Drew Karpyshyn - Retribution

Using Grayson’s undamaged hand, the Reapers ripped the pistol from the belt of the commander’s corpse, stood up, and delivered three kill shots execution style to the helpless turians on the ground.

Caught completely off guard by the unprovoked assault, the two turians up front were just now getting out of their seats to try and help their brethren. Grayson dropped the pistol and closed the distance between them, moving so quickly that everything around him became a blur.

His good hand wrapped itself around the wrist of the nearest turian and yanked him off his feet, tossing him to the back of the shuttle, where he landed with a heavy thud atop the bodies of the others.

This provided just enough time for the second turian to bring his assault rifle up. But as he squeezed the trigger Grayson slapped the nose of the weapon down. A stream of bullets deflected off the floor of the shuttle and ricocheted wildly around the reinforced walls of the cabin.

Several rounds ripped through Grayson’s flesh: one through the shoulder of his damaged hand, another through the knee of the opposite leg, two through the thigh. There was a cry of pain as the stunned turian lying in the back of the shuttle was hit as well.

Grayson yanked the rifle from his opponent’s grasp with his one good hand, taking it away as easily as an enraged parent might snatch a toy from a petulant child. Then he swung the rifle like a club, slamming it into the side of the turian’s helmet. There was a muffled grunt and the unconscious body went limp.

Ignoring the pain from the rounds in Grayson’s knee and thigh, the Reapers spun him around and sent him leaping through the air to land on the turian at the rear of the vessel as he tried to get up, knocking him back to the floor. Then the Reapers had Grayson lift up one of the heavy boots and bring it smashing down on his back again and again and again, cracking vertebrae, severing the spine, and causing him to spew frothy indigo spittle across the floor as the internal injuries caused his dark blue blood to seep into his lungs.

When the turian beneath Grayson’s boot had been reduced to a lifeless, pulpy mass, the Reapers stopped. Moving with purpose but without hurry, they piled all the bodies — including the still unconscious turian who had been bashed on the side of the head — into the airlock.

Had Grayson been in control of his body, he probably would have thrown up in reaction to the brutal assault. As it was, however, the Reapers kept him from having any physical reaction at all.

The most horrifying part was the cold, efficient way the savage attack had been planned and carried out. Grayson had sensed no anger or rage on the part of the Reapers as they had used him as an instrument of wanton slaughter. The massacre wasn’t motivated by hate or even a sadistic desire to destroy organic life. The Reapers had analyzed the situation, determined a course of action, and followed it without any emotion whatsoever.

This, more than anything else, terrified their human host. It seemed to symbolize an inevitability about the Reapers, as if nothing could stop their relentless, passionless pursuit of their goal.

Once all the bodies were secured in the airlock, the Reapers had Grayson take a seat in the pilot’s chair. Using his good hand, they punched in a series of commands that first disabled the vessel’s transponder, then brought them out of FTL travel.

Grayson was an experienced pilot, but he had never been trained on a turian vessel. Alone, he probably could have fumbled through the process, but the Reapers moved with precision and certainty.

They had an intimate knowledge of turian technology, and he could think of only one reasonable explanation.

The Reapers were gathering knowledge about him and his environment, recording everything they came into contact with. He didn’t know how many of the aliens were in his head; sometimes it felt like a single entity, other times it felt like billions of individuals. In either case, however, it wasn’t unreasonable to assume they shared whatever information they collected with others of their kind. Following this train of thought, if the Reapers had ever possessed a turian in the past for a long period of time, they could have learned virtually everything there was to know about that species. And now they were using Grayson to learn all they could about humanity.

The Reapers hit the eject button on the airlock, jettisoning the bodies into the cold vacuum of space.

Then they plotted a new course — too quickly for Grayson to catch the final destination — and made the jump to light speed again. Finally, despite his heroic struggle to oppose their will, the Reapers closed his eyes and made him fall asleep.

As she ran on the treadmill, Kahlee remained intently focused on her technique. She didn’t believe in simply putting one foot in front of the other until she was out of breath and dripping with perspiration.

There was an art to running; function followed form. She maintained an optimal stride length, kept her breathing under control, and focused on pumping her arms with each stride. Her pace never varied, and the kilometers — and minutes — rolled past.

The turian strike teams had left roughly twelve standard hours ago. Four hours after that, C-Sec had swooped in and arrested key Cerberus operatives for interrogation, including many high-ranking Alliance officials. As soon as the arrests were complete, Orinia had gone to oversee the interrogations. She had yet to return.

Anderson was gone as well, swallowed up by a maelstrom of meetings with representatives of the

Alliance and the Turian Hierarchy in an effort to avert a political catastrophe. That left Kahlee alone in the turian embassy with nothing to do but wait for them to return. She didn’t like to wait.

Patience had never been her strong suit. She was used to tackling multiple tasks at once. Whenever she felt bored or restless, whenever she felt the world dragging itself too slowly for her liking, she would throw herself into her work and occupy her mind with difficult, complex problems.

In that vein, she had tried reviewing the Cerberus data one last time, but there really wasn’t any point.

Not with the turian strike teams already deployed. She had employed a number of other methods to distract herself — surfing the extranet, reviewing data collected from the children of the Ascension Project, even watching a romantic comedy vid — but nothing helped. Knowing the plan to destroy Cerberus had been set in motion made it virtually impossible to concentrate on anything else.

In the end she’d resorted to a crude but effective therapy to vent her frustration: physical exertion. The turians had been gracious enough to offer her access to the fitness facilities of their embassy, and for the last three hours she had engrossed herself in a punishing cardio workout while waiting for an update on the strike teams.

She noticed a small ache building in her left knee, and she reluctantly reduced the speed of the treadmill to a walking pace. As a classic type A personality, she had a habit of overdoing things. After suffering many painful repetitive-stress injuries in her youth, she’d finally learned to pay attention to the warning signs her body gave her.

With the slower tempo, however, her mind began to wander back to the very things she was struggling to avoid. Could the turians really bring down Cerberus? Was it possible they might actually capture the Illusive Man? Would they ever find Grayson? And if they did, would he still be alive?

The questions gnawed at her, forcing her to pick up the pace again. But now that the ideas were firmly entrenched in her thoughts, even her run couldn’t drive them back into her subconscious. After another twenty minutes she shut the treadmill down.