Tali: Echoes of Rannoch by Jade Gretz

https://www.deviantart.com/jadegretzai/art/Tali-Echoes-of-Rannoch-1261736668

Tali: Echoes of Rannoch ANIMATION

The Geometry of Silence

Dust did not settle in the antechamber of Sector Four; it hung suspended, frozen in erratic spirals like microscopic galaxies. Tali'Zorah stared at a single mote of iron-oxide through her polarized visor. It was defying gravity, defying basic thermodynamics, just hovering an inch from her faceplate. The silence in the derelict space station was not merely the absence of sound, but a heavy, oppressive presence that pressed against the seals of her environmental suit.

"I have recalibrated my visor three times," Garrus Vakarian’s voice crackled over the secure comms line, stripped of its usual smooth baritone by the static of heavy dark energy interference. "It is telling me that the far wall is five miles away, and also currently touching my nose. I am inclined to believe neither."

"Your visor is reading the localized mass effect field, Garrus," Tali replied, her fingers dancing across her glowing orange omni-tool. The holographic interface shuddered, the code unspooling in jagged, unnatural lines. "The artifact is folding space. It is struggling to maintain a three-dimensional Euclidean projection. Just... do not touch the walls."

"Was not planning on it," Garrus muttered, his heavy footsteps echoing with a metallic delay that sounded entirely too much like a second set of boots following closely behind them. "Tell me again why we did not simply drop a kinetic strike from orbit?"

"Because a kinetic strike would rupture the structure's corrupted element zero core," offered Velyna, the Asari commando bringing up the rear. Her voice was strained, tighter than usual. Biotics were sensitive to dark energy, and the ambient radiation in this place was agonizing. "It would turn this entire quadrant of the asteroid belt into a localized singularity. We would be trading a Reaper corruption zone for a localized black hole."

"Right. A black hole. I always forget about the black holes," Garrus said, his submachine gun sweeping the empty, angular corridor. "I much prefer walking through a haunted tomb where the geometry wants to eat us."

Tali took a step forward, her three-fingered boots sinking slightly into a deck plating that felt entirely too soft, like bruised fruit. They had tracked the signal here, to an uncharted, hollowed-out asteroid on the fringes of the Perseus Veil. The Alliance claimed it was a pirate broadcasting station. The Quarian Admiralty Board suspected a rogue Geth outpost. But the moment the Normandy’s sensors had scraped the surface of the asteroid, Tali had known the terrible truth. The harmonic frequency was a dirge, a digital rotting sound. It was Reaper technology.

"Keep your eyes on your haptics, not your optics," Tali instructed, leading them deeper into the spiraling corridor. The walls here were not metal, nor were they stone. They looked like fossilized circuitry, bone-white and pulsing with a sickly, bruised-purple luminescence. "If your eyes tell you a corridor is clear, but your armor's proximity sensors beep, trust the sensors. The artifact is actively dissecting our visual cortexes."

"Comforting," Velyna whispered. "Tali... my biotics. They feel wrong. When I try to summon a barrier, the energy feels cold. It feels wet."

"Do not use your biotics unless absolutely necessary," Tali warned, a cold knot of dread tightening in her stomach. The Reapers did not just kill; they repurposed. They broke down organic and synthetic life into a slurry of agonizing servitude. But this artifact was doing something different. It was not creating Husks. It was creating an environment where sanity itself could not survive.

They turned a corner that angled at an impossible seventy-degree pitch, yet gravity pulled them straight down as if they were walking on a flat plane. At the end of the corridor lay the remnants of the previous exploration team. Tali held up a clenched fist, signaling a halt.

Five environmental suits lay strewn across the deck. They were not Alliance, nor were they Quarian. They were heavy, deep-space mining rigs, blocky and utilitarian.

Garrus swept his weapon over the bodies, his mandibles flaring in a Turian expression of profound unease. "No blood. No signs of struggle. Weapons are still holstered."

Tali knelt beside the nearest suit. She extended her omni-tool, running a diagnostic sweep over the bulky helmet. The readout made her breath catch in her throat. "The seals are perfect," she whispered.

"Did they suffocate?" Velyna asked, stepping back, her azure skin pale
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