“Was he manic?”

“I don’t think so. I never saw any sign of it before. But suddenly we were integrating all sorts of new hardware into the systems. Our research started going in totally different directions — we completely abandoned conventional practices and went with radical new theories. We were using prototype technology and designs unlike anything we’d ever seen before.

“At first, I just thought Dr. Qian had made some kind of breakthrough. Something that got him all fired up. In the beginning it was exhilarating. His excitement was infectious. But after a while I started to get suspicious.”

“Suspicious?”

“It’s hard to explain. Something about Dr. Qian was different. Altered. I worked with him for almost two years. This wasn’t like him. There was definitely something wrong. He wasn’t just working harder. He was obsessed. Like he was being… driven by some.

“And it felt like he was hiding something. Some secret he didn’t want anyone else on the project to know about. Before, if he needed something from you he’d go into excruciating detail about why your work was important. He’d tell you how it interconnected with every other department on the project, even though I think he knew nobody else could really grasp the full complexity of what we were working on.

“The past few months were different. He stopped communicating with the team; he’d give orders but no explanations. It just wasn’t like him. So I started digging into the data banks. I even hacked into Dr. Qian’s restricted files to see what I could find out.”

“You what?!” Anderson was shocked. “I can’t believe you… how is that even possible?”

“Encryption and security algorithms are my specialty,” she said with just a hint of pride. Then her voice became defensive. “Look, I know it was illegal. I know I broke the chain of command. But you weren’t there. You can’t understand how strange Dr. Qian was acting.”

“What did you find out?”

“He hadn’t just taken the project in a radical new direction. Our research was completely off the grid. All the new theories, the new hardware — it was all based on preparing our neural networks to link into some kind of alien artifact!”

“So what?” Anderson said with a shrug. “Pretty much every major advance we’ve made in the last two decades was based on Prothean artifacts. And it’s not just us — galactic society wouldn’t even exist if it wasn’t for compatible alien technology. Every species in Citadel Space would still be stuck inside their own solar system.”

“This is different,” she insisted. “Take the mass relays. We only have a limited understanding of how they work. We know how to use them, but we don’t understand enough to try and actually build one. At Sidon we were trying to create an artificial intelligence, possibly the most devastating weapon we could unleash on the galaxy. And Dr. Qian wanted to introduce an element to the research that was beyond even his comprehension.”

Anderson nodded, recalling the infamous Manhattan Project of the early twentieth century from his history courses at the Academy. Desperate to create an atomic weapon, scientists on the project unwittingly exposed themselves to dangerous levels of radiation as a matter of course in their experiments. Two researchers actually died on the project, and many others were stricken with cancer or other long-term consequences from prolonged radiation poisoning.

“We weren’t supposed to repeat the mistakes of the past,” Kahlee said, making no effort to hide the disappointment in her voice. “I thought Dr. Qian was smarter than that.”

“You were going to report him, weren’t you?” The young woman nodded slowly.

“You were doing the right thing, Kahlee,” he said, noticing the uncertainty in her expression. “It’s hard to believe that when all my friends are dead.”

Anderson could see she was suffering from a classic case of survivor guilt. But even though he felt sorry for her, he still needed more information.

“Kahlee… we still have to figure out who did this. And why.”

“Maybe somebody wanted to stop Dr. Qian,” she offered in a whisper. “Maybe my investigation tipped someone else off. Someone higher up. And they decided to shut the project down for good.”

“You think someone in the Alliance did this?” Anderson was horrified.

“I don’t know what to think!” she shouted. “All I know is I’m tired and scared and I just want this all to be over!”

For a second he thought she was going to start crying again, but she didn’t. Instead, she stared right at him. “So are you still going to help me figure out who’s behind this? Even if it turns out the Alliance is somehow involved?”

“I’m on your side,” Anderson promised her. “I don’t believe anyone in the Alliance was behind this. But if it turns out they were, I’ll do my best to take them down.”

“I believe you,” she said after a moment. “So what now?”

She’d come clean with him. Now he had to do the same. “Alliance Command told me they think whoever attacked the base was after Dr. Qian. They think he might still be alive.”

“But the vids are saying there were no survivors!”

“There’s no way to be sure. Most of the bodies were vaporized at the scene.” “So why now?” Kahlee asked. “The project’s been running for years.”

“Maybe they just found out. Maybe Qian’s new research tipped them off. Maybe there’s some connection to that alien artifact he discovered.”

“Or maybe I forced them to make a move.”

Anderson wasn’t about to let her go down that road. “This isn’t your fault,” he told her, leaning in and grabbing her hand tightly. “You didn’t order the attack on Sidon. You didn’t help anyone bypass base security.” He took a breath, then spoke his next words slowly and emphatically. “Kahlee, you are not responsible for this.”

He released her hand and sat back. “And I need you to help me figure out who was. We need to find out if anybody else knew about this Prothean artifact.”

“It wasn’t Prothean,” she corrected. “At least, not according to Dr. Qian’s notes.”

“So what was it? Asari? Turian? Batarian?”

“No. Nothing like that. Qian didn’t know what it was, exactly. But it was old. He thought it might even predate the Protheans.”

“Predate the Protheans?” Anderson repeated, trying to make sure he’d heard her properly. “That’s what Qian thought,” she said with a shrug.

“Where’d he find it? Where is it now?”

“I don’t think it was ever at the base. Dr. Qian wouldn’t have brought it in until he was ready to integrate it into our project.

“And he could have found it anywhere,” she admitted. “Every few months he’d leave the base for a week or two. I always assumed he was giving some kind of status report to his superiors at Alliance Command, but who knows where he went or what he was up to.”

“Somebody outside the base had to know about this,” Anderson pressed. “You said Dr. Qian changed, took the research in a whole other direction. Was there anyone not on the project who might have noticed something out of the ordinary?”

“I can’t think of… wait! The hardware for our new research! It all came from the same supplier on

Camala!”

“Camala? Your supplier was batarian?”

“We never dealt with them directly,” she explained, speaking quickly. “Suspicious hardware purchases anywhere in Citadel Space are red-flagged and reported to the Council. Throughout the existence of the project we used hundreds of shell companies to place individual orders for each component; orders too small to attract attention on their own. Then we configured them at the base and integrated them into our existing hardware infrastructure.

“Dr. Qian wanted to avoid compatibility issues in the neural networks, so he made sure almost everything could be traced back to a single supplier: Dah’tan Manufacturing.”

It made sense in a convoluted way, Anderson realized. Given the current political tension between batarians and humans, nobody would suspect that the primary supplier of a classified Alliance research project would be based on Camala.