N is for Noveria
N is for Noveria
The cold has a way of seeping inside the maintenance tunnels and emergency shafts. Even the labs where Benezia met her end leave their team fogging the air with their breath. Hoary glass encircles a tank at the center of the room, a pair of baleful eyes the only things Kaidan can make out through the fractals of frost. He steps closer, but an arm pulls him back. Shepard, dragging him back to safety like he did on Eden Prime.
“Haven’t had your fill of strange alien devices yet, sir?”
Shepard only grunts and steps closer. The contents of the tank rapidly become apparent. Rachni. The word and realization has Wrex raising his shotgun at the glass. Kaidan curls his fingers around the krogan’s forearm.
“You can’t.”
“You don’t know what my people went through exterminating those things. The price we paid…” Kaidan can’t tell if Wrex is really snarling, or if the scar across his mouth merely makes it seem like he is. But the rage and pain in his voice cannot be masked.
“She wasn’t a part of that. She’s a victim.” He looks at Shepard. “Like Toombs. Poked and prodded. You can’t.”
Shepard’s face remains blank. How he can close himself off like that is a mystery to Kaidan. Like a computer going through reboot, he just shuts down.
Two buttons sit before him: the valve to release her, and the trigger for the neutron purge. Shepard reaches out. Kaidan fights the urge to shut his eyes.
The ceiling groans as the emergency hatch wrenches open. Inside the tank, the rachni queen looks from Shepard to Kaidan and back again. Those flashbulb eyes hold an alien light, intelligence of a sort he’s never seen before. Kaidan gives a small nod of his head, and then she’s gone, up through the hole in the ceiling, out of sight.
“That was good thing you did,” Kaidan says.
Wrex only grunts. “A dumb thing, you mean. Her kind nearly wiped out the galaxy.”
“Enough.” Shepard stares up at the hole in the ceiling like it’s a window instead. Who knew the man fond of shoving pistols in the faces of his fans was capable of mercy, too? Kaidan shouldn’t be so surprised. He told Shepard once that aliens could be jerks and saints. So could humans. Sometimes both at the same time.
