Part 2

Warning: This chapter of the story may contain foul language and scenes some people may find upsetting.



They sprinted. Without looking back. Rounds from weapons flashed past them as they dived for cover around the corner of the street. They could still hear the dull thuds as incoming projectiles hit the building they were hiding behind.
"Shit. What do we do?" Renswick asked, slightly out of breath from the furious running.
"We need to get out of here. We need to lose them. If they follow us they could stop us from escaping. We need to run or fight or something."
"There's too many to fight. We should try and outrun them. They can't run as fast as us, right?"
Husks came into view. Thomson and Renswick opened fire with their M-8 Avengers, peppering them with holes. They fell to the floor, oozing a green substance which fell around them like a blanket.
They decided to run again. They were only two. Not exactly strong enough to take on a large group of Husks and other deadly creatures. If they managed to find reinforcements or something then they could stand a chance, but as they sprinted down the adjoining street, yet again it was empty. Maybe the people had fled, or perhaps they had been killed. Thomson wasn't sure, but the important thing was to get away from planet Earth to see if they could get people to help.
They turned down another street. It seemed to be some sort of high-street, because there were plenty of shops - all with broken windows and cracked brickwork. Unless people had decided to loot, Thomson knew that it was most likely the Husks that had broken in and had already passed through the area.
Something about seeing the previously busy street empty and quiet was upsetting. He tried to concentrate on what was in front of him, rather than looking up into the sky at the covering of synthetic organisms that ruled the skies. For miles around, all there was on the ground were the giant squid-like Reapers, which still were firing blasts of energy and causing mass devastation. There was a quiet and thick blanket of black smoke drifting up into the air from several locations. Big Ben was the tallest structure standing, and it seemed even that had not escaped the Reapers. The glass of the clock was smashed and it had large parts missing out of the tower.
Thomson and Renswick searched for movement in the shops. They had to do so quickly, because they could hear the Reaper ground forces moving behind them. But they couldn't see anything, no survivors. No bodies, even. That kind of made Thomson think that they had been taken to be converted into Husks.
They carried on running. Down the remains of the high-street and across a bridge. Alliance shuttles were flying overhead as an act of evacuation, but they were easily taken down by a Harvester. Harvesters were roughly bird shaped and were made out of metal like the Reapers were. They were used to transport Husks and other ground troops into combat situations but they were also very good at taking care of small shuttles by just... flying into them. An act of kamikaze.
Thomson didn't want to think what it would have been like inside the shuttles. Been so close to escaping, just to be taken down at the last moment.
There were sounds of scraping from around the next corner. They froze and pushed their backs against the wall.
It sounded like a Husk. The scraping and scratching of claws. It was continuing the 'cycle' of the Reapers, amongst the millions of other Husks on Earth.
The Reapers attacked in 'cycles'. They believed that organic organisms would create synthetics to help the quality of their lives, for example as workers. The Reapers believed that the synthetics would rise against their creators and aimed to stop it by wiping out most organic life in the galaxy, allowing smaller and less advanced civilisations to rise. Thomson didn't understand most of it, he wasn't an expert or anything, but he knew that was around about what they did.
He raised his rifle, slowly moving it around the corner. His finger was tightening on the trigger. At the first sign of movement he'd-
A figure stepped into view. A hand knocked the gun to the side so he drew his pistol and pointed it at the figure's head.
"Don't shoot!" said a female, accented, slightly synthetic voice, "Please don't shoot."
Only then did Thomson pause to see who it was. The helmet marked her out as a Quarian - a race of humanoids who lived at the edge of the galaxy. Quarians wore a kind of protective armour - more of a suit - which prevented diseases from getting in. Because they had lived for years on the Migrant Fleet - a large group of spacecraft that was the new home of the Quarian race after their home world was destroyed - they had next to no immune system due to the fact it was kept sterile. So the Quarians chose to wear the protective suits to prevent them from dying. The Quarian he now faced had a purple-pink visor to her helmet and a gold-grey hood that covered the rest of her head. She was wearing a purple and black environment suit.
She was definitely female. Recognisable by her slim but curvy figure. She was smaller than him - all Quarians were smaller than the average human, and she had three fingers on each hand. Two glowing eyes were visible from behind her visor, but otherwise her features were completely hidden. Her hips were wider than the rest of her body, but equally curved. They didn't look out of place.
"Who are you?" Thomson asked, holstering his Predator and lowering his Avenger.
"My name is Emi'Derik nar Neeah, or nar Earth when I return back to my people," the Quarian told him, the sound of fear in her voice,"I'm an ambassador for the M...M... Migrant Fleet."
Renswick pointed his rifle at her, "Humans have no political relations to the Quarians. Tell us the truth."
She seemed to step back and lower her head. Maybe from fright. It wasn't every day the Reapers invaded and you were threatened by two special operations soldiers. Thomson guessed how she was feeling - scared and unsure of herself.
Emi'Derik seemed to trip over her words, "Tha... tha... that's not true. The Fleet will be passing Earth in a few years and I was s... sent here to build up political relationship between our pl... planets so we were friends when we arrived. Pl... please don't shoot me..."
Thomson knew how the Quarian names worked. They were split into four parts. The Quarian's actual name - in her case Emi. Then came the name of her clan separated by a '. The 'nar' after the first two parts of her name indicated several things. 'Nar' in the Quarian language meant 'child of'. The 'Neeah' was the ship in the Migrant Fleet she was born on, meanwhile 'nar Earth' meant she was a child of the Earth... an ambassador.
'Nar' also indicated she was a junior Quarian. Younger than 25. She must have been sent out on her Pilgrimage - a task that all Quarians took to experience life outside their own fleet. They would have to bring back a gift, something of value. They would then live in a different ship once they returned and present the gift to their captain as a sign of good faith. Because they would live in a different ship it would stop breeding within families. Or something of the sort.
Maybe her Pilgrimage had been cut short by ambassadorial duties.
"I think she's telling the truth, Renswick. Lower your gun."
Renswick did as he was told. His Avenger was pointing at the floor.
"Emi, do you want to come with us? It wouldn't be a good idea to stay here, with the Reapers being around. You can come on board my ship, it's called the SF-2 Falcon and the shuttle is only a few miles away."
"I... I think that would be nice. I won't stay long if you don't want me to but..." Emi responded, slowly looking up at Thomson, "... Thank you."
"You're welcome. And we seriously need to go. They're coming and we need to get to the shuttle."
"I'm sorry... I didn't bring any weapons..." she said.
"Less talk, more walk," Renswick shouted, "Come on!"
They ran down the street, just as the Reaper ground forces came into view behind them. Thomson pulled a grenade from his belt, pressed the red circle on the top and then threw it. It bounced at the feet of a Marauder, who seemed to look down at it curiously.
Then it detonated. The Marauder was thrown backwards and many Husks around it dropped and didn't get up. Renswick fired his rifle on full-auto, spraying the street with rounds that felled many of them. But more moved to take their place.
Thomson saw a blue blast of energy as they began firing at them. He pulled Emi to the side and Renswick rolled out of the way as they avoided it.
He moved Emi behind his back to stop her from being shot, then opened fire with his rifle too. Every round found its mark and green liquid sprayed out of many of the enemies. Several of the Reaper forces returned fire and his shield flickered blue as they stopped the incoming projectiles.
Thomson stopped shooting for a moment, and threw a sphere of biotics at the enemies that covered the street. It hit one of the Marauders at the front and it was instantly torn apart at a molecular level.
"Renswick," he said into the communicator, "I'll shockwave them and then we'll run. Ok?"
"I'll cover you," was the reply.
He sent a shockwave out, alike to the one he had used to bust down the door. Blue ripples were sent out as the mass effect field tore through the air. It collided with the Husks a moment later, sending them flying and knocking them over until the energy dissipated into the air.
Renswick sprinted to them, shooting his rifle to cover himself if there were any enemies who had not been thrown backwards. Thomson meanwhile grasped Emi by the hand to make sure she kept up, and they finished running down the street as the Reaper forces recovered and started the pursuit again.
"Th... Thanks for protecting me," Emi said as they swapped to another street. This one was full of houses, but there were still no survivors. The Quarian was the first person they had seen alive since the Reapers had attacked.
"You're the first person we've seen. Of course we're going to keep you alive," Thomson answered with a smile inside his helmet, letting go of her hand. They slowed to a walk, knowing full well that they needed as much energy as possible to get out of London alive. There was no point wasting it when there could be battles to fight.
"Do you know where you are?" Renswick asked Emi, "It's rare we come to this part of London. We only walked through it - I think - once to go to the hotel. It's not a part of the city I'm familiar with. Since you're an ambassador, you will have explored, right?"
"... W... Well yes. I think I was here a few times. I met some of your ambassadors in a restaurant one night. But it was a while ago and it didn't look as... ruined, as it does now... I hope the people who were here are alright... it was a very busy part of down and now there's just... no one."
"You don't have to be scared," Thomson told her, then added in an attempt to reassure her, "We'll keep you safe. In a few hours we'll be on board the Falcon and have jumped to the Citadel. As long as we try and avoid the Reapers we should be fine. If you want, you could lead the way. Since we don't really know where we are and all, you might know a short cut we don't."
"Ok," she responded. Her hands were shaking but she didn't look as frightened as she did before. Thomson and Renswick were like her bodyguards.
"Oh Keelah, now I have to remember the way..." she added. Thomson wasn't sure what 'Keelah' meant, maybe a way of saying "oh my god" in their language. She moved in front of Thomson and Renswick and started looking around - perhaps for something familiar she could use as a marker to know where to go.
Renswick moved next to him, "Do you think we can trust her? She is a Quarian... famous for being thieves. She might be trying to steal from us. She is a young Quarian, right? So she needs something to bring back to the Migrant Fleet. She might want to take something from us. I bloody hate Quarians... the stupid bastards brought the Geth into the galaxy and then we're just supposed to accept them? How many years did we spend fighting the Geths? Three?"
"Two and a half. And I trust her. There's something about her. She's hardly a threat to us, she doesn't even carry a weapon. We should take her to the ship and then go to the Citadel to alert the council."
Geths were a race of humanoid synthetic organisms created by the Quarians as workers. They had shown signs of evolving which made the Quarians worry, and give them reason to try and kill them all. There was a war between the Geths and the Quarians that had lasted many years and still continued, neither side being able to defeat the other. The Geths' need to survive provoked them to address the Reapers to get 'upgrades'. The upgrades significantly increased the Geth's capacity for war. Thomson and Renswick had spent two and a half years trying to fight them.
"The council won't do anything. They're too busy worried about themselves to help."
"We've got to take that chance. We can drop Emi off at the Migrant Fleet after and then see what we can do. There must be something."
"I say we ditch the bloody alien, go to the Citadel and wait until they do something."
"Ditch 'the bloody alien'?" Thomson responded, "She's a Quarian and her name is Emi. Since when did you start thinking like Cerberus?"
Cerberus were a pro-humanist/anti-alien group who were more like an army. They were fighting to make humans the most dominant species in the galaxy. They were always doing something suspicious, and always enjoyed a bit of attacking spacecraft and trying to invade certain areas that give them a strategic advantage. Somehow, they seemed to be very popular - popping up in the places you least expected them.
"She'll just slow us down! Put us at risk! She barely knows where she is, let alone where she's going!"
"Emi is the first survivor we've seen. She can back us up at the Citadel. Prove that we're speaking the truth."
"The Citadel hates Quarians," pointed out Renswick, "They'll more likely lock her up."
"But she's an ambassador. Councillor Udina should back us up with that, even if the others don't."
Councillor Udina was Earth's representative on the council, which was made up of different leaders from several races. The Quarians had been banned from having a seat on the council. Not many people trusted them.
"Ok. Fine! But don't expect any sympathy when she steals from us, or we end up dead. You're like 'Oh yeah the poor Quarian' like she's going to help to save us. Ha!"
Emi walked towards them. "... I know where I am... or at least I think I do. It's hard to think when everything is like this..." she told Thomson, then pointed to a smaller adjoining road, "If we go up there then it should be a straight run for three miles before we reach your shuttle... again, I think..."
"Thanks for the help, Emi," he told her. Renswick just looked at her as if she was not something to be trusted under any circumstances. Like someone who had deceived him.
"It's ok. I just want to get off this planet... oh keelah. I can't believe this is happening..."
"Huh. Trust me. It doesn't help being an experienced soldier," Thomson responded.
"... they told me that I would be safe," Emi continued, "A nice little job as an ambassador on a nice little planet with some nice people there to look after me... and then this happens... I'm glad I have you two though... you're like... thank you..."
They changed direction so they were off the street with the houses on and on to the road that Emi told them would lead straight to the shuttle. Thomson couldn't wait to get away from Earth, to get people to come back and to try and destroy the Reapers. He briefly wondered where Cerberus were in all this - surely it'd have been their thoughts 'Oh the race we consider the best in the galaxy is under attack, let's help them'. But there were no signs. Not even a single Cerberus shuttle was in the sky. They were probably hiding. Or attacking some aliens.
"It's fine, Emi. Thank you for your help. We'd have already got lost without you."
"Oh yeah and we couldn't have just used GPS?" Renswick countered.
"... If it's alright to say, I don't think the satellites will be working... there's such a large amount of Reapers that they'd have probably destroyed them all."
"So GPS wouldn't work," Thomson added.
Renswick stayed silent.
"So we'll walk for a few miles and then we'll be able to escape?" Thomson asked Emi.
Emi nodded, "I think so. If I remember correctly... less than an hour away."
There were sounds of Husks from the street behind them. Growls and grunts and the scraping of claws.
"It's going to be close," Thomson said, "If we hurry up we might beat them to the shuttles but they're too fast just to continue walking. Especially on a straight road."
"Oh keelah, I can hear them..."

With a mixture of sprinting, jogging and power walking, they reached the landing pad in just above half an hour. In that time, they had encountered the Husks twice, both times of which they managed to escape by the use of a shockwave. Thomson had also learned a lot about the Quarian culture, as most of the time he had been talking to Emi. She had spoken of the cramped conditions inside the ship she was born on. Apparently, even with the massive amount of ships they had at their disposal, space was short and families were cramped into places designed for storage. She talked about the start of her Pilgrimage - how the whole crew of the ship had lined up to send her off, and how after she had completed it she would become one of the crew of a ship and be a full Quarian adult.
In return, he had told her about the training he had to do to gain the N7 status. All the combat zones he had been in. All the worlds he had been to. She seemed very interested in that. Emi had told him that she had always wanted to travel around the galaxy. But she had never been anywhere other than the Migrant Fleet and Earth.
Renswick was still in a terrible mood when they reached the landing pad. He wasn't sure what he disliked about Emi, she seemed a nice person and had not done anything to him but help them. But when he saw the black and blue shuttle in the hangar he cheered up and started talking again, though admittedly not to the Quarian.
The blue door of the shuttle swung down with a whir, revealing the dark interior. Thomson was the first to enter, starting it up with a few presses of a hologram on the inside of the door. Lights flickered on and the engines hummed. Emi was the next to step on board the shuttle, followed by Renswick.
"Emi, if you'd like to sit down just behind the cockpit, since it's like the only unoccupied seat. We'll be at the Mass Relay soon and then we'll go to the Citadel."
Renswick and Thomson moved to the cockpit of the shuttle, an array of orange holograms that controlled the small ship, whilst Emi sat behind them in a black chair. Thomson made the shuttle rise off the ground and immediately move so it was heading away from the Reapers. He had to dodge several Harvesters but he engaged the speed module and was out of Earth's atmosphere in minutes. The further he got from Earth, the less Reapers there were. Though they were still landing.
Then the blue of the Earth vanished, and they looked into the starry blackness that was space.
It all seemed so silent. So peaceful. It was a complete contrast to what was happening on Earth. The massacred people. All the death. All the empty streets. All the energy fired from the Reapers.
A large grey shape came into view. It had two rotating disks on one side that spun around a glowing blue energy as if it was keeping it in place. The Mass Relay.
The Mass Relays were the 'simple' way of travelling around the universe. They used element zero and allowed ships to move faster than the speed of light.
But parked next to their way out was the SF-2 Falcon. A blue and black spacecraft, looking sleek and mighty whilst bathed in the blue light from the Mass Relay. It had four blue-glowing engines at the back of the ship.
"This is SF-2 Falcon shuttle 2," Renswick said into the communicator, "Requesting docking. We've escaped from Earth after a Reaper attack and we need to get to the Mass Relay now!"
"Roger that," said the pilot. His name was Max and was one of the best pilots in the galaxy. He could take you anywhere you wanted to go, even in the trickiest situations. He had once managed to navigate his way through an asteroid belt without being hit once.
A hatch on the side of the Falcon opened, revealing three shuttle bays. Two were occupied, one was not.
As a team effort, Thomson and Renswick managed to steer the shuttle into the unoccupied bay. Clamps clicked in place to secure the ship, before the hatch closed back down. A hissing noise was audible as the air lock sealed. They opened the hatch quickly as the Falcon turned towards the Mass Relay.
"Welcome back Captain," said one of the crew as they left the shuttle, "Who is the Quarian?"
"Her name is Emi'Derik and she was the only survivor we saw. She'll help us at the Citadel to validate our claim that the Reapers have attacked Earth. If you harm her or verbally abuse her you'll be thrown off the ship. Ok?"
"Yes sir," said the crew member who addressed them, "Understood sir."
Thomson moved towards the lift that would take him to the galaxy map. He used the hologram touch screen on the wall to highlight where he wanted to go and then pressed the middle green circle. The doors closed behind him.
"Max, take us to the Citadel. I'll plot the jump if you steer us towards the Relay," Thomson said into his communicator, "Go as fast as possible."
"Yes Captain."
The lift only took a few seconds to take him to the level with the galaxy map. The doors whirred open and he stepped out into a circular room with a holographic projection of the entire galaxy in the middle. Several crew members worked around the side on smaller screens, but he set his sight on the map.
As he approached, he zoomed in on the Citadel space then selected his option.
"Ok Max," he said into the communicator again, "Plot confirmed."
A high pitched whir was audible from outside the ship. The closer they got the higher the pitch became. A blue strand of energy from the Mass Relay attached itself to the front of the Falcon. There was the sound of dissipating energy, then the Falcon was gone.