//------------------------------// // Indoctrination // Story: Mass Effect: Element of Kindness // by CommanderApplejack //------------------------------// Chapter 31 Indoctrination Skip a vote sometimes 71% Fluttershy was sitting in the totally silent comm room and unlike previous debriefings, no-one had undressed from their battered armor. The group that had gone planetside seemed to be in various states of mind, Liara looked distraught and saddened, Garrus and Kaidan Alenko disturbed by whatever they had seen on the surface, Wrex looked to be much angrier than usual, and even though Shepard held his demeanor as neutral as possible Fluttershy could feel the anger bubbling just below the surface. "Commander, what happened on the surface? Did you find the Matriarch?" Fluttershy carefully asked, Shepard nodded. "Yes, we did and in doing so we found out why Saren has gained the following he has," Shepard said before continuing to explain as Fluttershy shot him a questioning look. "When Saren attacked Eden Prime, the colony that had the beacon that gave me my vision, he came with an impossibly large ship. In the few moments before her death that Benezia was lucid enough to speak to us, she explained that that large ship exerts an aura that makes you want to do his bidding, listen and believe every word he says and, grovel in front of him." Fluttershy felt her heart skip a beat as she understood why Liara would be so distraught before looking over at Tali, the quarian already looking at her expectantly. Does Fluttershy reveal the workings of the Stare? Yes I promised the commander that I wasn't going to keep any more secrets from him and the others so I'm going to keep that promise. "Commander, in the time that you were gone Doctor Chakwas and I did some experiments that are important to this subject," Fluttershy told Shepard, the commander giving her a look that urged her to continue while the rest just kept silent and listened to what the pegasus had to say. "Wrex, do you remember how it felt to be hit by the Stare?" The krogan shrugged, "My instinct was screaming at me to just kill you and be done with it, though the rest of my mind wanted to... follow your every command... and grovel at your hooves..." Wrex's eyes went wide as this was probably the first time he had examined his feelings at the moment of the stare. "You're saying that..." "The brain scan Doctor Chakwas performed on herself under the influence of the stare and a while after indicated that there was still a lingering presence of the stare's effect in her mind. Both the doctor and I agree that this is probably a biological defense mechanism that forces a creature to follow my commands." Fluttershy took a deep breath as the others who hadn't heard about this were clinging to every word she was saying. "If anyone is exposed to the Stare for a greater amount of time, the effect will most likely be permanent and if the intensity is low enough as well, the person affected probably wouldn't even notice." The rest of the room silently stared at the pegasus, Ashley, in particular, looking repulsed by what she had just heard. "Do you think you could have reversed the indoctrination of my mother if you had tried?" Liara sniffed as she was clearly holding back tears, "Did she die for nothing?" Fluttershy felt as if a knife was being twisted in her chest seeing the asari in as much pain as she was, "I-I don't know. I've never met anyone with the same ability and most certainly didn't know it might do permanent damage." Liara swallowed the lump that had been forming in her throat and nodded. "Okay," she simply stated. "I think it's a given since you know this now, that you restrict the usage of your stare as well, right?" Shepard asked. Fluttershy nodded in approval. "Good, now I'm sure this is a topic that will be discussed more over the coming weeks but we should continue to the next important thing we encountered on Noveria." Wrex let out an angry huff, "You should have destroyed it, my people didn't suffer just to let that blight return to the galaxy again." Fluttershy looked confused at Wrex, wondering what in the world got the usually calm and measured, for his species at least, krogan to be this angry. It didn't take long for Shepard to answer that question. "We found a rachni Queen in the laboratory where Benezia was located." Fluttershy went slightly pale as, even though she didn't know that much about galactic history, it was hard not to know about the rachni wars. The insectoid beings had led a relentless assault on Citadel space causing the salarians to elevate the krogan to a space-born civilization to fight them. It had resulted in the complete genocide of the race and eventually lead to the krogan rebellion and the release of the Genophage, a virus that virtually sterilized the krogan. "Benezia was sent to the research facility to draw information about a relay called the 'Mu relay', Saren thinks it's linked to the system that holds the Conduit. We gained the location of this relay but it could link to dozens of systems and we'd just be guessing blind as to where the Conduit is so we need more intel, but that left me a decision on what to do with the Queen." Shepard stayed silent for a moment as he met the eyes of everyone in the room. "I decided that we went too far in the rachni wars and I set the queen free. Genocide should never be a punishment for the crimes of a species." Shepard turned to look Wrex straight into the eyes, "And you of all people should appreciate this since if we had followed your logic than the krogan would have been condemned to extinction in the krogan rebellions," He told the battlemaster. Wrex huffed but didn't raise any objections. "All of you dismissed, get yourselves cleaned up and rest. Until we get new intel on Saren we're back to patrolling the stars." Everyone started to file out of the comm room and make their way down to the crew quarters, except for Garrus who seemed intent on speaking to the commander. Fluttershy’s interest was immediately drawn and she too stayed behind to listen to what Garrus had to say. “What is it you two want to say?” Shepard asked as the door to the CIC closed. “I’m just interested in what he has to say,” Fluttershy stated as she pointed at Garrus. The turian just shrugged. “I wanted to ask a favor. I know you did a favor to Tali when you gave the geth data we found in the Armstrong nebula to her, she’s been trying to keep it a bit of a secret since that’s classified alliance data but I’ve seen her study it on various occasions in the mess,” Garrus said, “This is not about that but about a case I was involved with in C-Sec.” Shepard nodded, not betraying any emotion on his face just yet. “Go on,” he urged. “Back some time ago, I was tasked with monitoring the sales of the black market on the Citadel, most of it’s harmless but during the course of my investigation I noticed an increase in sales of body parts, organs mostly. There usually are some of those, but with how much the numbers increased we weren’t sure if there was a black market lab or if some psychopath was harvesting from citizens,” Garrus explained. Fluttershy turned a bit green at the thought that someone would steal the organs of another being. “But it turned out that this case wasn’t as clear cut as we had first thought. First, we got a sample of DNA that led us to a turian who was very much alive and convinced that he hadn’t lost his liver. After a bit of digging I discovered that this turian had briefly worked for a salarian geneticist called doctor Saleon but after going to his lab I found no evidence of any cloned organs but didn’t find any evidence, not even a krogan testicle,” Garrus said without even cracking the slightest of smiles, Fluttershy and Shepard showed no such restraint. “A krogan testicle?” Shepard asked trying to hold back a snicker. “Some krogan think a transplant will increase their virility, not that it works but that doesn’t stop them from buying. They pay about ten thousand credits for each and since they have four… someone out there is probably making a killing off of this.” “So what did you do to the geneticist?” Fluttershy asked as she returned to being grossed out by the fact someone had even thought about harvesting organs. “I brought in some of his former employees for interrogation. While interviewing one of them, I came across something suspicious. One of my detainees started bleeding profusely while we were interrogating him and when we offered to patch him up he freaked out. I ordered the medics to perform a full body examination. There were incisions everywhere, some even fresh. That was when we realized that these weren’t employees but walking test tubes.” Fluttershy felt a new wave of nausea come over her as Shepard followed up with another question.”He cloned the organs within the bodies of his victims?!” Shepard asked, clearly as disgusted as Fluttershy was. “Yes, most of his victims were poor and would get a small percentage of the profit but only if the organ was good. If not, he would leave the dysfunctional organ within the victim.” Fluttershy felt her disgust turn into rage as she couldn’t believe someone could be that cruel, “What happened to him in the end?” she asked with revulsion in her voice. “He ran. Blew up his lab, went to the nearest spaceport with some of his ‘employees’, and left on the first ship he could get. I ordered the ship to be shot down but I was countermanded by headquarters because of the fear of destroying a ship so close to the Citadel and they didn’t want to board because he was threatening to kill the hostages. I told them those hostages were dead anyway but they didn’t listen and he got away.” Fluttershy felt grossed out again but this time it was because of the casual way Garrus had dismissed the lives of the civilians. “If you don’t care about the lives of those civilians you’re no better than he is, just a terrorist with a badge,” the pegasus harshly scolded, Garrus flinched back at the harsh tone Fluttershy had used, the words coming from Fluttershy hurting more than usual for some reason. “Just because the salarian was cruel doesn’t mean we should stop showing kindness to anyone.” Before Garrus could respond Shepard continued. “I agree with Fluttershy here but since you started this by asking for a favor I’m guessing you found out where he is.” “Yeah, he changed his name to doctor Heart, his idea of a twisted joke I guess, and switched ships. I have his ship’s transponder frequency but haven’t been able to get someone to check it out, I wanted to ask if the Normandy could swing by that ship so I can verify it’s him and stop him. Permanently,” Garrus snarled, Shepard thinking about what he should do. “I already promised Wrex that we were going to retrieve an item that was stolen from him the first opportunity we would get. If we don’t have any new leads on Saren we can go by the ship but only if we have no intel on our main mission,” Shepard told the turian, something that wasn’t out of the question in the slightest. I don’t want someone that cruel to be able to evade justice and this seems really important to Garrus as well. Maybe… I could put that training to good use, Ashley did say learning on the job was the best way to do it. 1. Propose taking a shuttle and a third member to go investigate 2. Go retrieve Wrex’s stolen item first 3. [Wrex’s Item isn’t as important as this mission] [Vote link]