion.

If he was not wearing a helmet, it would be seen that the man was smiling. He then turned to his men and yelled, "Alright, let's move in. Delta team, stay out here and keep watch."

Four men took up position outside of the door while another four began to herd the scientists into a corner. The rest of them, a dozen or so men, entered the vault.

The inside of the vault was filled with what looked like some sort of artificial fog. In addition the ground was much more dank and carried with it a slight spongy quality to it.

"Sir!" said one of the soldiers, "I think I found something!"

The leader walked over to the soldier, to find him hovering over what looked to be like some large fleshy pod. Had he taken time to observe the Vault door more carefully, he would have seen that it resembled on of the carvings.

"What is it?" asked one soldier,

"Looks like some sort of…egg?" suggested another,

"Biological weapons?"

"It doesn't matter," said the leader, silencing his men, "pack it up and move it to the shuttle. I want everything and anything moved out of here in the next hour! It won't take long for the Alliance to notice the colony's communications system is down."

"Yes sir!" they all said,

"Uh, sir," said one wayward soldier, the leader turned to him, "I think we'll have to make multiple trips."

The whole team turned to see what the one soldier was seeing. The inside was much larger than they'd originally thought, it could have easily held a dozen Mako tanks. And spread out and covering the whole floor, were dozens upon dozens of pods.

The leader turned to two of his men, "get topside and tell them we need a couple extra bodies down here. Round up some colonists, we can use them to move these things."

"Yes sir," they both said, before jogging out.

"Ugh, nasty!" cried one of the men as he wiped some sort of viscous goo off his shoulder, "What is this crap?"

"Uh, hey, one of those pods just opened,"

"Did you touch it?"

"No! I just walked by it and-"

Their chatter was silenced when a low hiss suddenly permeated the air. All of the soldiers froze and raised their weapons.

"What was that?"

Silence hung in the air as nobody responded. For a long agonizing moment, no one moved, no one spoke, no one even breathed.

That silence was broken with a scream.

"Ahhhh! Get it off! Get it off! Get it off!" screamed one man before he was suddenly muffled,

"Hold still!" growled one of his comrades,

"There's something inside of these eggs!"

"What the hell is-AH!"

The leader himself was nearly incapacitated himself, but managed to put a few rounds in the spider before it latched onto his face. Another one jumped up at him, this time he was too slow to kill it but managed to throw up his arms to prevent it from reaching its goal.

He then quickly tossed it onto the ground and began to brutally stop on the creature till it stopped moving.

When he stopped, a sense of dread suddenly knotted his stomach as he felt some sort of presence looming over him. Slowly, he turned himself around and was confronted by a row of sharp silver teeth.

After that, there was only pain.

From outside of the vault, the screams carried all the way through the tunnels. That's when everyone knew that death had been released.