Holus watches as Desolas spoke to a Krogan. It wasn't Okeer, but he looked like a scientist of some sort. Behind them stood several vats of embryonic Krogan titans growing in what were presumably amniotic and hyperoxidated fluids. Despite being embryos, they were already the size of a full grown normal Krogan.
Holus however ignored that as he focused on what the Turian and Krogan were talking about. They were speaking in whispers, but small changes to the various auditory systems fixed that problem.
"…You've noticed too?" asked the Krogan.
Desolas nodded as he looked around, he saw Holus and his face grew soft, but otherwise he turned back to the Krogan.
"Something is happening to them. I think our benefactors are doing something."
"Some sort of social experiment perhaps. I can't think of anything that would change behavior like this. I asked Rana to see if she could get a hold of some equipment, specialized sensors. Whatever is going on here, it reminds me of an experiment performed by Salarian STG agents decades ago, and they used infrasound to see if it was possible to alter someone's behaviors. The sensors can detect infrasound with a high degree of accuracy."
"And if we find signs of it?"
"Then we need to leave, there is no telling if this… whatever it is has been affecting us or not."
"Thank you Dr. Droyas. Keep me informed, I'll have a spot for you ready to leave."
"We're not taking Okeer are we?"
"No."
Holus moved away from the area as he processed that information with aid from the many. It wasn't hard to see that they noticed the effects of indoctrination, and realized they were in over their heads.
Still, it became clear why the Collectors had data on Okeer. They were using him to create those titanic Krogan beasts as weapons against Blacklight. Holus had suspected that the Giant Krogan Husks had similar alterations as the Husks found on the Collector Vessel, with a Bloodtox based biochemistry to make sure they couldn't be consumed.
Holus couldn't imagine what else those beasts were capable of, but he needed to find out.
Either way, for now, they had accomplished their goal, they knew why Okeer was here and what he was working on, but this facility was much too dangerous to allow to continue. There was no telling how many Krogan Titans had already been made, but if possible they needed to make sure it stopped.
Holus walked calmly as he passed Heretic Geth who didn't so much as look at him, which was good. They probably assumed him to be yet another victim of indoctrination.
There were a few Collectors here, which Holus avoided as best he could, just on the off chance they could detect Blacklight within him.
Holus would continue to gather information as a plan was drawn up. Once it was completed Blacklight acted.
The Babi leapt from roof to roof as quietly as it could, inspecting the area for Holus before it leapt to the ground to make its way to the water. It found an easy channel that lead to a greater sea. Occasionally it would pass the native wildlife of Virmire, such as Podcrabs, and it would shed a few Indra who would head to the creatures for infection. If Blacklight was to stop this base from creating an army, they needed to be prepared.
Once the Babi made it to deeper waters, it shifted mildly to resemble an eel like creature. Making its way to even deeper waters, it eventually found what it was looking for.
It was like coral in many ways, a massive colony of polyps. A hard exoskeleton surrounded the creature, but that was simple to bypass.
The Babi grew metallic claws that were reinforced with an alternating current of bioelectricity and resonated to high frequencies allowing the Babi to easily slice into the softer tissues. Once a fair sized hole was made, the Babi pressed it's palm against it, and slowly it's body began to merge and fuse with the creature.
The effect was drastic as a multitude of changes were made to the lifeform as the Babi fully fused to it and used its own body to repair the damage to the exoskeleton. The now Blacklight coral lifeform rapidly grew and changed into a mesh of various aquatic traits that soon became a nest or hive of sorts. Tumor-like growths appeared on the massive organism as the infested pustules prepared to birth an army of infected.
Small aquatic life was lured by a chemical concoction, only to be ensnared by tendrils that infected each and every thing that came to close. After using the aquatic biomass, the infested Pustules ruptured and birthed specialized aquatic life that would go out and find more biomass to prey upon.
The plan was in motion, and a Hive was constructed. Soon, once the Hive was fully formed, they would destroy the facility with overwhelming force and countless numbers.
Holus would continue to gather information such as the layout of the building so that Blacklight had as many advantages as they could.
It felt nice for Blacklight to be the one being able to be prepared for once, rather than using limited resources or being subjected to a surprise assault. It had been far too long since Blacklight was able to have an entire hive prepared for battle. Not since the Turian invasion of Shanxi in fact.
'Should be fun.'
Jack and Miranda had eventually found someone willing to get them out of Salarian Space, and did so without asking questions about the Varren. The issue however was that there was a bit of a detour. On the bright side they had made it out of Inner Council Space, and now found themselves in Outer Council Space, which wasn't much of an improvement. They currently were still disguised as Female Salarians and each stood on a station above the Asari Colony of Nevos getting off their benefactor's ship, who was a simple Salarian smuggler who smuggled high end medical supplies of all things.
On the bright side a collection of homemade Medigel allowed them to get a ride, but that proved to be a bit of an issue at the moment since this was the first stop on the smugglers many trips, of which there were many, but this proved to be an interesting opportunity. Digging deep within their memories both knew that the planet below should have been one of the planets Blacklight was allowed on.
However no matter what method they used to attempt to contact anyone within the hive, there was no answer. Both Jack and Miranda were young minds, only existing with any form of consciousness sometime after Saleons experiments. As such neither was fully aware of anything that happened after Sovereign's attacks, though from the lack of responses from the hive, they could guess that something changed about Blacklights ability to visit various worlds and colonies within Citadel Space.
'Do you suppose they are limited to Blacklight controlled territory? We only had a handful of systems.' Miranda wondered.
'Maybe, but I really fucking hope not, good luck finding someone insane enough to willingly make a detour to space controlled by a sapient virus.'
Jack answered as she looked at another obstacle for when it came time to get off this planet.
'Viral scanners.'
'That is going to be a problem.'
Miranda looked at the scanner; no one seemed to be monitoring it. A few conclusions of Blacklight's current standing in the galaxy could be drawn, namely that if security was lax, then they believed that the chances of Blacklight coming here was small. Still the scanner was on and operational.
'Not much of a problem actually, Remember the Mark II large-scale digital computer built in the 40's at Harvard, the one that shorted out when a moth flew into the contacts of the relay inside the computer?'
'Those things had a lot more open space than a viral scanner, the 'bug' would have to be very small.'
'Aphid.'
Jack couldn't find issue with that as Miranda shed a single small aphid sized insect that quickly made its way through the crowds towards the scanner. Crawling around the scanner it found an opening, a very small opening that it was barely able to squeeze through by scattering itself into progressively smaller organisms. The small swarm made its way into the machine and crawled around; creating a collection of electroreceptive organs it was able to navigate itself towards the sensitive inner machinery. It wasn't hard, despite the superficial differences between the old viral scanners and these slightly modified ones, it was still based on human technology that both Miranda and Jack were partially aware of, not as aware as they would have been if they were connected to the Hive Mind, but aware enough to know how it worked on an intimate level.
The organism began to create and modify its own nerves and muscle tissue, turning it into a small stack of electrocytes. Then it waited.
Jack and Miranda made their way closer to the scanner and once they were about to pass the threshold, the small insect released an electrical discharge that shorted the machine just long enough for them to pass.
The alarm did not go off, and the insect made its way out of the machine as it rebooted in mere seconds.
Once outside the scanner it constructed crude wings and made its way back to Miranda where it returned to her collective biomass.
'So, what now?'
'We need information. Let's find an extranet terminal or something, figure out what direction we need to head.'
'Sounds good to me.'
"So then, we're all in agreement?"
"I'm not."
"Shut up Kaiden, you don't count."
"Why?"
"Because you don't agree," said Shepard blankly before she continued. "Unicron would eat the Death Star far before it had a chance to kill him. It takes way too long to charge up."
"I disagree, The Death Star is mobile so it could potentially keep away from Unicron long enough to charge up, not that it has to unless it had just got finished destroying a planet, cause then it's already going to be fully charged."
"Oh yeah, I forgot about that… But we can agree that Unicron could eat the Death Star right?"
"Oh absolutely."
Ashley nodded in agreement.
"Yep."
"I feel left out in this conversation." said Garrus.
"When did you get here?"
"…I have been here."
"You have?"
"Just ignore Shepard Garrus, we do." Said Ashley.
"Just be thankful you don't share thoughts." Added Kaiden.
"I'm not that bad."
"You really are."
"Am not."
"Are so."
"And now we have been reduced to children," said Kaiden with a sigh.
Kaiden turned to Garrus, who still looked confused as Frosty slithered around him.
"Welcome to my life. Be thankful your metabolism lets you get drunk. I wish mine did."
"Wow, what a whiny baby. Just change your metabolism." Said Ashley.
"Why? It's not like being drunk will ever affect my mind, and what's the point of getting drunk if you have to remain mentally sober but physically drunk? It serves no purpose."
"You could construct your brain into a singular organ and flood it with THC or something." Pointed out Shepard
"I prefer to spread my brain across my entire cellular structure like a civilized sapient virus thank you very much."
"Lame."
"And now I am lost again." Said Garrus.
"Yeah that's about normal for us." Said Ashley.
"Nah, normal for us is where we find a way to work in dinosaurs."
"We are not raptor jousting again Shepard." Said Kaiden sternly.
"Why not? Besides, that Elcor was just fine."
"You made him cry Shep. He thought we were riding mutant Varren fused with deformed Krogan."
"He got over it, plus I paid his therapy bills."
"Ok, now I am both lost and intrigued. What is a Raptor?"
Shepard smiled.
"I think we may have gone too far," said Garrus atop a utahraptor while wielding a lance made of solid muscle and bone.
Shepard, who was sitting on his own raptor, looked around at the relatively minor riot caused by their dinosaur jousting.
"Not the smartest thing we've ever done," commented Shepard.
"Why did I have to be a dinosaur for this again?" came Kaiden's voice from Shepard's raptor.
Simultaneously Garrus' Raptor snickered in a tone distinctly that of Ashley.
"…Because shut up." Said Shepard.
"Aria is going to kill us," said Raptor Kaiden.
"I regret nothing."
Garrus looked as a small group of Vorcha clung to the walls like an insect shaking as an enraged Krogan barreled through a small crowd of Volus. Then he remembered Aria's reputation. He slowly got off the Ashley Raptor before he looked to his lance and tossed it to Shepard, who easily caught it.
"Oh would you look at the time, I have to go pre-heat Frosty… I wasn't here. In fact, I don't know any of you."
With that Garrus walked away as calmly as ever before he froze and turned around.
"See you tomorrow."
With that he simply turned back around and left.
"I thought he didn't know us. Who tells complete strangers they'll see you tomorrow? Man, what a freak. I like him," said Shepard happily.
Ashley and Kaiden began to shift their appearance back to normal as they moved next to Shepard.
"Too bad his vacation's almost up." Said Kaiden.
Shepard shrugged.
'Eh, Virmire will prove a nice enough distraction when the hive gets big enough.'
'You planning on going then? You seemed conflicted about it earlier.'
Shepard nodded to Ash before shrugging.
'After taking over the Collector Cruiser I've been thinking about being more proactive. We came to omega for a lot of reasons, ours was to collect Asari DNA after we found the Ardat Yakshi gene. After finding Morinth there wasn't much of a point to stay after that, really everything since then had been us just kinda fucking around. I think I'll be a bit more proactive.'
'Sounds like fun Shep. I'll definitely be coming along.' Thought Ashley.
'Me to, someone has to keep you two out of trouble.'
Before their mental conversation could progress anymore, a familiar Batarian made his way to them. Shepard smiled.
"Aria wants to see you."
'What do you say, Fuck with Aria for the last time?'
The Batarian didn't see it, but both Kaiden and Ashley were smiling inside.
"Lead the way."Said Shepard with a familiar Smile.
"It's not a virus."
Saleon sat hunched on the floor with Nel laying besides him. He looked at old data he managed to keep on Blacklight proper.
"Blacklight is a retro virus, yet it has traits of a mega virus allowing it to hijack cells and nest in them. It can make cells make CRISPR proteins to turn cells into factories for just about any kind of mutation they can imagine. They can alter their own genetic code, they can even do the impossible and rewrite the virus's genetic code if they so choose to. Did you know Nel, that when I tested them, I found that many different strains have capsids made of vastly different structures, from viruses that came from the same cell? Some were prolate, helical, and icosahedral structures produced by the same cell infected with the same virus. Do you have any idea how many laws of biology that violates Nel? I thought I was going mad. Blacklight isn't just one virus, it's every virus, working together through means that don't make sense. They frighten me Nel. Blacklight frightens me and I am not afraid to admit that."
Saleon then looked to the malformed Salarian eggs incubating in their pods.
"I thought I saw the limits of their impossible biology. But those things… those unnatural monstrous things gestating away. They are doing something else… Something I never documented."
He looked to the egg nearest to him, the one that had adapted a metallic shell composed of the same Titanium as the metal case it was stored in.
"They can incorporate almost anything into themselves, and I don't know how they are doing it."
He shook back and forth as Nel attempted to comfort him by nuzzling Saleon's hand. It barely had an effect.
"I'm sorry Nel. So sorry, but when those eggs hatch… I don't think we are going to survive for much longer afterward. What's worse, I don't think there is a damn thing I can do about it."
Nel wheezed as Saleon stoked his loyal pet's head. It was mildly calming.
"What have I done?"