22 Overlord

--> Cerberus is asking for my help in containing an emergency taking place on Aite in the Phoenix Massing cluster. The report is vague and urgent, saying only that disaster is imminent and details too sensitive for broadcast over open channel. Whatever’s going wrong, whatever Cerberus has been up to, better it be investigated by me than someone else, and better now rather than later.

--> Damned fool Cerberus. Some experiments are illegal for a reason. Does the Illusive Man think he can ignore obvious dangers without consequences, or does he simply not care about the damage if there’s a chance it will give him what he wants? How many lives have been lost to satiate his curiosity and greed?

Project Overlord has been developing a Human/VI hybrid in the hopes of exploiting the Geth’s worship of Sovereign: fabricate an VI god we can control, hope the Geth worship it, and we control the Geth. Madness. Depraved, unholy madness.

The Human subject, David Archer, brother to the chief scientist Dr. Gavin Archer, was plugged into the VI prematurely when the Illusive Man threatened to cut funding for want of results. Now the Archer/VI hybrid has gone berserk, turning all security drones against the scientists, even activating all the on-sight Geth Cerberus had been using in tests, and tried to launch itself off-world through the extranet. We managed to shut down the upload by destroying the entire com dish, but that still leaves us with a series of Cerberus research stations on the planet filled with dead Humans and homicidal robots under control of the VI. The only Human survivor we know of is Dr. Archer.

Time to clean up this damned mess.

--> I’d foolishly assumed David Archer’s role had been voluntary. I was wrong. He had been plugged into that damned VI like an electrical appliance, a tool without the choice of consent to the horrible state he was thrust into. The incoherent sounds the VI screeched at us throughout the mission grew clearer and clearer as we neared the centre. The sound of its voice became coherent enough as we reached the last doors for us to finally understand the words. It wasn’t an angry mass of synthetic noise as we’d thought. It was English, badly garbled but eventually decipherable “Make it stop, please. Please make it stop.”

We pulled David Archer out of that hell-hole and are taking him to Grissom Acadamy. If anyone can help him, it will be the Alliance doctors and teachers there.

Dr. Gavin Archer is lucky to have seen the last of me with his face still mostly intact. Humanity has real enemies, creatures that will eagerly destroy us and subject us to horrors. We don’t need Humans doing the Enemy’s work.

As horrific as project Overlord was, it is just one more entry in an already lengthy list of atrocities committed by Cerberus. How Miranda and Jacob can continue to tell themselves that each incident is an anomaly, and the Illusive Man is responsible for non of it, is quite beyond me. I'd known Cerberus was crooked and cut-throat before. If I'd known a few weeks ago what I know now, I'd have never agreed to this deal; I'd have instead gone straight to the Alliance, no matter the ensuing delay. But I am here, and I intend to make damn sure I don't waste it. The Illusive Man's empire of evil must at all costs be exposed and destroyed.

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