Location: Cerberus Blacksite – Sublevel 9, Restricted Biological Containment
The air stank of burned flesh and scorched metal. Flickering emergency lights cast long shadows along the corridor as Nihlus Kryik moved with surgical precision, rifle raised, footfalls soundless. His armor was scorched from earlier resistance, but he was alive, pulse steady, voice unreadable behind his visor.
He’d cleared eight floors. And now, he was deep beneath the surface, beyond where any mission brief said the facility should extend.
Sublevel 9 wasn't in the schematic.
The walls here pulsed faintly with heat, like the station itself was breathing. Doors were marked in Cerberus shorthand: S-07 / Secure Biogenetic Containment. The locks weren’t standard. Triple-encoded. Someone had wanted this floor forgotten.
Nihlus hacked the first door, overriding with a glyph he shouldn’t have access to. He entered a dark observation chamber with half a dozen shattered monitors looping corrupted logs.
One flickered back to life.
Log 457 – Subject 07
"Day 206. Sedation holding. Wing amputation complete. Subject screamed for eighteen minutes. All attempts at vocal suppression failed. Harmonic resonance broke every window on Sublevel 7."
"Still… she survives. Power levels rising again. We’ll need a new damping field."
Another log auto-played. This one had video. A woman...no, a being, chained upright in a containment tank. Glowing skin. Blood streaming from her shoulders where wings once arched like moonlight. Tubes threaded down her spine. Her eyes were barely open, lips parted.
She sang.
It was barely audible… but even the recording trembled.
The screen shattered with a soft pop, smoke curling from its casing.
Nihlus stood still for a long moment, mandibles flinching.
“Spirits…”
He moved on. The next door required physical override. A retinal scan. He growled, jammed a thermal knife into the seam, and forced the panel open with a grunt of effort.
The final room was sealed in black glass.
He stepped inside.
There she was.
The Velari. The myth. The goddess.
Chained to a hovering platform. Limbs limp. Breathing shallow. Her wings, nothing more than crystalline stubs, cauterized and twitching, still shimmered faintly in the dim emergency lighting.
Her skin was like silver in moonlight, etched with constellations that moved. Slowly. Drowsily.
A steady drip from an IV bag delivering enough sedatives to kill a krogan.
Nihlus stepped closer.
Her head turned just slightly, sensing something.
Her lips moved.
He knelt down. Closer.
She tried to speak. Nothing came.
But he felt it. Resonance. Not heard, he felt in his bones.
He locked his rifle to his back.
“I’ve got you,” he whispered. “By every god and spirit. I’ve got you.”
He reached under her. She was cold. Too cold. Her body trembled as he lifted her, careful not to jostle the wires or tubes.
When her body touched his chest, the hum of biotic energy flared. The lights pulsed. A low, harmonic chime echoed through the walls.
She wasn’t gone. Not yet.
And now… she wasn’t alone.