His eyes closed, shutting out the world. The Reapers needed him to rest; the transformation was still in progress. They needed him to sleep, and so he did.

  The Illusive Man and Dr. Nuri had watched the entire episode through the one-way glass. The physical changes to Grayson’s body were gruesome, but any guilt the Illusive Man had over what they had done was offset by the knowledge that the data they were collecting could prove invaluable at preventing or reversing the process in future victims. More important, they were learning the limits of what the Reapers were truly capable of.

  At first the results seemed to mirror those collected from experiments on the so-called husks: human victims transformed into mindless automatons by the geth during Saren’s campaign to seize control of the Citadel. But the Illusive Man knew the truth about that war: Saren and his geth army had all been servants under the control of a Reaper called Sovereign. And the technology to turn humans into husks hadn’t come from the geth.

  But Grayson’s metamorphosis was something more subtle and complex. He was not becoming a mindless slave. He was becoming a vessel, an avatar of the Reapers—like Saren himself. And before his death at the hands of Commander Shepard, Saren had been very, very powerful.

  “His strength is growing quickly,” Illusive Man noted to Dr. Nuri. “We won’t be able to hold him prisoner for much longer.”

  “We’re tracking his evolution carefully,” the scientist assured him. “It will be at least a week before he poses any real threat of escape.”

  “You’re certain of your data?”

  “I’d stake my life on it.”

  “You already have,” the Illusive Man reminded her. “And mine, too.”

  There was an awkward silence before he added, “I’ll give you three more days to study him. That’s all I’m willing to risk. Do I make myself clear?”

  “Three days,” Dr. Nuri promised with a nod. “After that we’ll terminate the subject.”

  “Leave that to Kai Leng,” the Illusive Man told her. “That’s why he’s here.”

  TEN

  “Based on my analysis, we have to strike at the six locations highlighted on the first page of the report.”

  Kahlee had given plenty of presentations over the years, often to powerful and important people. But at her core she was a researcher, not a public speaker, and she couldn’t quite ignore the cold, heavy knot in the pit of her stomach as she spoke.

  “The names listed beneath each location are confirmed Cerberus operatives believed to have specific knowledge of the layout or defenses of the target in question.”

  This particular presentation wasn’t made any easier by the fact that, apart from Anderson, everyone she was addressing was a turian military officer. They stared at her with the intensity of hawks tracking a mouse on the ground—eight pairs of cold, unblinking eyes.

  “In order to use their intel without giving Cerberus advance warning, the strike teams will have to be en route before C-Sec arrests the operatives.

  “Even if someone does send off a warning, these bases are in remote clusters that haven’t been directly linked into the galactic comm network yet. It’ll take time for any messages to get through to them.”

  “What kind of window will we have between the arrests and hard contact?” one of the turians asked.

  His uniform sagged under the weight of all the medals pinned to his chest.

  Upon entering the briefing room she’d been introduced to the assemblage, their names and ranks thrown at her in rapid-fire succession as they went around the table. She hadn’t even made an attempt to try and remember them.

  “Four hours,” Anderson chimed in. “Plenty of time for C-Sec to interrogate the prisoners and transmit the info to you.”

  “Using the info, each strike team leader will have the authority to change the strategic plan for their target,” Orinia added.

  “This information is reliable?” another turian, this one female, asked.

  A thin white scar ran along her jaw, its color making it stand out from the dark red facial tattoos that signified the colony of her birth. She was the only female turian other than Orinia in the room, meaning she stood out enough that Kahlee could actually recall her name: Dinara.

  Kahlee could have gone into a lengthy explanation about statistical analysis, margins of error, and probability matrixes extrapolated from incomplete, estimated, and assumed data. However, doing so could have created doubt in the turians’ minds.

  “It’s reliable,” she assured them.

  “Most of these targets are within the borders of Alliance territory,” Medals, the first turian, objected.

  “Just before Orinia gives the go to the strike teams, I’m going to authorize a joint-species military action inside Alliance space,” Anderson explained. “Everything you do will be completely in accordance with existing Council laws and treaties.”

  “That’s the kind of thing that could get you dismissed from your post,” a third turian noted.

  “Almost certainly,” Anderson agreed.

  “Two of the locations are inside the Terminus Systems,” Dinara pointed out. “You can’t grant us the authority to strike there.”

  “Those are the most important installations,” Kahlee insisted. “The whole reason Cerberus has facilities outside Council jurisdiction is to allow them to engage in illegal or unethical research without fear of repercussions.”

  “Attacking a facility in the Terminus Systems means a Council review,” Medals countered. “It could be grounds for a military discharge.”

  There were murmurs of agreement around the table, and Kahlee feared the turians were turning against them.

  “That could happen,” Anderson said, speaking loudly to be heard over the general grumbling. “But Cerberus doesn’t play by the rules. Neither can we if we want to take them out.

  “If that’s a problem for any of you,” he added sternly, “you can leave now.”

  There was a long moment of silence, but every turian remained seated at the table.

  “The Terminus facilities are orbital space stations in uninhabited systems,” Oriana said, picking up where Anderson had left off. “If the strike teams complete their mission, there won’t be any witnesses to file a report against you.”

  “Understood,” Medals replied with a curt nod. “No survivors.”

  “Except for any prisoners you find,” Kahlee hastily added. “If Cerberus is holding someone against their will, they need to be rescued.”

  “This is a rescue mission?” Dinara asked, looking for clarification.

  Anderson and Orinia exchanged glances before the turian ambassador answered the question.

  “We can’t confirm the presence of prisoners at any location. If you find any, help them if you can. But do not put the mission—or turian lives—at risk unnecessarily.”

  Kahlee bit her lip to keep from objecting. Anderson had warned her that getting the turians to cooperate wasn’t going to be easy. They had to offer something the turians wanted: the elimination of Cerberus. If she pushed the prisoner angle, Orinia might pull her people out.

  “What about the Illusive Man?” Medals wanted to know.

  “Capturing him would be an ideal outcome,” Orinia admitted. “But we have no pictures of what he looks like. All we have is a basic physical description. If you see anyone matching the profile, try to bring them back alive.”

  Kahlee wasn’t sure what would happen next. She thought there might be a vote or some spirited debate regarding the mission. At the very least she expected others to voice their objections or raise concerns. True, the turians were a military culture, and they were used to accepting and acting on orders from their superiors; but this was an unusual situation, and technically Orinia was no longer part of the chain of command.

  However, whatever window there had been to question the mission had apparently been closed.

  “Strike teams leave in four hours,” the ambassador declared as she rose from her seat.

  Following her lead, the other turians stood and filed out, leaving Orinia alone with the two humans.

  “I wish we could go with them,” Kahlee muttered.

  “Each commander has crafted his or her team into a finely tuned military instrument through thousands of hours of training,” Orinia reminded her. “You’d only get in the way.”

  “They’ll do their best to help Grayson if they find him,” Anderson assured Kahlee, reading her thoughts.

  “I know,” she said, though secretly she had her doubts.

  Kai Leng’s muscles strained as he pulled his chin up over the bar one last time. Then he dropped to the floor and knocked out a final set of fifty push-ups.

  When he was done he threw a towel over his shoulder, strode to the fitness room’s gravity control, and dialed it back down from two hundred percent to one standard G.

  He wiped the sweat from his bare torso and slung the towel back over his shoulder. He turned toward the locker room, then changed direction instantly when alarms began to wail.

  Rushing over to the console by the wall, he punched in his security code to get a status update. The screen might as well have said: ALL HELL IS BREAKING LOOSE.

  Three unidentified vessels were bearing down on the orbital space station. They were small enough to have slipped past the long-range sensors; that meant they didn’t have the firepower to pierce the station’s kinetic barriers and reinforced hull. Instead, they were coming in fast in an effort to get close enough to begin boarding procedures before the GARDIAN defenses could burn away their ablative armoring.

  The database matched the energy signatures to turian light frigates, each capable of holding up to a dozen crew. The station had approximately forty hands, but the majority were scientists and support staff; only a handful had real military experience. It wasn’t hard to do the math: the turians would win this battle.

  Kai Leng raced to his locker, but didn’t bother to grab his clothes. Instead, he grabbed his knife and pistol—a custom-modified Kassa Fabrications Razer. Gripping the Razer in his left hand and the twelve-inch blade in his right, he raced from the fitness center.

  The station lurched as the first attack vessel’s boarding ramp latched onto the exterior, nearly throwing Kai Leng to the floor. The ship shuddered twice more as the next two frigates made contact a few seconds later.

  The invaders would use high-powered lasers to carve a seam in the station’s hull, then apply concentrated explosives to blow open a hole so they could board. Given the turians’ reputation for military efficiency, he figured they had less than a minute until the halls of the facility were crawling with enemy soldiers.

  The station’s main hangar housed several shuttles, but it was on the far side of the station. Going there was a fool’s errand: if the turians were smart, they’d hit it first to cut off a primary evacuation route. Fortunately, there were several small escape pods located throughout the facility … though not nearly enough for all personnel to make it out alive.

  Kai Leng had taken the time to memorize the location of every one of the pods; he knew the closest was easily in reach. But he couldn’t leave yet—there was something too important he had to do.

  The Illusive Man was asleep in his bed when the alarms rang out. Waking to the unexpected din, it took him a moment to orient himself. As soon as he had his bearings, he fired up the terminal at the desk in his private quarters.

  He analyzed the information on the readout, evaluating their chances of victory. Seeing they were under assault by a trio of turian frigates, he immediately realized there was no hope in staying to fight. But if he was lucky—and quick—there might be enough time to terminate Grayson and still make it to one of the escape pods.

  It had been over thirty years since he’d seen any active military service; he knew his skills were not what they once were. His best hope was to avoid enemy contact, but he wasn’t about to go out unprepared. Moving quickly, he pulled a Liberator combat suit from his closet and slipped it on. From the drawer in his bedside table he grabbed a Harpy pistol before unlocking the door to his room and stepping out into the hall.

  He was immediately assailed by a wall of sound: shrieking alarms, shouts of fear and panic, the pounding of booted feet as the station’s crew ran up and down the hall. A scientist ran past him, his hands wrapped tightly around a Gorgon assault rifle, the heaviest armament on the station. The fact that someone had opened the armory was good; the fact that an untrained scientist was carrying one of its most powerful weapons was not.

  The station was primarily a research facility; it wasn’t properly equipped or staffed to defend against a direct assault. Orbiting an insignificant planet circling an irrelevant orange dwarf star in the Terminus Systems, they relied on the secrecy of their remote location to protect them.

  The deck trembled beneath his feet and he heard the faint echo of a distant explosion, and he knew the turians had breached the hull. A few seconds later he reached a t-intersection in the hall. From the left-hand corridor, he heard screams and the sounds of gunfire. He turned in the opposite direction, realizing he’d have to take a longer route if he hoped to get to Grayson’s cell while avoiding the turian patrols.

  As he ran down the hall, his mind was already trying to piece together what had gone wrong. He liked to encourage the impression that Cerberus was all-knowing and all-powerful, but the truth was somewhat different. By galactic standards, they were a small organization, with limited people and finite resources.

  Though the Illusive Man was a master of deploying those resources with maximum results, and had a knack for anticipating the actions of both his friends and allies, there were holes in his organization that left them vulnerable. Somehow the turians had found one. None of his agents on the Citadel had warned him of a potential attack, which meant the turians were acting alone. But how had they discovered the location of the base?

  He saw Dr. Nuri coming toward him, flanked on either side by security personnel wearing heavy combat suits and armed with Gorgons.

  “Come with me,” he ordered. “To the lab.”

  Nuri shook her head. “We’ll never make it. The turians overran the entire wing. We have to get to the escape pods.”

  Nuri was a valuable asset to Cerberus, but she had only the most basic level of combat training. Considering she wasn’t even wearing body armor, he didn’t see any point in forcing her to accompany them.

  “Get to the escape pod,” he told her. “Hold it until we get there.”

  To the guards he said, “You two stay with me.”

  There was no objection from the guards; they were trained soldiers, and knew better than to defy a direct order. Nuri responded with a nod before dashing off in the opposite direction.

  Leading his small team, the Illusive Man was still trying to figure out how the turians had found them. He knew Grayson had information on Cerberus. The Illusive Man had assumed that Grayson didn’t know about this facility, but it was possible he could have learned of it during the two years he was on the run. Still, even if Grayson was the source of the intel, how did it end up in the hands of the turians?

  His musings were cut short as they rounded the next corner and came face-to-face with a six-member turian patrol standing less than five meters away. Both sides opened fire immediately, the turians dropping into crouches to present smaller targets while the Illusive Man and his guards retreated back around the corner for cover.

  The brief initial exchange hadn’t lasted long enough for the weapons to penetrate the kinetic barriers of either side. But the turians were better equipped and trained, and had them outnumbered two to one; further engagement was almost suicidal.

  “Fall back,” the Illusive Man shouted.

  Keeping their weapons pointed at the corner should the turians emerge, the guards crab-walked backward in a shuffling retreat.

  They’d gone roughly ten meters when two turians poked their heads around the corner and let loose a quick burst of gunfire. The Illusive Man pressed himself close against the wall, taking shelter behind one of the exposed steel ribs that ran vertically along the wall’s surface every five meters to reinforce the station’s hull. On the other side of the hall the guards did the same, the two of them cramming themselves tightly behind a single protruding girder.

  The first two turians continued to lay down a wave of suppressing fire to keep their opponents pinned against the wall so they couldn’t shoot back. At the same time the other four rounded the corner and took cover behind the beams in the same manner as their opponents.

  The Illusive Man peeked out and squeezed off a few token shots with his pistol, but a barrage of return fire forced him to duck back into cover. The guards huddled together on the opposite side of the corridor had a similar idea, and they were better armed. Working in concert, they leaned out—one high, one low—and unleashed a storm of bullets.

  One of the turians wasn’t pressed tightly enough against the wall; his left side was partially exposed. By design, both guards aimed at this single target, their concentrated fire ripping through his kinetic barriers and shredding his combat suit in less than a second.

  The turian screamed as the high-velocity rounds tore his arm and shoulder to pieces, nearly severing the limb. His compatriots returned fire as he slumped to the ground, blood gushing from his wounds. The Cerberus guards flattened themselves against the wall as rounds peppered their position, relying on the protruding edge of the vertical beam they were hiding behind to shield them from the assault.

  With all the turian fire focused on the guards, the Illusive Man took the opportunity to lean out and let loose with his pistol, aiming at the injured turian lying on the floor before his kinetic barriers could recharge. The turian’s body jumped and spasmed as the Harpy buried a half-dozen rounds into the helpless alien’s torso, then went still. Before the turians could retaliate, the Illusive Man ducked back behind cover.