Massive Disaster 5-11B

They should invest in some better music for these things.

Poor muzak aside, the elevator ride down to the Wards was a descent into its own version of alien hell to match the cosmic Heaven up top. At the very least, the tight space shared with a Krogan was a septic sensory tank

Air pressure spiked as the pristine, vanilla-scented lie of the Presidium thinned and fully gave up the ghost around Level 24. All that was left for them to take in was the humid reality of rolling ozone from mass effect fields running hot.

Hm. Zedd adjusted his aviators, the blue tint doing absolutely nothing to filter the smell.

To the right of him, a certain redhead was almost vibrating where she stood even as she barely moved at all. Despite that impossibility, the biotic managed to radiate enough kinetic frustration to power a small colony all the same. “We’re wasting time.” 

The words came out clipped as they usually did. “Saren’s halfway to the Traverse by now.”

“And we’re in an elevator, Jane.” 

To Zedd’s left, John answered the redheaded Shepard with patience he seemed to have been born with in spades. “An elevator we can’t make move faster.” Zedd didn’t look at either brother or sister as he just watched the floor indicator tick down. 

26… 27… 

“So, unless you want to jump and test the terminal velocity of a human body in a vacuum tube, little sister, we wait.”

“I could jump.”  Wrex’s grunt came from the entire back corner. Really, it was more than that, considering the krogan  took up forty percent of the available volume in the car, a mountain of red plate and scar tissue. “Be faster.”

“Be messier.” The turian chuffed back, the sound either a scoff or a laugh, as he checked the heat sink on his sniper rifle for the third time in two minutes. “C-Sec frowns on cleaning krogan mash off the transit lines.”

Mash. Simple and not so sweet, it stuck in Zedd’s brain the way a few things seemed to as he worked it over and filed it away quicker than it was said. Biological matter meeting duracrete at high velocity made simple math. Mass x Acceleration = Mash.

The doors hissed open and noise struck them full-on with force that the peace of the Presidium could never compare to. Where up-top hummed at best, the Wards screamed.

Ad drones, foot traffic, and the pounding thum-thum-thum of Batarian-inspired bass from a nearby club blasted Zedd with a chaotic, inefficient mess of data that took him a full half-second to recover from. Maybe this place isn’t that great after all.

“Clinic’s this way.” Garrus took point, long strides eating up the distance. “Keep up!”

Words taken right out of her mouth, Jane speedwalked after the turian and krogan, all five feet of her trailing angrily after the two seven-feet tall xenos. Zedd’s eye twitched, the mental image of the angry midget N7 almost enough to make Zedd snort.

However, a quick look from John had him bite it back, tired blue eyes almost pleading. “I’d ask you not to if you could help it. The height’s a sore subject.”

…fair. Zedd nodded at the other Shepard’s words and followed after the group, hands in his coat as he kept scanning the crowd. 

The Wards weren’t doing much to change his initial impression of them, even as they brought down his overall impression of the Citadel. The artificial sky, manufactured lake, and open sightlines of the Presidium didn’t do much to dissuade the idea of Heaven from anyone who had anything close to a working concept of it. If he had to put a word to it, up above was where power was shown.

The Wards made it clear where this was where power was produced. Towers climbed over each other in stacked and restacked layers, neon signs and cheap holos flickering from where they were plastered to walls. 

He looked up to see the ‘sky’? 

And wasn’t exactly disappointed — but also not surprised — to see thin strips of light filtering through metal ribs and open sky-ports. Yeah… Zedd nodded to himself. Makes sense. This was louder, closer, and hungrier than the Presidium; people moving fast, brushing past and stressing on their day-to-day without care for who saw them. From the looks of it, billions lived, ate, worked, hustled and died here.

This is definitely more real. 

Zedd clicked his tongue as they turned a corner into a lower-traffic sector, noise dropping just enough to hear the distinct sound of glass shattering.

“Contact,” Alenko’s voice was almost a whisper, but it cut through the ambient like a razor.

Zedd didn’t need the warning.

The clinic was a hole in the wall, even moreso with the front window gone. Or at least, already smashed open and ventilated by the fists of thugs.

Inside, a human woman in a white coat was backed against a reception desk, shaking as two men dressed in dull red hardsuits loomed over her; generic hitters with cheap gear and worse discipline.

“The quarian,” Voice modulated by a cheap helmet vocoder, one barked an order disguised as a question. “Where is she?”

“Hey!”

Apparently, Jane Shepard didn’t do stealth. She stood not far from the shattered window, voice projecting with the kind of command authority that probably made privates and pirates both consider wetting themselves. “Step away from the doctor.”

The thugs turned, shock clear on their faces.

“Alliance!” A pistol went up and Jane Shepard ceased to be stationary.

One second, a statue outside the window. 

The next, blue biotic light flared — a localized mass effect field reducing inertia just enough to turn the Butcher of Torfan into a living projectile — as she tore through what was left of the glass and burst into the lobby as a living blur.

The sound the impact made was less organic than it was structural as Jane Shepard slammed into the first thug with force ten women her size couldn’t manage combined. A ribacage collapsed before he could even properly scream, air forced out of his lungs in a wet wheeze before he was ragdolled into the far wall.

“Drop ’em!” John Shepard was already moving, rifle snapping up as he flowed into cover behind a wall, Alenko moving towards a decorative planter that wouldn’t stop a spitball, let alone a mass accelerator round.

The second thug panicked. He swung his weapon toward the krogan, ignoring the N7 in front of him, the N7 to the side of him, the turian, and the biotic flanking him.

Stupid of him, but he clearly wasn’t being paid for his brains.

Air cracked as Garrus fired from the hip. 

One shot. 

That’s all it took for the thug’s pistol to explode in his hand. Fragments of superheated metal mauling his fingers, the hitter howled, clutching the ruin of his hand.

Garrus raised his weapon and smirked. “Clear line of fire.”

Then the side doors kicked open.

“More! Right side!” Her barrier flared blue, a spray of shard rounds chewing up the doorframe next to Jane Shepard’s head as the Shock Trooper ducked for cover she apparently hadn’t thought of using before..

Red armor flooded the hallway, humans and aliens both, as the air in the clinic turned into a strobe light of muzzle flashes. The sound was deafening enough to match the seizure-inducing chaos of weaponsfire, Zedd taking a half-step back.

A solid pillar between him and the line of fire, he thrust a hand into his jacket. A heavy pistol came free — a matte obsidian piece resting in his palm as it turned on with a single tight flex of his fingers. Long for a pistol, royal blue light glowed faintly up the spine of the handcannon; the thing was ready and so was he.

Just in case, of course.

After all, there was a reason he built the Full Stop.

He always preferred finishing fights to starting them.

A roar had his head snap up, fingers tightening around the gun as it whined to life. Oh…

Yeah, oh was the perfect word for the sight of a krogan — armed, angry and ready — charging your way. Not Wrex, no; nowhere near old, scarred or massive enough to be a battlemaster but still a monster in every way that counted.

The krogan merc didn’t bother to roar. No, that courtesy was too much to ask as it charged down the narrow flank toward the suppressed John Shepard, the man too busy to notice as it built momentum like a freight train.

Zedd noticed, though.

He noticed the heavy footfalls cracking the cheap tile, the center of mass pitched forward, the way the alien turtle-thing committed to the charge. 

And he acted.

One hand went up, the sapphire ring on his finger catching the flickering light of a dying overhead lamp.

→ target: floor_grid(sector: 4-A)
→ bind: anchor_point(under: target.left_foot)
→ shape: falloff(gaussian), anchor(static)
→ emit: gravity_spike(radius: 0.06m, g: 12.0, dt: 1.2ms)
→ execute

“Snagspike.”

He didn’t hit the krogan. He didn’t touch him. 

No, just briefly, for a fraction of a second, Zedd forced psions to shift, spiking the gravity on a six-inch patch of floor right as the mercenary’s boot came down.

The foot stuck.

The rest of the krogan kept going as momentum did the rest.

Physics was a bitch.

The mercenary’s leg locked, runaway force pivoting his massive upper body forward as he went airborne. Arms flailing, the krogan face-planted into a structural pillar with a sound worthy of a wince.

The krogan slid down the wall, not unconscious but groaning.

“Nice trip.” Zedd stepped around a spray of sparks from a blown wall panel, Full Stop raised as it whined for a split-second. The next, a packet of bright blue shot out, another right behind it as both combined delivering a solid eighteen kilojoules of piercing force directly into the back of the merc’s skull.

The barrier shattered by the second shot, the krogan twitching as blue force hit home. There wasn’t much mess from where Zedd stood, but he knew it wouldn’t be getting up.

After all, krogans were tough but they weren’t that tough.

To his left, another krogan was painting a masterpiece in violence, Urdnot Wrex proving the title Battlemaster meant something as he moved like a storm of violence. A batarian racked a shotgun, leveling it at the old krogan’s chest. Wrex didn’t dodge; the laughing merc rushed forward. A gauntleted slap redirected the barrel into the ceiling, followed by an armored fist doing the best it could.

And doing it well.

If the four-eyes still had a head left to scream, it likely would have before its body crumpled to the ground.

Damn…  Zedd blinked, fingers tightening around Full Stop enough to make it whine. Years of making super-beings and he’d almost forgotten the galaxy had some of its o-

“Grenade!” Jane’s scream tore through the noise and his thoughts.

Zedd’s head snapped right in time to see a small, spherical canister fly across the floor, skittering over the debris, and hurtling straight toward where Kaidan and Ashley were pinned down.

Too far to reach, too fast to run; the equation formed in Zedd’s head before he even registered any other option.

→ acquire: object(mass ≤ 2.0kg, velocity ≥ 0.5m/s)
→ bind: trajectory_vector(object)

He flicked his fingers, ring shining bright again.

→ apply: impulse(delta_v: redirect, magnitude: 3.2m/s)
→ solve: path(ballistic), preserve_spin(true)
→ release: immediate
→ execute

A ripple of blue energy energy — tight, controlled, precise and psionic — slapped the grenade mid-roll, forcing it to… change its mind.

Suddenly moving the complete opposite way, the metal sphere hit the leg of an overturned table, bounced hard, and careened back through the hallway it flew out from.

“Fire in the hole!” 

Smoke and screams filled everywhere as the room shook and the air rang, dust layering the lobby of the clinic in a fine gray coat.

“Clear!” John Shepard’s voice was tight yet it managed to hold volume as he stood up from behind cover, rifle sweeping the room.

“Clear left.” Garrus stepped over the handless thug whimpering in a ball.

Zedd brushed a speck of dust off his cobalt coat, checking his boots at the same time. …mostly clean.

“Doctor…” Jane Shepard strode forward. “…where’s the Doctor and what’s her name?”

“M-Michel…” Said doctor rose from behind a desk, red hair covered in gray as she stared wide-eyed at her ruined clinic. “Doctor Michel.”

“Doctor Michel…” John Shepard walked closer, holstering his weapon. “I’m Commander John Shepard. My team and I are sorry for the disturbance and for what happened here.”

Now to be fair, Zedd wasn’t sure how much Commander Shepard was projecting his own feelings or if Wrex was supposed to at least try and look like he agreed with that, because he was pretty sure the krogan was down to cause some more of a disturbance right now.

“N-no, thank you.” The woman held her own arms, shuddering for a moment before she seemed to find some equilibrium and looked Commander Shepard in the eyes. “I’m fine, thank you.”

“That’s good, that’s good,” John Shepard reassured the woman, “we just need to ask you s-”

“Where’s the quarian?”

Zedd almost sighed at Jane Shepard’s interruption, the smaller woman clearly not in the mood to waste any time as she cut in quick and to the point. Yeah, I can’t believe people think I’m harsh.

John nearly sighed too, from the look on his face, as he smiled at the doctor. “We just need the location of the quarian you’re hiding. It’s for her own safety.”

“Back room.” Despite her calmed voice, the doctor’s finger still shook as she jabbed toward the bullet-ridden door to her right.

“Alright,” Garrus nodded toward the door in question, a heavy sealed thing behind the reception desk. “She’s in there.”

“Then what are we waiting for?” Jane marched forward, boots crunching on glass as she hit the door release.

Red light flared, a harsh beep leaving the mechanism.

“The hell?” Jane turned back to the doctor, eyebrow raised. “You said sh-”

“She’s scared!” Doctor Michel winced, the woman wringing her hands in front of her. “She must have locked it from… from the inside.”

A krogan-sized grunt took everyone’s attention, Wrex stepping forward. “Move.”

Jane Shepard stepped back and not a moment too soon as Urdnot Wrex’s shotgun slammed into the door itself. Sparks flew as the door groaned and slid half-open, stuck on its track. A massive three-fingered hand wedged itself into the gap and forced it the rest of the way with a screech of protesting metal.

 “Not locked now.”

Subtle. With a snort, Zedd followed everyone in as Commanders Shepard took point.

The storage room was dark, the light clearly malfunctioning. Even still, it was bright enough to see crates of med-gel stacked floor to ceiling. Huh… no V? Zedd clicked his tongue. Citadel ain’t got no need for the good stuff, huh?

Although to be fair, he’d be real surprised if they did.

“Come out!” Weapon raised, Jane Shepard spoke the only way she seemed to know. “We know you’re in here.”

“Jane…”

Jane Shepard looked up at her brother. “…what now?”

“Stay back!”

The voice was trembling, breathless and filtered to the point it sounded almost digital. Even in the dark, though, Zedd saw her first.

Small. That was the first thing Zedd registered. Huddled behind a stack of crates, the quarian seemed more fragile in her enviro-suit than anything else, a set of purple fabric hanging loose on her frame. Whatever the purpose of it, it definitely drew attention, the intricate patterns of her hood hiding her face behind a clouded visor. 

A pistol shuddered in her hand. A cheap, civilian model that Elcoss Combines sold by the cratefull. Shoddy, poorly-built and too weak to be worth it half the time, the quarian’s hands were shaking so bad the barrel was vibrating.

But the girl in the suit held her aim as steady as she could manage.

Right at Jane’s chest.

“I won’t… I won’t let you take it!” Her voice cracked through the vocoder, a sound of pure desperation. “The Broker can’t have it!”

“Easy.” John raised his hands, palms up and open in the literally universal gesture of ‘Please Don’t Shoot Me, I’ve Got A Lot to Live For.’ He nodded slowly.  “We aren’t with the Broker. We’re here to help. I’m Lieutenant Commander Shepard of the Systems Alliance. We’re looking for Saren.”

The last name hit her like a physical blow, the pistol dropping as she breathed it out. “S-Saren Arterius.” She shook her head. “The data… it mentions him. That’s why they want me dead b-but…”

The gun came up again. “G-give me one good reason why I should trust you.”

Alriiiiight, that’s enough of that. Zedd sighed and stepped forward, ignoring the gun and Lt Commander John’s warning of a hiss. “Look, I’m gonna be real with you for a few seconds.” He cleared his throat. “Twenty mercs back there are looking more physics than biology, so if we wanted you dead, you’d be a smudge on the wall by now. Accept we’re your ticket out of here and let’s get this thing movin’, people.”

Zedd clicked his tongue, thumb jerking quick over his shoulder to gesture at the door behind him. “Also, also, C-Sec is going to be here in about T-45 to ask about the property damage and all that shardfire. I’d prefer to be gone before they start handing out fines.”

The tension bled out of the quarian’s frame, pistol loweing as her shoulders dropped. “I’m… Tali. “Tali’Zorah nar Rayya. And… I think you’re right.”

Zedd smirked.

“Nice to meet you, Tali. Now let’s go ruin a Spectre’s day.”