[Tasale, Exarch Station] Bad Medicine

"With er'thin' swimmin' in 'er bloodstream, I ain't surprised," Kirok growled as he plodded down the hallway. This was starting to become a drag. Not only did he have to dress up as a singing elcor to get in here - well, okay, that part was kind of fun - but now the junkie had labeled him the "medical experiment" or whatnot, AND she was having 'issues.'

The krogan growled a bit. He'd have to have a talk with Shirin about this when it was over. Boss' daughter or not, there were some things that needed tightening up. He cracked his massive knuckles as he reached a t-section in the hallway.

"Awright, you two. Time's a wastin' - which way?"

"Okay, we should have access to everything we need... I'm going to stay in the system and poke around a little bit, keep the connection live just in case any unexpected situations crop up. Let me know if there's anything specific we need."

With that, the quarian set about rooting through the hospital's patient listings looking for celebrities, only to be sorely disappointed that the only one currently in residence was a 25-year-old former child-star now dealing with a few dozen nasty addictions and the consequences thereof. Boooooooooring.

Next up, patient records for political figures with embarrassing conditions... Ah, right, Illium. All the interesting ones had paid to have theirs wiped already.

Okay, new plan.

Ensemble, you haven't wiped the cameras yet, right?
We have already had this conversation.
No, this is different, I swear!
Very well. No, I have not wiped the camera records yet.
Okay, good. Lots of celebrities use this place. Let's find some candid shots we can sell.
You wish to invade their privacy for personal gain?
Sure do.
Very well. Beginning facial recognition algorithm.
Oh, make sure to filter out porn stars. It's Illium, they're everywhere, nobody cares about them and there's no candid shot they haven't done for money already anyways.
Acknowledged.

Nothing to do now but wait!

"We go left, Kirok keep your…" Quam took a moment to think of a very diplomatic word for ”… shortsighted krogan temper…” before settling on one, "… enthusiasm in check for just a little longer. Ana just… please try not to fall over, but if you do try to fall on something unbreakable like to floor."

The walk was short and luckily for them the passes seemed to work as the door opened giving them access to Quarantine Level B… The turian looked at the symbol on the internal airlock door for a second…

"Ya know, I’ve seen this symbol before…" He tried to place it, his realization of what it meant only hit him as the door opened and they stepped through it, surveying a hive of laboratory activity.

"Fuck, this is not just a quarantine lab, this is a full blown hot lab…"

"Great. All right, I've got access, so at least you won't be wandering around in the hot labs for too long. Hang on, looking up a specific location for the package."

All things considered, this was going fairly well. There were little snags here and there, of course, but those were always going to be a factor. Nothing too serious, unless the target's location proved to be a problem...ah, there it was. No, so far so good.

"You're looking for Cold Storage, in room B-008," Shirin said into the comm, studying the terminal's screen. "Looks like the package should be labeled. If there's a giant reservoir of it or something, don't try to carry the whole thing - KSK just needs enough that they can develop a countermeasure. So feel free to just take a large sample or something." She paged through a couple more indices out of curiosity. "...Huh. They're storing live subjects down there. Like, as incubators for some of the weaponized pathogens. Guess we lucked out, since we're after a toxin. Carrying a quarantine patient out through this security would've been harder than a pedophile in a water park."

The drell broke off for a moment to scan a few technicians. Well, if crime didn't work out, she was at least qualified for a cushy lower-middle-class security job in the private sector, apparently. (Gods forbid; if it ever got to that, Shirin would probably make up a cause and take up terrorism. Life without a challenge was unthinkable.)

"Keep looking. I'll go ahead and erase Cerastes' file, otherwise he'll bitch about it later."

With Jil'Korah's backdoor, it was easy enough to track down the patient records, and even easier to find Cerastes under his assumed name (after all, she'd given it to him when they checked him in). Setting the file to erase itself, Shirin watched the bar progress from 5% to 10% to 15% to...

"Ms. Kol?"

That was odd; the first guard had sounded slightly different. Shirin turned to behold a towering human with a 'head of security' holo-badge.

Shit.

Kirok shrugged.

"Hot lab? Ain't hot in here t'me, hoss. C'mon. We gotta git goin, no matter what th' temperature."

The krogan looked around the 'hot' lab. Techs in hazmat suits and envirosuits - a few of them actually quarian, which made a weird kind of sense - were messing with various rows of glass tubes or programming drones to do delicate things behind panes of glass. Everything was white as snow as well; not a single smudge of dirt or grime anywhere.

Then, as one, they all turned to look at the group, questioning looks on their faces.

Kirok rubbed the back of his neck. He suddenly realized he'd neglected to get an encounter suit, being krogan.

"Uuuuuh. Hi."

Ana sighed. Fuuuuuuuuck. Even now, looped out of her skull, she realized what Kirok had just done.

Still, in for a penny, in for a pound (if they were already boned, why not have some fun while they were at it?), so, stumbling in front of Kirok, she put a hand on him for support and gestured to him with her other hand.

“Ah, there we are. Heyyyyy everyone, say ‘hi’ to our latest test patient, Jorgal Dwick!”

Up top, Shirin was doing her best to redirect the head of security.

"--and she didn't get a chance to give me all the new hire paperwork yet, since there was kind of a personnel emergency today," she was in the midst of saying. "The, uh, the human resources coordinator, that is. Alania." Doing research on the hospital's extranet site beforehand had been a good idea.

"Right, right," said the suspicious human in the blue armor. "Well, that makes sense. Put in a request once you're off - we can't have any of that going amiss. This is Illium, after all."

"Yes, sir."

"All right, Kol, you're off the hook for now..." Yessssss "...and hopefully we can get things sorted out once--"

“Heyyyyy everyone," blared the feed from the hot labs on Shirin's terminal, "say ‘hi’ to our latest test patient, Jorgal Dwick!”

Their eyes met.

Now, we are fucked.

Welp. In fer a penny.

"CONTAINMENT BREACH! CONTAINMENT BREACH! ERRYBODY GIT OUTTA HERE! NOW! MARK SEBBIN PROTOCOLS IN EFFECT! INDUCT OPERATION OMEGA CHARLIE, GIT DONE, GIT DONE"

Of course, Kirok had no idea what he was talking about, but it sounded official. More importantly, it sounded loud and panicked, the kind of thing a military person would scream as things were going to hell.

Things weren't going to hell yet, of course.

Which is why Kirok immediately slammed the ALARM: BREACH button on the side of the wall, and then started shooting techs with his twin Carnifexes, still screaming "CONTAINMENT BREACH, GIT T'THE EXITS" all the while.

Ah, it was always good to spread a little mayhem.

Back upstairs where the bullets weren't flying, Cerastes, who had just successfully overcome a fake panic attack, let out a very long, exasperated sigh.

Let the chaos begin.

Quam turned around and looked at Ana, his jaw slacking, mandibles dropping and his eyes wide with incomprehension, even though the helmet’s visor hid his face his expression somehow was still expressed. But it is nowhere near the level of incomprehension he has when Kirok… starts shouting… SHOOTING, and presses the goddamn alarm.

Sirens cry out, light flashes, people shout and 7 inch thick fire doors slam shut at all the exits… Things fall on the ground as more people panic a stampede hits against the far door.

”Level 2 Security Protocol Omega Has Been Initiated … Please Remain Calm … Security Protocol Omega Has Been Initiated … You Will Receive Further Instruction soon … Security Protocol Omega Has Been Initiated … Please Remain Calm …” a VI voice informs the people.

Then something catches fire… it’s not a big one and it is contained on one workstation but it is still a fire, and less than five seconds have passed, and through it all Quam just tries to get his mind around what just happened.

He took a deep breath, opened a com to Jil. Unfortunately for him the whole situation somehow made him temporarily forget the names of the people he was working with, that detail didn’t stop him.

"Quarian, geth, shut this alarm off and open these fire doors. Krogan stop shooting people and shooting and touching stuff. Asari do something useful but don’t touch anything."

He jumped on an empty table, ignoring Kirok and Ana for a second then using the built in amplifier of his suit he started to shout his lungs out. "Right! You lot stop panicking, everything will be fine if you asses don’t do stupid things, you… quarian in the green suit… use that extinguisher to put that fire out." He hardly got any attention at first, but he continued.

"I SAID STOP PANICKING! AND YOU WHY IS THAT FIRE STILL BURNING?" The quarian looked meekly and did grab the extinguisher to stop the little fire.

"Wow, who knew the Milk Sheik had so many nipples..."

Jil'Korah's distressingly unpleasant task of scrolling through some astoundingly candid celebrity shots came to an abrupt halt when literally every alarm in the system started going off at once.

What the fuck did Ana do
It would seem she tried to give Kirok a new name to which he objected.
That doesn't seem like it would set off an alarm, let alone every alarm.
No. The subsequent shouting, shooting, and general panic set off the alarms.
Oh fuck me.

Celebrities forgotten (well, not entirely, more like saved to a cloud folder and set aside for later), Jil was paying complete attention when Aliquam's voice came crackling over his headset: "Quarian, geth, get this alarm shut off and open these fire doors."

"Right, on it!" was the quarian's quickly spoken reply, his fingers already dancing across the security panel, counting on Shirin to keep any outside attention from heading towards the security office. She was probably fine; she was the mastermind and she had the easiest job this run, right? Right.

Access denied.
What?
Access to the quarantine subsystems is denied. Apparently in case of emergency a redundant quarantine subsystem activates, complete with its own security protocols.
Awwwwww FUCK"

It was hard to curse sub-vocally sometimes.

"Okay, Ali, I'm working on the doors, but it's going to take a couple of minutes - this fucking customized system is redundant as shit and since it's customized I couldn't predict everything. Hold tight, we'll have you out of there soon!"

Can we at least terminate the alarms?
Local alarms are connected to the redundant subsystems. We can mute alarms hospital-wide but not within the quarantine zone.
Fuck. Okay. I'll do that, you focus on the subsystems.
Acknowledged.

Yeah, Shirin was fine. She'd let him know if she needed something.

During the first few moments of gunfire, Ana rolled her eyes slightly and grabbed a table for support, muttering vague platitudes.

”No. Bad. Dwick. That is not nice, Dwick.”

As Ali began taking charge of the scene, however (and drawing attention to himself), Ana took the opportunity to start stumbling towards one of the shut-off rooms. Specifically, B-008, the door from earlier. Tripping over a bullet-ridden technician, she picked up his arm and began dragging the body along behind her.

“No. Bad, Dwick. No treatment for you. Bad, Dwick. Bad.”

Normally, Shirin would be a touch agitated that her authority had been temporarily usurped. However, even if this were under normal circumstances (it was not), that would be totally mitigated by two facts. First, Aliquam was doing exactly what she would do in his place, right down to the orders, and as far as the drell was concerned, that was perfect.

Secondly, and more importantly, she had bigger problems to deal with at the moment. Specifically, the chief of security was rushing towards the door to the stairs, distracted entirely from his suspicions towards Shirin, and shouting into a comm. "Protocol Omega! Hazmat security to Quarantine B! Hazmat security to Quarantine B!" She was right behind him - why wouldn't she be, it was an emergency and she was helping - so as the doors to the towering stairwell closed behind them, the human barked out an order. "Kol, get dispatch on the line and--"

Like a snake in the grass, Shirin struck.

Monofilament was a popular choice when the High Republic's military needed high-tensile-strength wire. A single strand (hence the name) of solidly-bonded carbon nanotubes, it had a very reliable tensile and mechanical strength, as well as absurd sharpness - the ends of the garrotes issued to Red Room program alumni (and indeed, somewhat synonymous with them in the High Republic's popular perception) had to be fashioned out of solid diamond, which, made of a single molecule, was able to stand up against the edges of a monowire.

All of these things would have been very fascinating to the security chief at any other time, but at the moment he was distracted because Shirin's garrote had slipped under the chin of his helmet as he headed for the staircase. It wasn't going to cut through milspec armor, but that wasn't the drell's intent; hauling back and twisting the ends around each other, she dropped low and hip-checked the human over her, sending him falling over the railing. He stopped short with a wet snap as she pulled upwards, and hung in place over the yawning pit of stairs, blood dribbling from a spot on his throat where the monowire had cut through a point of articulation on his armor's neck joint.

A quick twirl and one released handle, and the garrote unwrapped itself, sending the security chief's body plummeting down the stairwell. Shirin turned, stashed the wire, and headed back out into the security checkpoint, where a dispatch hazmat team would be coming in short order. They knew there was a hostile situation, and if they checked the security room, Jil'Korah would be in trouble...

She glanced towards the elevator.

"Dispatch team is incoming; dunno if they're headed for the security room or the quarantine labs. I'll intercept them either way."

About a minute and a half later, just as she was using the security override to shut the quarantine elevator's doors, a troop of heavily armed and armored blue uniforms stormed around the corner. The drell motioned to the elevator, waving an arm. "The Chief's down on Quarantine A! We're not getting anything on radio; get down there and reinforce him!" One of them began heading for the security room - she'd need to intercept that one. Fortunately, the rest were piling into the elevator she'd just finished up with.

As the doors closed and the elevator began to thrum, Shirin produced a detonator.

Meanwhile, Kirok was redefining the term "raising a ruckus." As techs ran for the doors and security guards swarmed in, still half-dressed in their hazmat suits, Kirok grinned and ran for a nearby water cooler. Gripping it in his mighty hands, he tossed it into the middle of the melee, screaming terrifying portents of pestilence.

"OH GOD, IT'S THE CRIMSON SEA FEVER! IT'S OUT!" he said as the harmless water washed into room. "EVACUATE! EVACUATE! NOOOO! TERROR THREAT NINE! REPEAT, TERROR THREAT NINE! CALL IN THE FIRE BRIGADE!"

Grinning like a maniac, he pointed at Ali and Ana, and pointed at the location of the target. Fuck trying to keep things on the downlow. If you wanted to get out of a situation without being spotted, make sure something more important than you was going on.

Speaking of...

"Hey, Jil, gotta request," Kirok said as he watched the chaos ensue around him. "Galaxysearch DDS an' Jorgal Dwick. When ya wipe our faces outta this footage, just replace mine with that fatass face o' his. I still owe him one."

Kirok smiled. Oh, yes, today was turning out to be a very good day.

"KI- DWICK! STOP! IT!"

The bellowing was so loud that even Ali didn’t really know how he produced it. "You," he pointed at a lab tech, "help her," pointing at a wobbling Ana dragging a dead man, "find the 'chimeric histoplasma cardiophagia' and make sure it’s safe for transport! And don’t give her anything breakable… or things that she might accidentally try to sniff, ingest, inject or fuck knows what else." At the very least his outburst had created an effect on the personnel, their eyes where and minds where concentrating on the turian who just shouted at a krogan, and was clearly only one single step away from shooting everyone. The turian was only a single step away from going into a full conniption, his eye was already twitching.

Quick.

A crazed lizard is running amok in your incredibly dangerous hot lab, throwing things and shooting up half of your security force. Along comes a turian who’s apparently equipped with an industrial-strength larynx, ordering the krogan to “knock it off” as though it’s second nature for him to order it around.

His eye is twitching. He’s probably packing as much heat as the dinosaur is.

He tells you to do something.

What do you do?

Damn straight, you do exactly what he says.

The lab tech (a weedy-looking salarian with a massive blinking tic) practically leapt to Ana’s aid, spewing forth a panicked “Yeah okay sure whatever you say no problem I can do that please don’t shoot me I can do that—“

Ana’s hand came up to her helmet and made a zipping motion across her mouth. The salarian immediately shut up and helped her drag the corpse to the door. The moment he was there, she hailed Jil on the comms.

“Heyyyy, Jilly,” she drawled into her mic, apparently oblivious to the tension of the room. “I got one of Dwick’s vics here with all the hot labs credentials? Maybe you can use it to speed up the process?”

“Uh, uh, uh, uh, yeah, you could do that,” the salarian spat out before thinking. “Yeah, you can totally do that to override protocol, but, uh, it’s not gonna work, you know, unless you have like five of us putting in our override—”

There was a moment of silence as he suddenly realized what he was doing.

“Thanks, Chid,” muttered one of the surviving techs.

The final security officer, having broken off from his hazmat-suited colleagues, had already entered the security room before Shirin could intercept him. While a quarian slicing the console was the last thing he expected, it was also gratifyingly familiar - something he could deal with.

"Hands over your head!" the man ordered, leveling his pistol at Jil'Korah. "Turn away from the console and get on the floor!"

"Just ignore him." Shirin flipped the safety switch on the detonator, striding towards the security room's door. "He'll be a nonentity in a second. By the way, retrieval team, sorry about the loud noise."

When she pressed the button, the shaped mines she'd planted on the elevator's power conduit and anchor points two minutes ago went off, and the quarantine elevator, with the entire dispatch team in it, plummeted six floors and crashed into Quarantine A. There was a thunderous, trembling boom, and that was more than enough to distract the guy holding Jil up.

"I said--wha?"

These were his last words, as the door to the security room opened once again, a hand pulled his gun back from behind, and a strike to the elbow fractured his arm. The pistol hit the floor, the guard followed, and two shots in the back of his head ensured he wouldn't be any more of a problem.

"Sorry about the interruption," Shirin said, pulling what looked like a dozen different gadgets out of her satchel. She accessed the team's comm, and resumed with the orders. "All right. You're doing fine, stick to the objective. Now, I was hoping to make our usual 'end up running away in a total clusterfuck' strategy a non-option this time, so I didn't mention this during the briefing..." She sighed as she prepped an automated turret pod. "...but I do have an alternate egress route, in case this ended up happening. I'll mark a waypoint on the stairs; once you've got the package, meet us there."

Of course, they couldn't get the package until Jil did his thing, which meant...

A flurry of turret pods planted themselves on either side of the checkpoint, and Shirin anchored a single monowire unit in front of the lobby entrance, right at waist level. She raised her pistol and checked the heatsink.

"Guess I'm holding the security room until we're good to go."

So much to do, so little time… And then, a guard.

Jil’Korah began to slowly raise his hands, even as Shirin came over the comm.

Just keep working.
Acknowledged.

And then, just as suddenly, no guard.

Well, so much for doing this non-lethally.

“Okay, Ana, plug the corpse’s security card into the console next to you. We can clone them and set up access codes for you, Dwick, and uh… Archangel? Yeah, that’ll work. Then you’ll just need one cooperative tech, plus the corpse – Chid should do nicely as the former?”

You getting all this?
Yes. Processing credentials now.

Working in tandem, the quarian and the geth quickly cloned the security clearances, set up new dummy accounts and applied a password they considered to be very witty indeed.

“Oooooooookay. You should be able to log in as Dwick, Archangel, and Doctor Bloob, all using the passphrase ‘I’m very, very sorry.’”

Perhaps not so witty as they’d initially thought, but it was long enough and met the security requirements.

Chid, not being privy to the conversation crackling on Ana’s earpiece, still managed to understand what they wanted from him. Perhaps it was his unintentional burst of “help” from earlier that let him figure it out. Or maybe it was the way her omni-tool was manufacturing a fake security clearance, courtesy of one Jil’Korah and his associate geth.

Most likely it was the way her hand waltzed up his chest before poking hard against his own keycard, making him gulp with the impact. In any case, he fumbled quickly with the wafer of plastic, holding it up to the door with an “oh, uh, right, what’s the passcode?”

“I’m very, very sorry.”

Chid gave her a sudden look of terror, as though she had suddenly cocked a shotgun in his face. “Wait, what? Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, don’t kill me!” he shrieked.

“…That’s the passcode, hon.”

“…Oh.” He keyed it in. ”Man, all my passwords get tossed unless I throw a number in there…”

That was when Kirok, having finally chased out the last of the techs like a lunatic, came back smiling like a varren caught in a chicken coop.

"Hawt damn, that was fun. Awright. We got two minutes 'fore enny of 'em git sane 'nuff t'call fer security, an' about four 'fore enny of 'em hit th' press. When in doubt, spread some chaos! Damn! Awright, what now?"