Mercer's Game

Noveria

Aleutsk Valley

"By the goddess," Liara whispered. She turned to Alex in the driver's seat of the Mako. "Is there anything you people can't do?"

"I agree," Garrus said. "Since when could Cole do anything with ice?"

Wrex already knew the truth, so he just sat there.

Alex laughed like a maniac. "Cole can gain new talents by applying deadly stress factors to his body. He's only ever tried it with electricity, but it looks like it works for ice too." He wasn't really lying. Alex had absolutely no idea that this would work, nor did he think his friends was stupid enough to try. Right now, he didn't even care that Cole had jeopardized their secret. He just was glad that Cole was alive and whole again. This was a mistake that needed to be corrected, and the crazy bastard had done it. 

Cole, for his part, was doing his utmost to calm. He was back. He was complete again. The gift from Lucy Kuo was once again at his disposal. But it felt stronger this time, and he was pretty sure he knew why. This time, it was much more than a transfer of twenty percent. Now it felt more like sixty. Lightning was still his forte, but ice had countless uses in the battlefield, from offensive, to defensive, to locomotive. 

Hopping off the stalagmite, Cole open his comm. "I'll race you guys there!" 

Alex smirked before answering. "You're on, but watch out for more geth."

"In this terrain, you leave them to me," the conduit growled.

With that, Alex floored the accelerator, taking off for Peak 15. He was looking up, expecting Cole to ice launch right over the tank, but a blur of yellow and black shot past him on the left. Like the Vermaak 88 shotgun troopers back in New Marais, Cole was utilizing the ice-dash, an ability to enhance speed by generating a field of frost beneath his feet to half-skate, half-sprint towards his destination. This allowed him to outrun the Mako easily. "Ease up, Cole!" Alex warned his eager friend. "You'll drain yourself dry at this rate."

Cole just laughed. "Not anymore. I'm drawing on the ice around me. I'm a made man in this blizzard!"

Alex was shocked. If that was the case, then Cole's plan had worked better than expected. Refocusing on the driving, Alex called for a radar check. Garrus' news was unpleasant to say the least. "We've got armatures, shock troopers, and turrets up ahead!"

Cole laughed again, sounding happier than he had been in over two years. "I'll handle the mobiles, you can have the turrets." Rocketing into the sky with an ice launch, he used static thrusters to maintain altitude until he was right above the first group of shock troopers. At that point, he cut the thrusters and smashed into them with a devastating thunder drop. Any units that didn't immediately fry in the blast were blown apart by a shatterblast, a shockwave filled with rapidly generated spikes of ice for maximum damage ouput.

Already ice-dashing again, Cole didn't even bother looking at the turret built into the cliff for two reasons. First, he wasn't generating any detectable body heat for the turret to target. Second, the damn thing was about to-

BOOM

Explode. Alex may be a sociopathic killer, but he was somehow the safest Supernova to have behind the wheel. And the gun was working again too, even after Cortana's sabotage on Agebinium. It was supposed to take another week, but the turian was that damn good at calibrations.

Rounding the first bend in the valley, Cole barely had time to swear as an armature opened fire with both primary and secondary weapons. While he didn't know whether plasma could hurt him or not, Cole wasn't in any hurry to find out. Luckily, it was painfully slow, posing no threat to someone with his agility. The secondary machine gun, however, had a faster rate of fire than the Mako's. It also wrapped its slugs in phasic jackets that could easily pierce Cole's polarity wall.

Expect Cole wasn't using a polarity wall to protect himself anymore. That ability was replaced by the frost shield, which Alex had once called, "the same damn thing, just colder and better." When he said "better" he meant exponentially better. The armature's machine gun rounds were stopped dead by the barrier of mixed of ice and lightning.

Keeping the shield up, Cole brought down a lightning storm that utterly wrecked the armature. Unfortunately there was another one in the distance. Dropping his defense, Cole ice launched away from the machine gun fire, but the walking tank had calculated his trajectory, firing a siege pulse at the spot where he would land. Too bad for the mechanical quadruped, Cole could defy that trajectory by engaging his static thrusters. The pulse went wide, and Cole launched a fearsome cryo rocket into the geth's head, shutting down its primary armament.

Hitting the ground, years of parkour and urban exploration instinctively sent Cole into a landing roll. Coming out of the roll, he immediately fired off a second cryo rocket, followed by a third, taking down the armature for good.

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"How does Cole already know what to do?" Garrus asked. "I'd have thought he'd need proper training to unleash all these new tricks."

Alex pondered this for a moment as Wrex scrapped yet another turret with the Mako's cannon. "I can't speak for Cole, but..." the virus raised his right hand in the air and shifted it into a claw, keeping his driving steady with his left. "This isn't the kind of thing that you can learn in the conventional sense. Nobody told a thresher maw that it could spit acide and strike with infrasound. Nobody explained to the first asari how to meld minds. It's instinct, plain and simple." Again, it wasn't a total lie.

Cole had cleared the path to Peak 15 almost completely, so they made their way without further incident. Wrex even complained that Cole had stolen all the fun. Pulling the Mako to a stop outside the Peak 15 entrance garage, Alex and the other three stepped out into the cold. "Shit it's freezing out her." Alex hissed. 

"Is it too late to mention that turians hate the cold?"

Cole looked at Garrus strangely as they walked inside. "You weren't complaining on Agebinium."

The sighed. "Yeah, that's because there was radiation on Agebinium."

Cole laughed as everyone stowed away their environment helmets, which had been useful in the blizzard but would only hinder them inside the facility. "Well, you'll be feeling a lot warmer if we can't solve this mess soon."

Alex tensed. "Cole... would you care to explain what that means?"

The conduit stopped laughing and paled. "Ryan didn't tell you did he?" Alex just glared. "Crap. Okay, here's the short version. There was some kind of 'containment failure' that Benezia allegedly came here to fix. Unfortunately, the breach was bad enough to trigger the facility's Code Omega. If that Code Omega isn't dealt with by the end of today, the Noveria executive board votes whether or not to hit this place with antimatter warhead."

Alex sighed, held up a hand, and closed his eyes. "I'm not going to kill you. Ryan should have passed this detail onto me when I was on the Normandy. Still, you know I hate being around WMDs!"

Cole flared his lightning. "Then let's get to work. There are hostiles in the next room, so we'll start there."

Indeed there were hostiles. A juggernaut, a destroyer, a shock trooper, and some kind of drone. Cole lobbed a pair of shock grenades at the synthetic soldiers, frying the shock trooper and blowing away the shields on the heavier units. Garrus targeted the destroyer's "head" and pulled the trigger.

His shot was stopped dead by kinetic barriers that shouldn't have been close to recharging. Garrus looked around wildly for a cause, and saw that the drone was a repair unit. Readjusting his aim, he blew a hole straight through the little bastard.

Tanking rockets and carnage blasts from the remaining synthetics, Alex leapt at them, shifting his right arm into a blade. Somersaulting in midair, the virus brought his organic weapon crashing down on the destroyer, cleaving it in half. The juggernaut took advantage of Alex's downward momentum and attacked him point blank with its shotgun. The sociopath's organic shield came up with microseconds to spare, absorbing the blast, but getting shredded in the process. Having no nerves in the shield, Alex didn't feel a thing. Rather than recoil, he simply kicked the confused juggernaut into Liara's waiting singularity field, which battered the geth against some heavy crates until Wrex detonated it with a warp.

They were about to say it was too easy, but three krogan roaring from the walkway did that for him. Free-soloing up the walls to intercept the massive warriors, Cole channeled a massive amounts of electricity and frost into his hands. Connecting his arms to the ground with sheathes of ice, the conduit unleashed an ionic freeze. It turned the landscape ahead of into glacial tundra, with giant spikes of ice penetrating the ground all along the way. The krogan never stood a chance, getting frozen in place by the onslaught and shattered by gunfire, biotics, and hammerfists.

"User alert." A synthesized voice called out over the speakers. "All Peak 15 have suffered a great deal of damage."

Well that sucked.

"Biohazard materials present throughout the facility," the voice continued.

Everyone glared daggers at Alex. He shrugged. "Wasn't me!"

"Virtual intelligence user interface offline." The voice apparently had no idea how annoying she was.

"Great," Wrex muttered. "This place needs to be fixed, and excepts for Liara, everyone here is an expert at breaking things." Nobody mentioned how damn good Liara was at breaking things with her biotics.

"I'm more concerned about the 'biohazard materials' in this place," Cole said thoughtfully. "We'll need to get the station's VI back online if we're gonna get any answers."

Agreeing that this was the best course of action, they headed further into the facility. Soon they came across a pair of defense turrets. Normally, this was the part where the shooting started, except these turrets were facing the interior door rather than the exterior one. Cole shuddered, knowing full well that such a positioning implied lethal enforcement of containment procedures, just like back in Empire City. "No doubt about it. This is a quarantine zone.

Alex was of the same mind. All the blood that Blackwatch had spilt in New York City was on Dr. Mercer's hands, both before and after the geneticist had released the virus in Penn Station. Gruffly, he muttered, "You set up turrets like that, and you're more concerned about keeping shit in than keeping it out."

Nobody responded the Alex's morbid bit of insight. They just stepped into the elevator, and rode it up into Central Station.

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SSV Normandy

Crew Deck

CO Quarters

Docked at Port Hanshan

"Find anything yet?" Ryan asked Cortana. They were looking for anything that might tell them what Cole, Alex and the others were walking into at Peak 15.

"Nothing," the AI replied. "But I'm close to..." She tilted her head curiously. "That's odd."

"What?" came the Chief's gruff voice.

"There's more than one quarantine in effect on Peak 15. The first is station-wide, and the other is isolated to a single room." The blue construct frowned. "What's the logic behind that?"

Ryan sighed. "Considering they've entered the facility, we'll know a lot more about the station-wide quarantine soon enough."

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Noveria 

Peak 15

Central Station

Cole alerted the squad to geth presence behind the next door, so they went into the destroyed cafeteria with guns blazing, biotics flaring, and Alex... rampaging. It was over in seconds, and the worst of the damage was a bullet through the viral runner's head, which instantly healed.

Cole was about to comment on how well they functioned as a team, when the creaking and groaning of metal on.... something. Liara gasped. "What was that?"

"Probably debris," Wrex sighed. "Don't have panic attack. I'll protect you." Of course the krogan severely doubted it was debris. But it was better than saying that his instincts were relentlessly screaming at him to find and kill the source of that noise. More than usual, that is.

Over by the butchered remains of a geth rocket trooper, Alex was going nuts. There was a presence here. A hive mind race of some kind. It was intelligent, cunning, and baying for blood, just like him. It would descend upon their position, and when it arrived, Alex knew one thing for sure.

The room would become a slaughterhouse for everyone standing in it. Friend and foe alike would be broken like twigs before a hurricane. Not because he was going to lose control, but because he needed to cut loose. As a virus, he was designed solely to kill. Through his own Blacklight hive mind, Alex could sense that the same was true for this new threat. Nature itself demanded that one of the two factions die. 

And Alex Mercer did not die.

Swiftly turning to the others, he issued a warning that only Cole would be able to interpret. "Cole!" He shrieked, catching his long-time friend's attention. Barely above a whisper, the Blacklight Virus said one word. "Predation."

Cole's joy at regaining his cryokinetic powers instantly disappeared, replaced by complete terror. This would be so much worse than Akuze. The conduit grabbed Liara by the arm and screamed at the top of his lungs. "Everyone get the fuck outta here!" Garrus obliged, but when Wrex hesitated and started to open his mouth, Cole yelled again. "Don't ask, dammit! Just run!"

There wasn't time to file into the hallway, so rushed them all to the corner of the cafeteria furthest from the action, and he generated a thick wall of ice to keep them safe, relatively speaking. "Whatever you do," he whispered. "Don't try to help. I don't care if Saren himself shows up. You do not want to be near Alex Mercer right now."

The looks on their faces showed mixed responses. Garrus was curious, already wanting to solve the mystery, like this was a C-Sec case. Wrex was barely able to contain his excitement. Throw in a slab of varren meat, and you had dinner and a show. Liara's expression was a mix of fear and interest. She was about to see the true face of the man that saved her life, and it would forever alter her view of him. For better or worse, however, she didn't know yet.

They all watched Alex as he stood there, claws at the ready. Then they heard it. A screeching noise filled the room, and they looked for the source. It had come from a giant spider-like creature with a pair of spindly tendrils that ended in large bulbs. Then, they saw another one. A third one appeared, accompanied by over dozen smaller green insect things. Their high-pitched wailing pierced the air a second time, before half of the small ones charged at an incredible speed.

Snarling, Alex delivered a punishing kick to the nearest bug, sending it flying. It slammed into its allies, knocking them all down like bowling pins. 

Explosive bowling pins. These things apparently were kamikaze bugs. The viral hunter had gotten lucky enough to kick it away before they managed to explode in a cloud of poisonous gas. The second wave of bomber bugs hadn't made it more than two feet when a malicious column of black spikes ripped through the ground and blew them all up.

The larger spider weren't idle during this time. One had been slowly approaching Alex, and upon seeing that its opponent was temporarily immobilized, it barreled forward, spitting acid on approach.

"Shit!" Alex swore as his left flank began to slough off, melted by the green fluid. He didn't care though. It was a small price to pay to eliminate every last one of those small bastards. Yanking his arm out of the ground, he yell, "Bring it!"

And the spider brought it. Before Alex could bring his claws to bear, the thing had already punched a hole straight through his gut with one of its tendrils. While Alex reeled from the shock, it sliced into his head with the second one. Roaring in pain and fury, the runner cut the tendrils off at the pods, grabbed the wounded creature by its now-truncated limbs, and ripped it apart with his bare hands. Drenched in alien innards, he yanked the pods out of his head and stomach and screamed, "Who's next?"

As if in response to his challenge, a fourth and fifth spider burst of the air vents on the floor. Alex quickly removed them from play by tossing the razor-sharp pods straight into their main body cavities, pulping their vital organs on impact. "Three down," he bellowed, shifting his right arm into the blade and the left back into a claw. "Three to go!"

There was a moment of silence, lasting all of a second and a half, as the warring parties soundlessly respected each other's power. Then all unholy hell broke loose as they sliced, diced, stabbed, impaled, spit acid, and expelled biomass in attempts to kill each other.

Garrus was in shock. Spirits... This was the kind of man he had been serving on the Normandy with? He knew the tales about Akuze, but he thought they had been somewhat exaggerated. If anything, the official story didn't give Alex Mercer enough credit. Sure, he was impressed, but more than that, he was worried: Why would someone - something - so incredibly powerful willingly obey Cole or Commander Ryan when the whole damn galaxy may as well be its plaything?

Wrex was in awe. "Animal fo Akuze" indeed. If he didn't know better, he'd think Alex was going into blood rage. The blood-soaked creature was no man. It was the humanoid equivalent of Kalros. There was something oddly familiar about the fight and the enemy, but Wrex just couldn't seem to place it...

Liara didn't move a muscle. Never had she witnessed something so primal in her life. If this was his ground state of being, then the willpower required to keep it in check the way he often did had to be enormous. For some reason, though, she wasn't scared. At least, she wasn't scared for her own safety. She couldn't say for the same for her mother, however. The young asari was beginning to understand that fighting Alex was an effort in futility. One had a better chance of fighting gravity or the forward movement of time. Alex Mercer was a force of nature, yet he strove to be a man as well, as shown by his interactions with others. Goddess.. This was all too much to take in. They had come here looking for Benezia and for answers about Saren. Yet all she could think about right now was the apex predator before her. 

As Alex sunk his entire blade into the last spider's neck, Cole sighed in relief. He had been afraid that the viral powerhouse would use a devastator in his excitement. Taking down their icy barricade with a shockwave, Cole motioned for the squad to follow. They complied, albeit hesitantly. The place was absolutely drenched in gore, and the room was covered with claw marks and acid burns. Alex looked even worse than the room, but the regeneration process had already begun.

Wrex was the first to break the silence. "I'm gonna skip the part where we awkardly avoid the matter like little girls and ask: What the hell brought that on?"

Alex gave a psychotic grin. "Instinct. These spiders are intelligent. They can plan. And they're probably the 'biohazard materials' that were mentioned on the speakers. If so, then we're on their turf. That makess us all targets. So, in the one language that every species understands, I sent a message that I am hunting them, and not the other way around." 

The last of his wounds beginning to close, he stalked off down the hall. The other caught up with him at an elevator, and for a moment, nobody moved. Alex figured out why everyone was just standing there, and he laughed. "I'm not gonna flip out and kill you all in the elevator, if that's what you're afraid of. I'm in total control."

Wrex just lumbered in, followed by Cole, Liara, and Garrus. "He's telling the truth," Cole said with a smirk. "He hasn't killed anyone inside an elevator of years now."

Alex twitched. "That was one time Cole! Besides I didn't flip out on my ex. It was completely premeditated."

"You... killed your ex in an elevator?" Liara asked, unsure what to think of this.

Alex grinned again. "She sold me out to government spooks to save her own skin."

Wrex grunted. "Payback's a bitch."

"So was she." Alex responded, not missing a beat.

Before the atmosphere had time to become awkward, the elevator opened, and another giant bug tore out of the air vent to greet them. Liara immediately lifted the creature into the air, where Cole, Garrus, and Wrex pounded it from a distance. "They seem vulnerable to biotics," the asari observed.

They made their way around the corner, killing a handful of the smaller explosive ones, and came to a halt before the VI core. Cole used his electricity to increase the signal strength of his comm. "Hey Ryan... how soon can you get to my location with Tali?"

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Thirty Seconds Later

The Splicer King appeared before them with the quarian girl holding his arm in a death grip. "This fast enough? I would have been here sooner, but Tali hates teleporting." He turned to the mechanic. "I told you that you could trust me." Looking back at the others, Ryan became all business. "What's the problem?"

They all simultaneously pointed at the VI core. Tali sighed. "I'll see what I can do." As she descended into the chamber, a metallic skittering noise echoed through the whole room.

"What... was that?" Ryan asked slowly, pulling out his shot gun with one hand and activating winterblast with the other for the heat diffusion.

"Good question," Cole muttered. "For now, the best answer we've got is big, intelligent spiders."

"Spiders?!" Tali yelled. "Of all things, it had to be spiders?!"

"Arachnophobic Tali?" Ryan inquired. Before she could respond, he spawned fiery cyclone traps all around the room, blocking off every possible entry point. "Defensive perimeter in front of the core, people. Don't let anything near our mechanic!"

Alex looked at the line of burning traps, and thought of New York. "Third general order," he said to himself. "Nothing crosses the Red Line."

Nothing did. Garrus put clean shots through the large ones' heads. Wrex alternated between pounding away with his shotgun and detonating biotic combinations with Liara. The asari was keeping the little ones at bay with singularities. Ryan had put away his shotgun in favor of placing  more traps, as well as attacking the bugs directly with any plasmid he thought would work. Alex was spearing anything that moved on the end of his whipfist. Cole was spamming lightning and ice, utterly surprising Ryan with his use of the latter.

"Since when can you do that?" the Splice King yelled, choosing his words carefully.

"That's nothing!" Cole replied. Charging a massive concentration of power into his arms, he let loose a second ionic freeze that devastated the bugs and seemed to bring an end to the fighting for now. Turning back to Ryan, the conduit glared. "I'll be sure to tell you all about it later." 

Ryan sighed, knowing that this would be an awkward post-mission debrief. "You done down there, Tali?"

"Yes. Can we get out of here now?"

Ryan chuckled. "So now you want me to teleport you?"

The quarian shook her head. "I'm taking the lesser of two evils!"

Ryan laughed, and waited while she rode the lift back up. 

Alex easily noticed the tone of Cole's voice. He began to go over the pieces in his head. "He's treating the return of his ice powers as an insult to Ryan. He lost said ice powers on the Columbia Paradox job. That would imply that Ryan was... Oh, son of a bitch!" 

While the group was conversing with a very annoying VI named Mira, Ryan felt the room's temperature drop twenty degrees, and knew it had nothing to do with the ice that Cole had just laid down. He turned around to see Alex Mercer seething with a quiet but powerful fury. He met the killer's glare unflinchingly and shook his head. Now was not the time.

"Commander Ryan," said a filtered voice. He looked at the nervous quarian. "As much as I love being in a freezing cold science facility crawling with spiders," she shuddered. "I'd really like to get out of here now."

"With pleasure," he responded. "Let's go." Grabbing her by the wrist, he teleported them back to the Normandy's engineering deck. Ryan silently thanked Tali for giving him a reasonable excuse to leave. He wouldn't put it past Alex to kill him right now.

Back in the Peak 15 VI Core, it became apparent that everything they wanted was at the facility's Rift Station. Of course, getting there wasn't going to be easy. Alex led Wrex and Liara up to the roof to reconnect the landlines, while Cole and Garrus headed for the reactor core.

This was less about getting the job done than it was about making that damn VI shut the hell up.

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Noveria

Peak 15

Central Station

Roof

Team 1

"More bugs!" Alex shouted, extending his claws and running straight into the thick of things.

"Remind me why we don't know what they are again?" Wrex yelled while launching a carnage blast from his shotgun, incinerating a spider on impact.

"Apparently," Liara commented while catching more small bugs in a singularity. "Cole's Spectre status grants us 'Secure Access' only. We need 'Privileged Access' to get that information."

"Which is complete..." Alex paused to raise his foot before bringing it down hard on the last spider's head. "Bullshit!" Liara gasped when she saw him reach down and grab his left arm of of a snowbank. "Come on, let's fix these damn landlines."

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Noveria

Peak 15

Central Station

Main Reactor Core

Team 2

"Scratch that one!" Garrus bragged as he blew the head clean off yet another geth. This had been going on for the past ten minutes, and they could hear a juggernaut stomping around above them.

"So let me get this straight," Cole thought out loud while firing bolts at the hoppers. "The geth are attacking us. The bugs are attacking us. Yet somehow, they aren't attacking each other?"

"Pretty much," the turian remarked, firing at the juggernaut that had finally come out to play.

"That's just messed," the conduit complained. He tossed a cluster grenade, a group of multiple shock grenades that clung to targets on contact. Three of the explosives caught onto the juggernaut, and they ripped the mechanical warrior to shreds.

"Alright, Garrus. Mira said it would be easy to repair these fuel lines. Let's hope she was right."

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Noveria 

Peak 15

Central Station 

Decontamination Chamber

Reunited Squad

"He killed himself." Liara observed, looking down at the dead salarian corpse. "Because he was part of whatever happened here." 

Wrex grunted. "Among my people, a suicide's body would be left for scavengers. The nathak will get to him eventually."

"That's exactly what this place needs Wrex," Garrus said dryly. "Nathak. Why didn't I think of it before?"

"We're wasting time," Alex muttered. He was eager to get this over with. Something about this whole place was starting to feel... off. The memories of the krogan and even a few asari that he'd consumed in the Terminus systems were on edge at the discovery of the spidery aliens. Not only that, but what could there possibly be linking Saren Benezia, and the geth to these giant bugs. There was also the small matter of an imminent antimatter warhead strike if they didn't hurry up.

Cole finally sighed, giving up on repairing the plasma vents conventionally. "Asari and gentlemen, I present the one solution that never requires me to RTFM." Placing both hands on the terminal, he ran a forced massive electrical current through it, and was reward with the screams of dying insects within the decontamination chamber. "Works every time," he snickered.

The victory was short lived as yet another bug burst out of the vents. By now, however, the air vent ambush had become tedious rather than surprising. The thing was dead in seconds.

They dealt with the small spiders at the other side of the decontamination chamber just as efficiently, and stepped onto the tram.

"Now departing Central Station," Mira declared, much to everyone's annoyance. "Destination: Rift Station."

Alex's heightened senses could easily pick up Liara's erratic pulse. She was trying so hard to keep calm, but this was bothering her to no end. Alex thought of what he could do to remedy the situation even slightly. She'd get herself killed otherwise. Luckily, she addressed him first.

"Alex," the asari said hesitantly. The living virus turned to look at her. "Promise me something." Her tone made it sound like a last request.

"Anything," Alex responded instantly. Strangely enough, he realized that he meant it too. It didn't matter. With what she was going through right now, whatever she wanted, she'd get. 

"Promise me that... even if my mother refuses to tell us anything..." A tear slid down the blue woman's face. "Promise me that will not... You will not take... Ugh!" Unable to finish, Liara began to sob gently.

Liara couldn't say it, but the message was clear as day: She was begging him not to consume Benezia. Even at the beginning, in New York, he never interacted with children and that was when he didn't give a damn. Now, he had this girl who knew that they would soon likely be confronting her mother. And she was asking Alex to be a man she could trust instead of a monster just here to kill.

Sighing, Alex reached down and placed a comforting hand on Liara's shoulder, taking great care not to accidentally hurt her. She looked up at him with hope in her eyes. He didn't let her down. "Liara, you haven't seen you're mother in years. If this ends up being the last time you see Benezia, I won't make... that you final memory of her." He shifted his other hand into a claw, and literally "crossed his heart" for good measure, earning a tiny smile from the teary-eye asari. She looked at him, trying desperately to find words that would express her gratitude.

The tram docked with Rift Station, jolting everyone inside. When Liara looked back up, Alex was already walking out the door alongside Wrex. The krogan accused the hooded Supernova of going soft.

"You caught me, Wrex," Alex said with zero sarcasm. "I have indeed gone soft over the years."

Amused by the battlemaster's confusion, the virus grinned. "As you saw back at Central Station, I used to much, much worse."

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