43 Task Force Aurora

--> Priority message from Admiral Hackett. I am to report to a Dr. Bryson on the Citadel and render him all possible assistance, details classified. This sounds important.

Joker says we spend so much time running back to the Citadel we should save fuel and just “sit-a-there”. I say he needs to stop making eyes at EDI; it's not healthy, this growing fascination of his with his robot copilot.

--> Ashley's time has been well spent during my absence, bagging quite a prize in the Minos Wasteland. The Cerberus defectors have been successfully rescued. Top scientists, they deserted en mass with their families when they realised their members were disappearing like clockwork as they completed their given assignments. While initially thinking they’d given Cerberus a clean slip, they'd soon found themselves trapped on the planet Gellix, surrounded, grounded, and out-gunned. The Illusive Man would have killed every single one of them rather than see them escape.

Jacob, who had remained with Cerberus when I left for the Alliance, was leading what little defence the scientists could put up against their pursuers, and had already taken a bullet by the time the Ashley and the Normandy showed up. Nevertheless the operation was a success: Jacob and almost all of his compatriots got out of there alive. Their expertise will be quite welcome in our construction of the Crucible.

Jacob has chosen to remain with the Cerberus scientists rather than rejoin the Normandy. Specifically, he’s offered his services to Alliance leadership as advisor on Cerberus strategy and tactics. For my part, I trust Jacob's sincerity, and have officially vouched for him. The man doesn’t have a deceitful bone in his body, and having been finally convinced of the Illusive Man’s true nature, Jacob can be counted upon to fight against his erstwhile superior with all earnestness.

There is, however, the possibility of spies hidden amongst the scientists. They’ll help build the crucible, but they’ll be kept under discreet observation. I hate to seem suspicious of people who, in all likelihood, sought merely to save their own lives, but Cerberus has a solidly established habit of sleeper agents wrecking sudden havoc. Udina was not the only traitor on the Citadel.

One such “mole” was the Volus Ambassador. Political discretion forbids I make this story publicly known. Din Korlack had already begun to have doubts about his ties with Cerberus by the time they attacked the Citadel. After that, they used blackmail to gain information through him on classified Turian shipping. He then cut ties with Cerberus, but not before certain Turian officers put a bounty on his head. I pulled his little tail out of the fire, and he told me of an attack Cerberus is planning on the Turian shipyards at their colony on Aphis. When Cerberus arrives there, they’ll find a warm welcome. Korlack will remain on the Citadel for the time being, where C-Sec can keep an eye on him.

It irritates me no end. The bloody Reaper invasion is underway, Earth is under occupation and being harvested, and not only am I not fighting on Earth, I’m spending as much time fighting Cerberus as Reapers. Cerberus was supposed to be an underhanded force for Humanity, and instead they’re doing their level best to ensure our downfall. So the Illusive Man wants to control the Reapers; but does that hair-brained scheme of his require the destruction of the forces that oppose the Reapers? I’m becoming more and more convinced that the likelihood of, if not Cerberus, at least the Illusive Man being to some extent Indoctrinated, is very high. It would have to be a subtle measure of the affliction, enough to twist his mind without rendering him senseless. Maintaining such a delicate balance on such an intrinsically insidious and slippery slope as Indoctrination must require a very cautious measure of controlled exposure.

I've consulted Alliance Intelligence. We still do not have the location for the Cerberus central HQ. Over the course of this conflict, all Cerberus personnel that have been seized have either committed suicide, been too thoroughly reeducated to be of any use, or simply not known anything crucial. I mined Cerberus for all the data I could get my hands on during the Collector Crisis, and even that had failed to reveal the centre of the spider's web. Comprised of isolated Cells, each of which operates independently of the others, the whole network is specifically designed to thwart discovery. All Alliance assets, combat, intel, and logistics, are strained to the limit; we simply don't have the margin to track down Cerberus at this time. The Illusive Man remains, in a word, elusive.

When it all goes down, it won't be enough to destroy the Reapers; we have to walk through that fire with enough strength remaining to ensure that Cerberus is not left dominant. It would never do to slay the dragon only to be ruled by the jackal.

Citadel is in sight, docking clearance granted. Time to find Bryson. Crew has shore-leave for two hours.

--> Bryson is dead, shot by his assistant almost as soon as we walked into his office, as though it were our arrival that prompted the action. The shooter, Bryson’s assistant, is named Hadley. His dossier checks out clean. Had there been any suspicion of his being a security compromise, he’d have never been assigned to Bryson’s team, Task Force Aurora. After the event he claimed that he had no memory of shooting his superior, then collapsed after delivering an odd message: “Turn back. The darkness can’t be breached.” He’s now comatose in a Citadel hospital under C-Sec watch.

Task Force Aurora was assigned to investigate all unexplained phenomena, past and present, that could lead to information on the Reapers. Bryson had begun following leads on what had caused the death of a Reaper found by the Batarians. This Reaper corpse, the Leviathan of Dis, as the Batarians called it, had been their downfall. Their people studying it had become Indoctrinated, and betrayed them to the Reapers. Bryson believed that the true Leviathan was not the dead Reaper, but the thing that had killed it. Unlike the Reaper corpse I acquired the IFF from to reach the Collector base, which had been killed by a defunct mass accelerator of enormous scale, the means of this other Reaper’s death is unaccounted for, and conspicuous by absence. Bryson’s investigation indicates that the cause of death was mobile: no possible remains of a weapon powerful enough were to be found anywhere near Dis. Moreover, the nature of the damage done to the Reaper was unique. It had been crushed.

That is a sobering thought. There’s something out there in the depths of space, something we know nothing about, that has the power to crush a Reaper.  To say that is unprecedented is an understatement of the highest degree.

Using a search pattern founded on alleged deep-space creature sightings crossed with Reaper hunting patterns – they are evidently searching for Leviathan too – Bryson’s field teams are searching the Aysur system for clues. We’re heading there now.

Garrus voiced the concern that finding this thing may very well necessitate its destruction. Despite the fact that it killed a Reaper, we have no guarantee of its disposition, or even its intelligence: it could be sentient, or it could be a more-or-less vegetative creature that destroys everything it catches. We only know that it's dangerous. Whatever the case, we need to know where it is, and more importantly, what it is.

--> Dr. Garnaue, Bryson’s foremost field searcher, is dead. The station he was on is ostensibly a mining operation, but was instead researching everything from the digestive properties of Varren to varieties of carnivorous flora to the evolutionary implications of Human biotics.

Every person aboard that station was in a half-daze, as though the bulk of their brain function had been suspended, or diverted. We found an artefact in the mines; a dark orb with an inner glow, but it was immediately destroyed by one of the resident personnel. Immediately thereafter, everyone on the station stood up and looked about them as though they had been asleep. They’re ten years behind times. They are now in Alliance custody for psychological evaluation and security. It appears the artefact we almost got our hands on was the means for what more or less equates to a form of indoctrination, different from standard Reaper Indoctrination in that once the source was destroyed, the effects were immediately terminated, and the subjects recovered their minds. The control was an active imposition of will, not a complete rewriting of the subject.

There was another such artefact in Bryson’s office. We have an object with undefined powers of Indoctrination right in the heart of the Citadel.

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