Shepard sprinted towards a pallet of metal crates and slid behind them just in time to avoid the gunfire from the last few Cerberus Troopers in the area.
She saw a few red energy bolts zip past as one of her squadmates snapped off a few shots in return and drove the Troopers back into cover. No one made any callouts, so no confirmed kills.
Her squad had been moving quickly, but they had stalled right outside the control room. Probably the worst possible place, but there wasn't much they could do about it. Not with two heavy turrets covering the corridor, forcing them to slow their approach.
So now her team had to slowly advance to avoid being targeted by something more suited for tearing through vehicles than infantry while keeping an eye on their backs for Cerberus reinforcements sneaking up behind them.
They had already been attacked from the rear three times and none of them had appreciated that one appearance of a lightsaber-wielding Phantom that had almost gutted Liara before James shot him in the back and destroyed the powerpack.
Shepard leaned out of cover and sighted down two of the Troopers. One was yanked out into the open with a Biotic Pull where he was immediately targeted by the rest of her team and the other caught a five shot burst from her blaster rifle before dropping dead.
In the meantime, another Trooper was shredded by a Biotic combo attack between Liara and Javik and a fourth had his head practically removed by Garrus.
"Looks like that's all of them! We really cleaned up!" James exclaimed. "Anyone have an idea about how we're slipping past those turrets though?"
"EDI?" Shepard tossed the question to their AI tech expert.
"Unfortunately those turrets are not networked to anything so we will be unable to hack or disable them without direct physical access." And if they had that, they would be able to slip by anyway, EDI didn't say.
Shepard heard it anyway. "Okay, I need options. Any ideas on how to disable or destroy those things, or go around them if we can't?"
"No good on destroying them, Commander. We don't have anything heavy enough to do more than scratch them." James spoke up again.
"Going around won't help much either." Liara added. "There's only one other entrance to the control room and it should be just as heavily defended as this one. We'd have to fight through Cerberus again just to wind up in the same spot."
She'd half been expecting something like that. And unfortunately they couldn't even ask Revan's soldiers for assistance either. One of the downsides to her team's blitz on the control room meant that their allies weren't really able to support them.
Shepard was starting to worry they would have to fall back to the point where they could acquire enough heavy weapons to destroy the turrets. Which would mean risking running through their field of fire at least two more times just to get back to where they were now along with whatever other issues popped up along the way.
"Looks like you ran into some trouble, Shepard. Maybe I can give you a hand?"
Shepard reached a hand up to her ear. "That you Kasumi?"
"The one and only!" The thief chirped, "Your friends made one hell of a distraction on the way in so I was able to slip inside some interesting places I couldn't get to before."
"And one of those places can get us through those turrets?"
"Well I just so happen to be sitting next to the main power node for that section of the facility. Should something happen to it, all the electronics it's providing for should be disabled for a few seconds until the grid adjusts. That should give you a few seconds to reach the control room."
Only a few seconds to clear the rest of the corridor, huh? And if those turrets came up early or they didn't make it in time they would be caught completely out in the open.
But as Shepard compared the distance her team had to cross, it became clear that they could do it. It'd probably be close, but they definitely could.
"Alright, on my signal blow the node and we'll make for the control room." She ordered and turned to her team. "Everyone get ready. We'll move the second Kasumi confirms the turrets are disabled."
She got several affirmations back from her team as they all repositioned to the edges of whatever cover they were using and prepared for a sprint.
Once everyone was set, Shepard gave Kasumi the order to blow the power node.
"Alright, detonating in 3… 2… 1…" *boom!* "Turrets are down, Shep, get moving!"
They didn't need her encouragement. The second they got the signal, every member of the ground team was sprinting for the control room doors. Since she was already towards the front Shepard naturally was the first to stack up on the door, leaving room for EDI to immediately access the door controls once the android reached her.
Cerberus security might be better in this facility than their more disposable outposts, but EDI had both the entirety of the Normandy behind her and Cerberus's own playbook on their digital security techniques. She was through the door in seconds.
There were five operators in the room. Four of them frantically calling out updates or manipulating their terminals while a fifth obviously higher ranked one barked orders. None of them seemed to realise that the door had opened until Shepard snapped her blaster up and dropped the officer with one shot and one of the operators with another.
By that time the rest of her team had filtered in behind her and opened fire on the remaining three before they could even finish reacting to the deaths of two of their fellows. Shepard didn't even need to say anything before they split up to secure the room while the Commander started poking around one of the terminals.
It didn't take too long to find the controls for the prisoner blocks and only moments and a few button presses more to release all the doors.
"That did it, Commander. All prisoners in this facility have been released and Imperial soldiers are moving them to evac points." EDI confirmed once Shepard was done.
"Alright, we saved the day. Great job everybody. But you need to get moving, Shep, if you want that Cerberus database intact." Kasumi said over the comms, "Its auto-delete timer is running and I need to physically touch it to get it to stop. The good news is that it's pretty close to you guys and I can link up with you before you reach the location."
"Let me guess, the bad news is that there's an army of Cerberus between us and that point?" Shepard snarked sarcastically.
"Oh, I guess you already knew." Kasumi joked back, "Just like old times. Right, Commander?"
-o-
Cerberus was going to have to move up on the Empire's threat scale, was what Revan decided as they moved deeper into the lab they discovered.
The human supremacist group trying to buy/cheat/steal or otherwise acquire whatever technology they could that would give them an edge over the rest of the galaxy? That was expected. Force, every other organization in the galaxy did the same on some level so it would be foolish to believe otherwise.
Them throwing ethics and basic decency out the airlock in the name of human advancement? Less tolerable in Revan's opinion for a few reasons, the first being that kind of thinking led to more projects being about satisfying the lead scientist's sadism than actually solving problems. But she herself had turned a blind eye to similar actions taken by subordinate Sith during her war with the Republic. So long as those experiments didn't lead to a general weakening of the galaxy since the whole point of the war was to prepare for an external invasion.
That had been the category Revan had placed Cerberus in for a long time. Her early negotiations with Miranda and the Illusive Man had painted a picture of an organization willing to push boundaries but had the best interests of their species in mind. That position had shifted somewhat when it became clear Cerberus was more about clawing every scrap of power for itself – or rather the group in charge, considering what they did to the rank and file – when they actively went against human interests even as the Reapers burned their homeworld, not to mention their other efforts.
The Empress considered them a problem equal to the Asari Jedi Order at that point. A hostile group that would likely need to be managed or defeated when found until the Reapers had been dealt with because going after them directly was unfeasible.
What Cerberus had been playing around with in this lab made them almost as big a threat to the galaxy as the Reapers.
Because they had delved into, and played around with Reaper tech and come up with something similar to the Rakghoul plague.
They called them Adjutants. Bio-mechanical horrors like most Reaper derived creations but unlike those, Cerberus's creations were an existential threat to the world they inhabited. Because Adjutants could create more of themselves without the presence of a Reaper or the Dragon's Teeth devices the Reapers' usually used to create Husks.
From the lab notes they discovered, they did this by directly infecting a victim somehow and shortly after transforming said victim into another Adjutant.
If a single one made it to a civilian population, it would replicate out of control until every single other being was either turned or dead. And then they would move on to continue replicating.
And Cerberus wanted to use them as an army.
Revan placed a hand on her forehead in a vain attempt to banish the sudden headache she was forming.
"That bad, huh?" Tali'Zorah murmured from a short distance away. "Let me guess, Cerberus lost control of an experiment, it broke out, and killed them all?"
"Worse." Revan said gravely. "Cerberus sent that experiment somewhere else, and it has the potential to kill planets when they do lose control of it."
There was a lot of quiet cursing from the surrounding Troopers at the news, but no one questioned if she was serious. Cerberus's reputation among most of the Imperial Navy alone made it believable they would create something like that.
"Then what do we do now?" Lymrase asked.
"Cerberus is trying to evacuate the scientists that remained here when the experiments were moved and most of the data regarding the creations of the Adjutants three floors down." Revan replied, already moving towards her target. "We're going to make sure none of them get away to replicate this horror elsewhere and hopefully find a way to neutralise the ones they moved when they inevitably become a problem."
The lights in the area suddenly flickered and died before slowly coming back up as auxiliary power went to emergency lights. Revan immediately felt whispers of danger through the Force despite the lack of any visible change in the area.
Tali'Zorah instantly had her omnitool up and scanning for the cause of the problem. "This sector just lost power for some reason. I'd guess a distribution node was damaged."
"Master… do you…?" Lymrase asked, proving Revan wasn't the only one with a bad feeling all of a sudden.
The sound of shattering glass in several parts of the lab cut off Revan's response. And the following animalistic growls told everyone what had just been released among them.
"Form squads back to back." Revan ordered. "I want eyes on every direction and callouts the moment you see movement. Lymrase, you and I will engage when we can. Everyone else, get to the stairs and under no circumstances let these things get close to you."
With that said, Revan ignited her sabers and stalked into the darkness where the stairs down should be with the others following nervously behind her.
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