The message caught him on the way down to the lair; everybody stopped at the rude buzzing of his omni.
It was from Benezia. Perhaps the last message he’d ever get from her. He signaled Shiala to wait, and then lingered. As if the act of reading it had the power to sway the outcome of the inevitable encounter. Which way would it sway?
Nihlus tried to hold Liara back, but wasn’t quick enough even though he’d known she’d run for it. She had been keeping up a brave front but… oh, who was he kidding. He’d have done the same if it had been Saren there, standing atop the elevated platform, hands against a thick glass cage. As it came into full view, Nihlus saw that it contained an enormous creature, doubtless another type of rachni, but different from everything that they’d encountered. The brood-mother.
At the same time…
Shepard had been shocked when she saw the geth for the first time, because hey! Nobody had seen the geth for three hundred years so obviously there was no need to fear them, right? Right?
The security measures at the ExoGeni research station were laughable. Saren went through them like a plasma cutter through omnigel and the building was taken in a matter of minutes. He ordered the scientists herded in a large conference room, and sent out the geth to hunt down those few who had managed to escape and hide on the lower floors.
Shepard squinted through the thick glass wall. Her breaths were drawing white hearts on it, because 286K passed for room temperature on Noveria. It looked warmer in the bar on the other side. Unlike her turian teammates, who were constantly shifting from foot to foot and occasionally emitting sounds suspiciously reminiscent of chattering teeth, the guy sitting inside, three tables to the front and two to the right, didn’t seem uncomfortable at all.
Saren didn’t want to think it, but after some moments of internal struggle, he realized resistance was futile. He wished Nihlus was there. The sight of Feros, the Prothean megalopolis, with needle-like spires casting long shadows over the pristinely white clouds in the pale, chilly dawn was something Nihlus would revel in, saying poetic things in his orator voice (which ran more than a few keys lower than his normal speech), and blinking tears of high emotion from his eyes when he thought Saren wasn’t looking. Perhaps he’d even be moved to immortalize the scene by painting. A quick sketch with a pencil, then a minute of biting his right mandible, then a high-resolution shot from the visual detectors – to keep the light steady, he’d explain.