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Disclaimer:

Mass Effect, the Mass Effect franchise, Commander Shepard, the Reapers, all characters contained herein and the entirety of back story material are property of Bioware and Electronic Arts (EA) and the author claims no ownership thereof. This novel and its plot are solely the author's artistic interpretation of the Mass Effect universe and are – as such – unapproved and unverified by Bioware and EA.

This fan-novel is being made available via free eBook download from Smashwords.com in a variety of digital formats. No source of revenue is being obtained from it.

This work of fiction may not be reproduced, rewritten or rebroadcast without express written consent from the author, Karen Politte, who is contactable at karenpolitte@gmail.com.

v1.6
Foreword

I was first introduced to the Mass Effect game franchise by my husband, who was almost beside himself at having found a science fiction game title that was not only worthy of playing, but also interesting, enjoyable, colorful and gripping. Being someone who usually leaned towards the other end of the spectrum with games (generally 'medieval fantasy' rather than 'science fiction'), it took me some time before I exhausted the supply of titles needing played and finally picked up Mass Effect 2. What ensued was one of the most enlightening, exciting and emotional rides of my game-playing life. The broad tapestry of the Mass Effect universe has been woven with intricate detail, and the game designers display a fervent understanding of the characters and stories contained within it. Mass Effect has largely transcended game status for many fans, becoming a story of hope, humanity, and the greater good and concealed evils in people.

Firstly, Bioware (a division of Electronic Arts) are to be commended for their vision and creativity in creating the Mass Effect series of games, characters and back-story – as well as casting the talented, enigmatic voice actors they did for each role in the games. It is only thanks to their imagination, passion and determination that titles such as this exist and become greater than the sum of their parts. Director and Executive Producer of the franchise Casey Hudson deserves commendation and admiration for the success and perseverance of the great universe and civilizations he – and his team of designers, writers and associated producers – created.

The second half of Mass Effect's equation of greatness lies with you – and me, the fans. Or... 'The Fan'. Because we are all the shepherds of our Mass Effect. Without a loyal and enthusiastic fan base – any franchise is doomed to obscurity. Mass Effect's fan base is large, growing and effervescently involved with the games, stories and materials associated with the franchise. Throughout my journey to create this novel (it sounds strange to call it my 'book' as it is the first work of my writing that can be described as such), I have always tried to keep in mind that I am a fan, and only a fan. This novel started – and ended – as my personal labor of love for the Mass Effect series of games. One quiet Friday afternoon, I decided to pick up my virtual pen and begin a piece of writing based on my own canon Mass Effect character, Karen Shepard. It may have ended after a couple of chapters. I may have become distracted by some other project and laid the whole idea to rest permanently. I may have decided that it was a waste of time and effort and picked up my game controller once more, but none of those things happened (well, okay – the controller did get picked up occasionally...). I can't really tell you how it came to be – it just did. Sitting here penning this foreword now – I can scarcely believe it.

It is so very important to remember that Mass Effect will signify and mean something different to each and every person who has played all three games in the trilogy. But ironically, this is why it has universal appeal. Each and every person who has become involved in Mass Effect has been able to craft their own Commander Shepard – male or female – and undertake their own voyage within the boundless universe that Bioware's developers and writers created for us. We have watched our characters grow, make universe-changing decisions, and strive to overcome the ever-present enemy – whether it be the geth, the Collectors or the Reapers. I am also keenly aware of the fact that my Shepard character is mine alone – and her relationships, opinions, personality and drives may seem foreign to some who will read this. But my fond hope through all of this is that some commonality can be found in the overarching desire of everyone's Shepard to do their utmost to see that the Reaper threat is extinguished once and for all – whether you do it through diplomacy or cracking heads together! Karen Shepard's story begins after the end of Mass Effect 3 – essentially after the credits have stopped rolling on your completed game.

If you are a newcomer to Mass Effect, I would strongly recommend that you take the time to read my separate document entitled 'Mass Effect Primer' which is also available for download from my Smashwords library. I have created this primer with accompanying images to provide those unfamiliar with Mass Effect information and background on this novel's races, peoples, places and elements. It also helps describe the tone of the world and people I have based this story on, and includes imagery of the various characters and places involved. It will give you a basic but sufficient understanding of vitally important aspects of the Mass Effect story, and the characters featured within it. Those already familiar with Mass Effect may continue from this foreword on to the novel itself.

I feel compelled to say here that I have not read any other pieces of Mass Effect fan-fiction that are available in the public domain, nor have I participated on any online forums or boards related to the franchise. I am merely a fan – with a passion for writing – who wished to turn the story of her Commander Shepard into something more personalized and in-depth. The 'Indoctrination Theory' has allowed me to do that and build a completely new ending for my own character (and her team) using the previously-established plot elements of the Citadel and the Crucible.

I struggled for some time with the decision regarding the name of my central protagonist/Commander Shepard, and in the end relied on advice I was given and kept her name synonymous with my own. I was somewhat concerned that this would appear self-indulgent, however, once my writing began in earnest it became very apparent to me that it was in fact pivotal to my emotional investment in my Shepard. It was simply not possible to transfer a different name onto the persona of Karen Shepard – because, for me, there has only ever been one Karen Shepard. I hope you understand my decision with respect to the name.

Creating this work was at times arduous, and sometimes seemingly insurmountable. But it became a very personal - and public - journey of exploration and discovery for the writer inside of me. It is an imperfect thing. It is an emotional thing. Above all – it's a Mass Effect thing. It is my fond hope that you – whether a fan of Mass Effect or new to the whole concept – are able to identify with the characters, themes and story that follows. I have laughed, agonized and wept during creation of this work for the best part of nine months, and I hope beyond all else that some of the emotion reflected in it reaches out to the reader.

Please – if you read this novel and enjoy it – recommend it to other Mass Effect fans that you may know. Share it with them, because it exists purely to enrich the world Bioware created. I welcome all comments, reviews, questions, critiques and letters – and I would be delighted to hear from and talk with any of my readers. I can be reached numerous ways, however the first option (personal email) is always my preferred mode of communication:

karenpolitte@gmail.com (E-mail)

VakarianGirl (XboxLive Gamertag)

@VakarianGirl (Twitter)

And with that, I will log out of my private terminal, set the CiC to snooze, and retire to my cabin as we all have done. I hope you enjoy the journey and story of EndShard.

Karen E. Politte

March, 2013.

For my husband Jason, who provided limitless, enduring advice during this project

...

and anyone who has ever ejected a thermal clip.

Prologue

The trees loom again – stark and black and overbearing. Grasping branches...the same watery sky, streaming at an unholy pace above my head to somewhere, to nowhere. Somewhere the air shifts – and although I resist it, I hear. My feet stumble uncommanded through the leaves towards the sounds. Moving. Can't stop it. The whispers bleed into my subconscious...nauseously familiar tones of the dead. A woman's confident voice teases me with the same phrase that haunts my waking mind; 'I think we both know that's not going to happen, Commander.' Ashley. I can hear her laughing – at me.

The skeletal branches watch my macabre journey as I traipse forward. I feel his warmth on my cheek before I see him...but the little silvery figure in the distance is there, as always. The only place he would ever be now – my dreams. As if circling a singularity, I cannot resist his image. It reassures me and horrifies me. They told me to rest, after all. He told me to sleep – so I am!

I stumble forward again, to bring his little face into focus. But before I can reach him, he scurries away as always. 'Hurry Shepard.' Panic! My child...the rustling of the bare branches overhead mock my frantic search. It's darker now – and for the first time I notice them. The woods are thick with shadows – oily, sickly streaks that falter on the edge of my vision, like I'm the problem. Their slender forms seem...familiar. No. No no no no no. I claw at my ears as Mordin's hurried speech assails them. The ache of hopelessness and dejection snarls my stomach as I watch him walk to his death a hundredfold. I can't tell what he's saying, can't make him out - he whispers too softly, too quickly...but his voice fills the forest. Tears stain my cheeks for the dead salarian's sacrifice as surely as the oily shadows stain my vision, and I press forward through the thicket...need to find him...don't know why. Need to end this.

Lungs bursting...but I see him again...he's stopped his scurrying. Crouching in the dead leaves, playing. I walk confidently now...my legs respond better. Gently I draw up behind him, resting a hand on his shoulder to let him know I am here. He doesn't look at me, his toy ship is far more interesting...but I want him to see me, want to know he knows.

Then, he finally looks up at me, and the ice of helplessness pierces me...so cold in my veins, draining everything I ever had. So very, very cold as he looks at me with dead eyes. I laugh but it comes out as more of a shriek. But it's not me laughing – it's the trees again. They won't stop coming...can't stop it. The all-encompassing, black-blue shadow descends, and as every disembodied night before this one, we are bathed in red. Our eardrums are shattered by the sound of an Old Machine...so old. So tired. The flames can take us. Take our flesh. Take our hearts. Take our purpose. End this. End this with the permanence of death...of harvest. So I can finally rest.

"You will end – because we demand it."

Her body was jolted into consciousness in the dead of night, the firm grip of reality slowly constricting her dreams into nothingness. Clothing damp from sweat, Karen Shepard propped herself up from the still-warm pillow and ran a hand through her hair as if to comb the nightmare from her mind. The reassuring sound of the Normandy's drive core told her that this was reality – even as she realized that if she closed her eyes, she could still see the shadows...still hear the whispers. Shuddering, she realized just how cold her cabin had become overnight.

Staring at herself in the bathroom mirror, she willed her mind to stop for just a brief moment, but it refused. Thoughts racing, hands shaking, this was probably the tenth night in a row she had stood in this spot – the bathroom's spartan metal fixtures doing nothing for her frame of mind. So alone. So many nights – so many downtimes shattered by the dreams. Always the same – always the boy, always the child, always the flames, always death, and always no choice. But with subtle differences...she sighed, looking at her drooping eyelids in the mirror. Can't stop my mind any easier than I can stop the Reapers. The Reapers...the all-consuming threat to life that they now faced. The alliances she had forged over the past weeks and months had given them the entire galaxy at their backs, and still they were unsure if it would be enough. She couldn't even sleep at night...what hope did she have for saving humanity? Saving life as all beings in the galaxy know it?...

Another sigh – this time while listening to the shower water as it heated up her void-cold cabin, watching as the steam curled in smokelike tendrils. It may be close to one o'clock in the morning, but another six hours and she would be expected to be back on her next command shift. There would be no more sleep this night – of that she was sure. Shedding her last garments, she caught a glimpse of herself in the mirror before entering the steaming water. Pale, naked, stark – scarred in body and mind amidst this world of aluminum and glass. Shepard stepped mercifully into the hot water. It was probably too hot, but its sting on her skin reminded her she was alive...and that in itself was a miracle. How many others have been given the chance at what was basically a second life?

Miracles. She snorted to herself while towel-drying her hair. Here they were in the ninth decade of the 22nd century, her skin a perfect organic overweave on top of powerful and expensive reconstructive cybernetics, and she couldn't even get a decent night's sleep! Too many horrors – too many responsibilities, and all she wanted to do was just rest...just for a moment. Everything – every place seemed to have ran together in her mind into a sea of pallid slideshows. Eden Prime, Ilos, Horizon, Tuchanka, Rannoch, Cronos Station. Wrex, Eve, Mordin, Thane, The Illusive Man - all the things she had been through in the past few weeks were crammed inside her constantly pounding head until she felt as though it may burst. The torture and change she had undergone the past three years would have broken most. But she persisted.

Having found a clean, crisp soldier's uniform from the well-stocked closet, Shepard lifted a stack of datapads from the in-tray on her desk and took them over to her bed. Lately, she had developed the habit of avoiding sitting on the hard sofa in her quarters – her sore muscles and aching bones preferred the relative comfort of the mattress.

Taking a deep breath and feeling the muscles in her lower back spasm, she sifted through the glowing screens of the datapads with obligated precision. All this data literally at her fingertips. It would cause her to stop and marvel, if it weren't for the fact that she was playing with fleets...and with lives. So many of them, so much at stake. This fleet – that system, this loss – that triumph. All we do is give and take – an inch here, a solar system there. The Reapers gave as good as they got, and while humanity and their allies had the upper hand in some systems, others had fallen to the Old Machines in the most spectacular fashion. Ream after ream of information scrolled past her eyes on the datapad's holographic screen – ammunition reports, acquisition orders, fatality lists, soldiers' correspondence to their families. The Alliance expected her to have her finger on every pulse of this war, and she couldn't even sleep at night.

The throbbing in her head started again...and Shepard felt her eyelids getting heavier. So tired...'close your eyes...just for a minute'...no! She sat bolt upright. 'No! No more sleep tonight – no more dreams.' She'd rather hallucinate from lack of sleep than from a nightmare. Sighing again, she rubbed her brow and begun on a new set of support coordinates for the quarian's fleets...

Barely two minutes had passed when the door to her quarters activated quietly. Shepard looked up, waiting for her eyes to adjust from the bright datapad screens to the darker cabin which was lit only by her aquarium wall. She smiled weakly as the one person she actually wanted to see slid inside her quarters and re-sealed the door behind him. Garrus regarded her quietly as his hand left the control panel of the bulkhead.

"Thought I'd find you up here."

Shepard shifted on the edge of the bed, half-digging herself out from underneath the stack datapads. She gestured at them feebly.

"As ever..." She looked at the turian as he approached her. He seemed...older. Much older than the hot-headed C-Sec officer that she had first befriended at the beginning of her quest to stop Saren. A hip-shooter all his life, Shepard had counted on him in more ways than she could recall...through their pursuit of Saren, during the fight against the Collectors, and, now, in this hopeless war against the Reapers. Always there, always the steel in her backbone, he had never let her down. Not something she could say for very many in this world.

The pleasurable mixture of comfort and excitement she felt as she watched him approach made her quarters seem a little less cold. His species afforded him an odd grace even with a height of almost seven foot, and his gold-trimmed, stiffly-styled turian officer's uniform only gave him more caliber. She was beginning to see what would probably pass for lines on the turian's face...beneath the scars and the metallic sheen and the blue-lit eyepiece. She cocked her head, overtaken by sentimentality.

"You've put your visor back on."

Garrus slid himself onto the edge of the bed deliberately and sat close to her, making one of the distinctly turian gestures with his mandibles that Shepard always found so inexplicably striking. He gave a soft laugh.

"Meh...I always thought it hid my best side, but then Joker pointed out that I don't actually have a best side, so I figured – 'what the hell?'"

Shepard felt her face crack in what was probably her first laugh in weeks...months maybe. It was too easy to lose track of time – at least, easier than it was to keep track of it. She pushed the datapads further away from her. Their presence now seemed to violate something.

"You're good for morale, Garrus – you know that?"

They both laughed, now...something small. Some tiny part of a past that they both shared from a time when the burdens seemed so miniscule. But Garrus fell quiet again, his trademark attitude muted. Perhaps it was dulled by war and struggle, perhaps it was his own burdens, perhaps it was...something else. He looked at her, a seriousness passing across his face that she had rarely seen. He cleared his throat softly, his voice at once soft and metallic...and wistful.

"You know the best thing about waging a war against genocidal machines that decides the fate of the whole universe?"

Her expression darkening at the merest mention of the Reapers, Shepard shrugged, her question sounding more like a statement.

"Winning it?"

The turian moved a little closer, not hesitating in taking her hand in his. She felt the metallic roughness of his three-fingered hand and it reassured her, seemed to remind her that she was still human. Ironic, perhaps, that being with this turian could make her feel more human...but by this point, there was no other being she needed more. He continued, his tone flecked with alloyed tenderness.

"No. I was thinking that it's a good excuse to remind the ones you care about that...well that you care about them. Want some company?"

Everything else seemed so distant now – the war, the datapads, the constant never-ending struggle to balance resources with demands. Garrus always succeeded where she failed, provided her with the hope and support to continue. True, there was a time for sacrifice, for conflict, and for grief. But there was also a time for self, and for love – even in this cold, war torn time.

Smiling, Shepard ran a hand softly over his cool, scarred face.

"You read my mind..."

She drew close to him, wanting for once to lose herself from the world and the galaxy. Close, so close now...his familiar scent – like steel mixed with leather. Somewhere deep inside, she remembered potently the first night they had spent together while under Cerberus flags. Never would she have thought that of all the men she had been with, she would find the true meaning of love in a turian rebel. Now, she couldn't imagine it any other way.

"It'd be an awfully empty galaxy without you in it, Garrus. I don't know what I'd do without you."

Garrus slid his arms around her waist, his mandibles stirring into an expression that Shepard had long ago learned was a mischievous grin. The closeness and intensity of that predatory glint in his eyes would have unnerved most humans – true interspecies crossed wires...but Shepard knew. She had seen. She had welcomed this turian to her before and it had changed them both forever. For the two of them, there were no species, no borders, no race. There was only the individual.

Garrus' flanging voice was soft – softer than most would give a turian credit for.

"Hmmmm. Guess I'm getting pretty good at this..." His mouth brushed hers in the awkward kiss that had become their raison d'être.

"...but, some more practice wouldn't hurt..."

Feeling his fierce love for her, Shepard snaked her arms around his plated neck, and took him down with her into a world of purple haze. The colors of the far-flung nebula they traveled seeped in through the skylight, bathing them both in dancing waves as the forgiving bed received them. Two aching, tired, hurting bodies – clinging to each other because it was the only thing they knew was real.

If only personal devotion could forge a future for all. The Normandy was their vessel across the light years, but their love for each other was the vessel of everything and anything they ever fought for.

~

The war was brutal, as all are. The entire intergalactic force behind them, Shepard and her crew in the Normandy brought the interspecies equivalent of rain from hell to the Reapers, yet still they persisted, still they gnawed at supply lines with their ground troops, and decimated entire fleets with their flagships. Space was alight with constant destruction as this cycle came to its Reaper-portended end.

But life – be it biological or artificial – has a stubborn backbone. The geth, the krogan, the turians, the quarians, the asari, the salarians, the humans and countless other smaller species conglomerated in one final wave as their 'Hammer-and-Sword' strategy played out. In the entire history of the current cycle, no other singular sight matched the spontaneous arrival of the combined alliance's fleets to the Sol System. The Sol mass relay lit up a million times over in a split second as the forces arrived to the most desperate theater of war.

From cooks to commanders, aboard every ship men and women caught their breath in awe of what they were seeing. For as sure as they were likely to be facing the end-days of their species, they were also witnessing an intergalactic, interspecies miracle play out in real life. Turian cruisers flanked krogan transport ships, geth fighters used asari dreadnoughts as staging platforms, human starships bolstered the mass effect fields of quarian liveships. The Reapers stood between them and the perpetuation of what they were fighting for. One person, one woman stood at the helm – the tip of the spear. Shepard...a stubborn, worn chariot of life.

~

Reapers' beams sliced through waves of ships, and with every orange glow that lit her peripheral vision, Shepard shed another mental tear. So much death – so much destruction. For what? Were they just pawns being manipulated by these grotesque dark space harvesters towards their own perverted goals? Then again, who cared? Reality is as it is – not as they desired.

The allied fleets' losses were astronomical, but they brought enough firepower to the front line of Reapers surrounding Earth and the Citadel to break through to the planet's orbit. Separating from the bulk of the force, the 'Sword' fleets hung back, defending the last hope of the Crucible under the ever-watchful eye of Admiral Hackett. 'Hammer' – the forces designated to take the fight for Earth to the Reapers and find a way onto the Citadel to open the massive station's arms – broke off and executed a mind-numbing, stomach-turning plunge into Earth's atmosphere. The Normandy danced in the hands of Jeff 'Joker' Moreau as if he had been born and raised the pilot for this very day. Screaming through lines of Reaper fighters and ships before they even had a chance to react, the Normandy showed the other Hammer forces the way down. Her Thanix cannons cut a path of righteous indignation clear to Earth's atmosphere, the sun glinting off her wings and seeming to give hope to all who followed her down.

Whereas the battle in the void of space was merciless and all-consuming, the battle on Earth was claustrophobic and personal. London had been the focus of the most intense fighting, and was where bodies littered the streets. Pitched battles – whether squad-to-squad or soldier-to-soldier – flared up on every street corner. Shepard's crew took leave from the Normandy in a shuttle to the surface while Joker returned to assist the vital Sword forces as they hung back, waiting to escort the Crucible towards the Citadel. Stepping out amidst the rubble, their stomachs squirmed at the carnage and the terrible realization that this was all that was left. The rivers ran red with blood, the skies burned, and the buildings fell to the wind.

Reaper ground troops pressed on every artery of humanity and its allies, even as the krogan and turians bolstered the front lines. Was it all for nothing? Was it all going to go this way – end this way? Doubt and depression were beginning to set in. The troops who had been on Earth since the beginning of the war had known nothing but this carnage, and the units arriving as reinforcements were now thrown into the midst of it with little notice or time to recuperate. It needed no voicing...this was how wars were lost.

Anything and everything any living being had known was being systematically erased from the surface of Earth, and of countless planets the galaxy over. Not content with sheer destructive force, the Reapers were also employing subtle stealth tactics. In more remote areas, their vessels landed and broadcast slithering, tempting offers to anyone that would listen. Those who entered to 'negotiate' returned only as indoctrinated servants of the Old Machines.

The Normandy crew – aided by Admiral Anderson's forces – were able to assist in some of the most important and taxing missions in the city. The entire horizon of London was awash in blue from the energy conduit the Reapers had established there. It served as a physical link between Earth and the Citadel, and those who had got close enough told horrific stories of human bodies piled higher than buildings. Most soldiers – rightfully so – dismissed the notion, thinking their comrades were trying to inflate their own war stories. But some – Shepard and her crew included – knew all too well the truths of the Reaper harvest. They were some of the only beings alive who had actually communicated with the Reapers – beginning with Sovereign on Virmire, then Harbinger, then the destroyer on Rannoch. The Reapers weren't merely here to extinguish all organic and synthetic life – they were here to use it. The beam was their harvesting mechanism.

Since the destruction of Sovereign on the Citadel three years ago, the Reapers had regarded humans with some kind of fascination. The race that Shepard seemed to represent had been picked once before for the Reapers' mysterious devices – the human proto-Reaper in the Collector base stood as testament to that. It stood to reason that they would begin these 'harvesting' operations on Earth. If the allied forces didn't experience a breakthrough soon, it looked as if they would also end on Earth.

~

Forward Operations Base on the edge of the war-torn center of the city served as a hub of chaotic planning, triage and re-fuelling. The mood in the musty, burned-out buildings was quiet, somber, yet determined. Somewhere in the distance through radio chatter, a medic was barely keeping it together while trying to talk a soldier through an emergency amputation in the field. Dust floated in the air so thickly that some even kept their breather helmets on – it danced teasing patterns in the military floodlights that had been erected around each corner of the building. The whine of gunships overhead was constant, and gunfire was often heard as wave after wave of husks was kept at bay from the exterior gates to the base.

Gasping for air, Shepard looked up at herself in the grimy bathroom mirror as the incessant concussions of war resounded in the distance. She looked like death. Her eyes were sunken, her face was ashen, and the sour odor of her vomit hung in the makeshift restroom's air as thickly as the dust in the crumbling operations building. Wetting her shaking, clammy hands with the pitiful trickle of water that fell from the faucet, she wiped the moisture across her face, trying to regain some feeling of life before facing her team for the final push to the beam. 'What's happening to me?' Her breath stung in her raw throat as she dried her face with one of the soiled rags that lay in a pile next to the basin. She couldn't escape that image of her – that horrific face that insisted upon peering back at her from the speckled, clouded mirror. Was she still herself? The headache that had plagued her since she could remember had reared itself into a cluster of indescribable agony. It seared her temples, clenched her skull, fogged her judgment. Freezing sweat dampened her clothing.

Stopping for a brief moment, Shepard closed her eyes and massaged her forehead slowly as she tried to regain her composure. Forcing her lungs to draw deeply on the acrid air, she felt her teeth slowly loosen their pressure on each other. Then, a massive, closer blast gave way to a lull in the noise of battle outside. The quiet that then descended on the ruined operations base was a brief respite – a moment to catch breath and sanity as troops and demons alike stopped, waiting for the next move.

"You can't do it."

An instantaneous attack of vertigo coursed through her body, giving way to rising nausea again. Her clammy fingers gripped the edge of the sink as the sudden silence allowed the whispering to return once more. "Futile. You are so tired. We know this. Do not fight – instead, rest..."

'Goddamn it!'

Shepard pushed herself away from the mirror with feverish desperation. The tight confines of the restroom were compounding her fears, playing on her weaknesses. With resolve, she stalked from the small room leaving the door swinging on its hinges.

"Shepard!"

She was about to head towards the strategy room where her team has gathered when Anderson's voice sounded from a corridor. As he approached, the careworn face of the admiral provided her a faint sense of comfort. His combat armor was dust-ridden and blackened in places, but his eyes still held the same determination they always had. Smiling, he seemed to have been waiting on her.

"You alright?"

Shepard's eyes tumbled from his face, settling at his feet.

"Fine, sir."

Anderson sighed, shaking his head.

"Goddamn it Shepard don't call me that – we've been through too much together and known each other far too long for formalities."

She smiled slightly, acknowledging their friendship in the dark, debris-littered building. The concussions began again as the aging admiral's kind eyes absorbed her.

"Helluva thing we're about to do, huh?"

Drawing a shaky breath, she nodded as her hand worked its way through her hair.

"Yeah. Sure is."

Anderson had moved closer to her – his gaze seemed more intense now. He searched her blanched face unapologetically, and she felt his hand grip her arm. His voice was low, hushed.

"Shepard – seriously. You look like death warmed up. Are you alright? You've been fighting these damn things longer than anybody else I know. You've had more exposure to the Reapers than all of us combined! No...headaches? No dreams? No...voices?"

A chill settled in her bones as her eyes met his. The nothingness inside her was all-consuming.

"I'm fine, sir."

Her mouth answered him seemingly without her bidding. She felt his hand leave her arm as she unconsciously walked away from him. The further she got from him, the more control she regained, even as the battle-weary admiral watched her leave with a dark, worried expression on his face.

A shower of dust and small rock particles fell from the crumbling ceiling as another closer blast echoed over their part of the city. As if being jolted from another of her nightmares, Shepard's feet picked up their pace. Down the dingy hallway she could see the glow of the operations room – the sparkle of holographic interfaces as EDI and Tali poured over an omni-tool map, and a reassuring blue visor...

"Shepard."

She jumped visibly as Kaidan emerged from the shadows of the corridor near her. He smiled apologetically, raising a submissive hand.

"Sorry...I didn't mean to startle you. Do you have a minute? To...talk?"

Casting one last, guilty glance at the now distant-seeming room containing the rest of her teammates, Shepard nodded at the major.

"Yeah, of course, Kaidan."

Feeling his hand gently usher her into a burned-out side room, separating them from the overburdened soldiers and panicked medics that scurried about the forward operations base, Shepard watched him as he pulled the blackened door to, muffling the sounds from the corridor. His silver armor shone even in the murk of the ramshackle building, and five days of stubble shadowed the handsome lines of his jaw. The young lieutenant she had known from years ago had matured into an accomplished Major and Council Spectre. A knot of nervousness twisted in the pit of her stomach as he drew closer to her.

"Sorry, Shepard. I just – I wanted to just have a minute with you. Before..."

He gestured towards the smashed out window on the outside wall, and the ever-present harvesting beam that linked earth to the Citadel across the city blocks. She nodded slowly as he continued.

"Shepard – I know you and I haven't always seen eye to eye on everything."

The statement seemed at once true and absurd, given their history. Kaidan laughed under his breath,

"Hell – sometimes we've seen more than that...of each other, I mean..."

A warmth thawed his hazel eyes that brought back painful memories to her – and there was a sorrow in them as well. It delivered a small piece of reality to her as she fell over her words,

"Yeah...I know, Kaidan. Look \- a lot happened between Sovereign and..."

But he cut her off, not wanting to lose the thrust of his statement.

"Shepard – don't. Listen. No matter what has gone before us, no matter what's gonna happen today at the end of all this, you need to know. You need to know that I don't blame you for anything. I've been wrong time and again about you...and I want you to know that I'm grateful."

His gaze held hers intently now – she could make out graying strands in his black hair.

"I'm grateful for everything we've been through together. I'm grateful to have had the opportunity to serve with you again on the Normandy – something I never thought would happen. Above all, I'm grateful for our friendship...for having the chance at this friendship. I know you could never have given me any more than that. Not...now. But I owe a lot of what I've become to you, Shepard. I needed you to know that."

A deep rumble from the center of the ruinous city punctuated the conclusion of his statement, followed by the patter of more dust as it fell around them. Shepard looked at him, finding the ability to breathe freely for the first time in what seemed like days. She clasped his shoulder with a grateful hand.

"Thank you, Kaidan. That means a lot to me. Our friendship means a lot to me. It...always has."

The major smiled warmly – their salvaged friendship bringing a small point of light to them amidst the destruction and death and war. Pausing for one more brief moment, he reached out and opened the door the led back into the corridor. The sounds of injured soldiers and frantic troops reached them once more.

"Come on – they're waiting for you."

~

Through her migraine, Karen Shepard was aware of events only through a haze of shellshock, fatigue and whispers. The occasional bought of vertigo overcame her – dismissed as too long at space and not long enough on firm ground. Her eye twitched incessantly as she stooped over a makeshift operations table with the others – so few of us. So few left...London's streets were complete rubble. Earth was dying. Anderson talked over plans for the Hammer forces' push to the beam – the mechanism by which they hoped to get a few souls onto the Citadel. Sweat studded her forehead and her skin crawled with goosebumps as she talked over plans with Admiral Hackett before embarking on the final push towards the beam. Conversations began to make less and less sense.

"Huh?"

"What?"

"Sorry – I thought you said something."

Nauseous and ridden with vertigo, Shepard orchestrated a rally that refused to sound like anything else but a goodbye with her massed squad mates. Her speech was pressured and unnatural. It was hot...but she was so cold. In her armor – was she still alive? One last push...one more step...

~

War...do I remember anything else? Do I remember the sun on my skin? No matter...I don't feel any more. I don't hear, I don't see. Welcome the shellshock – bring it to me. The Crucible...the Catalyst...nothing else matters. Focus.

Rudimentary creatures of blood and flesh...

Destruction under a wash of blue. Heat and smoke cloud my vision...my senses. My skin is torn off, chunks of Earth reign down on me, the trees, all of us. Ears ringing, stumbling...only know to go forward. A silver light on the Citadel. They won't let me leave...so much pain, so many voices. I don't understand. There is only one objective – there was only ever one objective. Destroy them.

Why me? Why do I have to be the one to choose? 'Had to be me. Someone else might've got it wrong.' So be it.

You exist because we allow it. You will end – because we demand it.
Chapter One

/Uplink initiated/

..... ....... ..Prime11a2298-634#recon-salvage operations request consensus ....... ...... ..

>>Acknowledged. Welcome.<<

..... ....... ..Recon-salvage operations in LondonSector14 procedure queried.... ..... .. with proximity of Old Machines decreased, wider scope of salvage operations was initiated to include primary blast zone.

>>Negative. Primary objective of munitions salvage overrides increased search area.<<

..... ....... ..Prime11a2298-634 supplemented by Hunter detachment 662 would be capable of executing both mission objectives without threatening estimated time of return to Outpost>human designation not yet received<, with additional sweep for allied survivors concentrating on coordinates of last observed allied units.

>>Negative. Denied. Retain original coordinates and mission parameters. Probability of survivors within primary blast zone is 5.678%. Salvage of ammunition deemed of greater importance in Sector 14. With uncertainty of Old Machines current strategy, Allied forces cannot proceed with formation of contingency plans until sufficient resources have been pooled. <<

..... ....... ..With advantage of ground truth assessment, Prime11a2298-634 challenges consensus determination of probability of survivors in blast zone. Debris forming significant cover, cool spots, downed human gunships not destroyed, some partially intact structures. Probability of survivors computed as 15.955%.

>>Negative. Denied. Consensus determines that.......<<

..... ....... ..Prime11a2298-634 thanks the consensus for its insight and has taken its views onboard. Confirmed disagree. I am initiating search of primary blast area. Thank you for your input.

/Uplink terminated by source/

~

Cut down in a black world. There was no light, no air, no heat, no urgency. Death was delicious and uncomplicated. It required no effort. Laying in a wet crimson bed of mortality, she cared not. She breathed not. Sensation lost to the winds of the Crucible, the image of an imploding web of mass relays was burned indelibly into her empty eyes. Death – with its ugly talons of whimsy – exploited her...scoring flesh, crunching bone, piercing organ. Her body was riddled with the torture of a thousand sacrifices. A thousand tears for every life lost to the Reapers before the Crucible was completed.

The pregnant darkness was no longer latched to her. With death had come a release – a chilling realization that her life had been tortured by the insidious suggestions of that which she had sought to destroy. Better dead than theirs. Don't wake up.

>>Salvage of ammunition and supplies in excess of mission parameters confirmed. Booting secondary objective. Scanning... ... ... deep thermal scan initiated. Estimated mission time remaining: 1hr 37minutes. Insufficient beam penetration – re-routing remaining runtime to increase potency. Scanning quadrant 4B. Negative. Scanning quadrant 6A. Negative. Scanning quadrant 11C. Negative. Scanning quadrant 3X. Confirmed. Existence of viable organic life detected in quadrant 3X. Investigating.<<

>>Shepard-Commander.<<

"Legion?"

>>Negative.<<

Her voice was ragged, guttural, her lungs were lacerated in the caustic air. The pain of shrieking made her slip under again.

>>Estimated expiration in 48 seconds. Commencing emergency intravenous application of epinephrine.<<

The Catalyst was piercing her, invading her, dismembering her. Her body shrieked with pain, pain brought back by life, by a heartbeat. Every sinew shrunk away from this newfound purpose...this unholy expectation...'don't take me there.' She was being pulled from her quiet, dark death world. They were forcing her to breathe, even as she coughed blood. Forcing her to live, even as her heart burst. Her charred hand clawed at her chest from the crushing spasms of breathing.

>>Pulse rate...atypical for species. Ventricular fibrillation. Clear.<<

The shell of her body was pierced by an unseen, shocking energy. A hint of consciousness began to seep through her mind slowly...so slowly.

>>Clear.<< Another crescendo of agonizing, burning energy wracked her chest.

A finger twitched, a muscle contracted, a life returned...and Karen Shepard opened a blood-crusted eye. She gasped the ragged breath of her third life, tried to move her head and gritted her teeth through the pain. For the first time, she felt the cold, scraping rubble under her body and fought the agony to raise her head and look at her unlikely savior.

A overbearing geth prime crouched by her. Normally, such a scene would have spelled death, but not now. The machine cast its vision towards her even as it tended her torn limbs.

>>Shepard-Commander. Ambulation is inadvisable. Please cease movement.<<

Folding away its cauterizing implement, it attached something to her left arm, and she felt the sickening sensation of something being pulled from her body, leaving her flesh. The raw taste of bile rose in her ruined throat. Her armor was vaporized, her clothes were fused to pieces of her flesh. Suddenly she remembered – with horrific, ice-cold clarity she recalled. The Catalyst. The Crucible. The beam. Harbinger. Her breathing quickened, she twitched under the metal grasp of the geth unit.

"Wa...wait. S...stop! Anderson??"

She could barely croak the words from her split lips. Ignoring the pain now, Shepard craned her neck past her bizarre medic to the field – the burned, blackened field. A building in the distance was being consumed by flames, the night sky was filled with clouds of smoke. There was nothing but silence – silence and the terrible blue illumination of the beam. It was still there...there and highlighting the deathbeds of millions. Human corpses lined the rubble-strewn crater they lay in – piled high for the harvest, swimming in blood.

>>Shepard-Commander – it is inadvisable to recommence higher organic functions at this time. Please cease...<<

Nothing was done – nothing had worked! She panicked, breathing harder...squirming under the grasp of the machine as they lay in the rubble of Earth's war. Her throat rasped with every burning breath.

"No...have to...get there..."

She began to hyperventilate, an agonizing pain returned to her chest. Gasping for air and pale from blood loss, starbursts filled her vision as she tried to extricate herself from the geth's cold metallic grasp. It cast its optics her way once more.

>>Pulse rate exceeding safe levels...decompensation in progress. Administering sedative.<<

Another pinprick in her arm...everything became cloudy, her tongue was rubber in her mouth. Her last vision before slipping into dumb sleep was of the beam...always the beam. Terrible and blue and dwarfing everything around it. They had lost.

They killed you once, and all it did was piss you off.

~

James spat the butt of his cigar out the airlock and cursed through the radio.

"Look – I've told you – I don't have any more!"

He fumbled with the rat's nest of wires, looking for the additional length of comms cables – or "green ones" as he had made Tali refer to them – that she had insisted he must have 'somewhere up there.' Slicing his finger on a jagged weld edge, he jumped back as if Harbinger itself had just materialized in front of him.

"FUCK!!!!!"

The radio activated once more – bringing the quarian's thickly accented voice up to him from the engineering deck.

"Unless you actually have something constructive to say, James – I would respectfully like to request that you close comms before using colorful human language. It makes my ears hurt."

Mumbling something under his breath, James sucked the blood from his cut and resumed the teasing out of each and every single wire from the Normandy's quantum entanglement communications hub.

"Of all the damn stupid things to ground us – it's a freaking loose wire and some welding?!"

The Normandy sat under the cover of the torn London buildings, prostrate and silent. The quiet of a graveyard had descended on Forward Operations Base since the Reaper forces had mysteriously pulled back from Earth, to merely circle the Citadel as it superimposed itself in the void above the planet. After the beam evacuation called for by Shepard, Joker had powered the Normandy away from Harbinger - no matter how wrong it had felt. The vessel had almost made it clear of the city and was nearly in a position to engage its FTL drive when the shockwave from a Reaper Hades cannon had torn through the immediate vicinity. The bridge of the ship had taken the greatest damage, and it had disabled all of their comms systems. Flying deaf for the remaining five minutes, the Normandy set down back at the FOB for emergency repair and regroup.

Once arriving there, they had learned from the remaining troops of Hammer's failure and retreat and Harbinger's destruction of the entire area surrounding the beam. Similarly, they learned of the subsequent, mysterious departure of Harbinger and its forces from the surface of the planet. Where as there had been only chaos and bloodshed and ground-rending impacts, now there was only the sound of settling debris, and the cries of the dying.

Major Coats had received the Normandy's crew when they disembarked from her smoke-blackened hull. James remembered with a sick feeling the way the young soldier's eyes had scanned their group, the way they had offered up that last futile, feathery flicker of hope.

"Shepard?"

He still searched them – searched their faces. James had cursed. Liara had wept as she slumped against the Normandy's exterior. EDI had shook her head grimly as she helped Joker scramble from the stairway. And Garrus...Garrus hadn't done anything, hadn't said anything. Silently, he had walked away from the ship and from the questions. Nobody dared to follow. If turians had a hell – he was in his.

Twenty hours had passed since that time. Twenty hours of silence as the tattered forces of Earth attempted a pitiful regroup. FOB had been transformed overnight into a makeshift metropolis of every intergalactic species. Asari gunships kept a watchful stare over all roads leading towards the base, but no hostile forces appeared, only group after wretched group of Hammer's decimated forces. Some were in armored vehicles, some trailed on foot. Some were wounded, some dead. All were watching their backs, looking over their shoulder at the inexplicable scene of the Reaper forces in orbit, clustered around the Citadel, doing nothing, only waiting. It was as if the center had been eaten out of their purpose.

There was little structure to speak of in the remnants of the forces, most individuals were permitted to dispose of their time as they saw fit until a contingency plan came from somewhere. Most had little to offer – be it in mind or body. Exhausted squads of turians tended their wounded with the help of salarian medical scientists. The asari performed last rites over their dead and others'...praying to their goddess to grant the departed some rest from the madness they had endured.

The Normandy crew was fragmented. James and Tali cooperated with Joker in working on restoring power and communications to the most advanced ship in their fleet. EDI assisted in retrieving data on the Normandy's schematics as well as providing a feed of ground data to Admiral Hackett with the Sword forces. Garrus worked silently, almost ritualistically in the Normandy's armory – ensuring their weaponry was functional and ready. Only Liara and Javik seemed driven...by something. Something strangely untold. After some time alone, the asari had suddenly demanded to speak with Javik on a matter of urgency related to the Prothean's memory shard. Their exchange before convening in Javik's quarters had caused ripples throughout the immediate Normandy camp, but few had the heart or the interest to pursue it.

A steady rain set in on the first night spent at forward operations for many – meals were eaten alone on unhungry stomachs, and off-duty soldiers took care of their comrades. A transmission from Admiral Hackett and Sword was received that informed the Earth resistance of their coordinates, but there was no mention of a plan...or hope. As the repairs to the Normandy were finalized, her silvery Alliance finery became visible as the rain washed the dust and smoke from her hull. A lone turian stood on the bridge, silently watching as the communications hub was restarted, and panel upon panel of holographic displays suddenly blazed in the darkness. Deck by deck, room by room the spine of the Normandy lit up as energy pulsed through her from the element zero core. This night would not be so dark, at least.

~

Cigarette smoke hung like a cloak in the central communications room of the FOB. Ramshackle display monitors had been strung up with spare wires to show feedback from each entrance gate to the compound. Private Medlock sipped tepid coffee as he scanned over each monitor...night duty sucked. But in a world where everything sucked, it didn't really matter. 1:00AM had come and gone, and there was only a skeleton staff left at central communications now. The sterilized smell of a military meal pervaded his nostrils as he flicked to Gate 3... 'oh crap, just my luck.'

Medlock sighed, straightened his spine and watched on the monitor as a thin ribbon of geth picked their way into view from London's ruined streets.

"'Nuther salvage party's returned. God – they're big buggers, too..."

One of the other privates on duty snorted in the background.

"Shit if they can bring us some more grenades, I'll kiss 'em!"

Drawing long and hard on his newly-lit cigarette, Medlock cleared his throat and addressed the geth through closed channels.

"Please state your designation number and detachment code, geth."

He waited, listening to the geth static while drumming his fingers on the console. He made a derogatory sign to his shift mates behind him...the race of synthetics had not been accepted into the ranks of the organics unequivocally. The transmission that came back from Gate 3 was broken.

>>..... ....... ..Prime11a2298-634...........unable to acc...ess.....esignation.....sh.....return from......blast zone with surviv......require emergen......45 minutes.......<<

Medlock sighed from the depths of his boots, ignoring the monitor in front of his face. Blowing a cloud of smoke on the mic, he drummed his fingers on the desk.

"Geth Prime – you're not coming through clear, I'm on 211.20 try again..."

>>Broadcasting on...alternative frequency. Geth detachment code unavailable......comms down across area. Prime11a2298-634 is requesting emergency access to human Operations Base with survivor from beam locale......unit has subject >Shepard-Commander<......req........rgent medical care.<<

The private stopped for a moment, his eyes twitching as his sluggish brain processed the message. He sat his mug down with shaking hands, sloshing cold coffee through the virtual keyboard. Had he heard what he thought he had?

"...Say...again."

>>Further elaboration risks subject's welfare.......estimated expiration.....42 minutes without species-centric emergency triage. Consensus determine expiration of >Shepard-Commander< to be......unacceptable.<<

A small, disheveled crowd had gathered behind him, every face now centered on the situation unfolding on the Gate 3 monitor. The private glanced back at his comrades,

"What did it say? What...what the hell did it just say?? I...I don't underst..."

Medlock stared dumbly at the monitor, his burned-out cigarette hanging by a thread from his lower lip, unable to close his mouth. A hand materialized out of the throng behind him and brought the Gate 3 surveillance camera in tight to the lead geth prime. Even in the dimly-lit street of rubble, they could make out enough to coax soft curses from all present. The prime stood motionless in the soaking rain, its rifle stowed on its back, its arms locked in a permanent, cold metallic cradle. Blood ran in rivulets down the machine's torso, a charred hand dangled from the motionless mass it carried. A woman behind Medlock gasped,

"Oh......christ, John!..."

Someone from the flight control tower had had the presence of mind to train a searchlight onto the Gate 3 entrance. It was now blatantly obvious to all the situation that was unfolding...but time – time seemed to be frozen. Thoughts, processes, movements all seemed too slow. The prime stood with an unnatural stillness, its ten foot tall, metal frame dwarfing with absurdity the body it still clutched. Its facial optics flickered and twitched with the processes of a thousand of its kind as the rain fell steadily. The geth's entrance code came in the form of a battered, red-and-white plate which still clung to the grievously injured person it carried, the only piece of armor left. N7.

"It can't be..."

They scrabbled impotently as the prime sent another broadcast.

>>..... ....... ..Prime11a2298-634 would advise against further delay....subject >Shepard-Commander< will expire in...35...inutes<<

"Hit the fucking gate!"

~

James and the lieutenant dumped the last crate of salvaged ammunition in a pile with its brethren underneath the Normandy's fuselage. Straightening with a groan, he looked up to see a wash of floodlights on the opposite end of the base.

"Whaddiya suppose that's all about?"

Lt. Tessier shrugged in the glimmering lights of the ship's exterior and shook James' hand.

"Dunno man – look, if I don't call it a night I'm not going be worth much for tomorrow's meeting. It's three in the morning, and I'd like to actually make use of the first night off I've had since the Reapers took a vacation. I'll see ya, alright?"

James only half acknowledged this statement as he shook the young man's hand. He watched across docking field as one white-clad figure – then another tore from one building, through the night and into another.

"Y...yeahh that's cool, man..."

He drew up to his full height, still watching the floodlights, and adjusted his gun holster so that the weapon was that much closer to his hand. Sighing, he secured the ammo crates and was about to retire to the mess hall when Tali exited the Normandy carrying several full lengths of excess cable and the welding gun. She dumped everything in a pile with a disgusted sort of gait, and looked at James through her grease-stained mask.

"Green ones."

He laughed even as he heard the exhaustion in her voice. He and the quarian had forged a partnership of necessity during the past couple of days. Joker was laid up with multiple bone fractures courtesy of his Vrolik's Syndrome. EDI was looking after him when she wasn't acting as a data-hub for the FOB when the infrastructure became over-taxed. Liara and Javik hadn't been seen or heard of for the past day-and-a-half as they convened in the Prothean's quarters – the asari had even erected a biotic barrier behind the ship's bulkhead that led to their room. Garrus – well, Garrus was doing what he could, and nobody was going to ask any more of him than that. There were also the lost. Those who didn't return from Hammer's assault on the beam.

And so that basically left he and Tali as the crew of the Normandy who were at somewhat of a loose end, although it was a grotesque way of describing it given the current situation.

EDI had trusted him to assist Tali in finalizing the repairs to the ship's communications hub ('Just know, James, if you screw it up, I WILL find you.').

Machines with a goddamn sense of humor – what's next? James was lost in thought as he helped Tali roll up the endless cables, his brow creased in a frown of exhaustion. 'Although, there could be worse assignments...' His eyes wandered to the quarian's svelte alien envirosuit. Alien or not – those hips would drive any man mad. Shaking his head to clear it of those thoughts, he and Tali picked their way together towards the mess hall on the starkly floodlit pathway.

~

Garrus Vakarian sat in the pilot's seat of the Normandy. With an unfeeling grasp he checked and re-checked his rifle's sight, barrel, clip. He watched without registering its silver and blue metal catch the light from the bridge's instrument panels. He thought nothing, felt nothing. Spirits preserve me – I'm going to die like this!

Locking and loading the weapon with a series of fluid clicks, he pushed it away from himself suddenly. He stared at his hand – something he couldn't recall ever having done before. Its metallic surface and scarred palms brought unwanted thoughts...thoughts of when he had felt those warm, human fingers mesh with his. His lungs contracted. He had never been like this before – never been without his sense of duty, sense of purpose. Now it was all he could do to stay together long enough to try to sleep at night. Which he had failed at – again. One more time, he found himself sitting at the helm of the Normandy at 3:00AM, lost...

Drawing a ragged breath, he looked out the bridge's windows and saw James and Tali conversing by a floodlight. They appeared to be in the midst of an animated discussion, but he could tell from the quarian's body language that she didn't feel quite up to it. How many of us go that far back? The memories of everything he had ever fought for flashed through his mind at the speed of light...had they all been living a lie? Living in denial of their end days? The triumphs over Sovereign and Saren, of the Collectors and the Illusive Man – none of it had made any difference. How many previous civilizations had been through this? How many cycles of death and destruction...how many times had the Reapers brought their fiery death to peoples – organisms that just wanted to live? Live...did he want to? Who would want to live to see this – this slow, squirming death of the galaxy? His rifle, laying on top of the central bridge console, caught his eye...his imagination. Garrus shifted uncomfortably in the chair, trying to banish the dishonor of the thoughts that were coursing through his conscience.

Glancing out again, he saw Tali and James still in the floodlight. The rain had let up – and a breeze had sprung out of the south. Tali looked at her left arm as her omni-tool activated. Oddly enough, James did the same. They suddenly looked at each other, and in an instant sprinted off into the darkness. Garrus frowned as his own omni-tool's communicator chimed out an alert, waiting to be read and confirmed. It must be the same one Tali and James had got...but they had vanished. Maybe the Reapers are finally coming for us. He snorted.

"Bring it."

Anything to accelerate an end to this insanity. He opened his omni-tool's communicator if only to shut the damn thing up, and glanced over its screen...over the single, two-word message-to-all that had been sent.

"She's alive. ~Chakwas."

~

A hundred human hands delivered her from the cold grasp of the geth. Five seconds – and somebody had a syringe in her broken arm. Another five – and war-grade medi-gel flooded her veins. Sensation had left her hands, her feet, her lips. Her ears rung, her blood boiled. The garbled voice of a man was in her ears, separated by bouts of unconsciousness.

'No......no damn it in HERE!! I can't......get that off of her!... anyone......blood type......no we're......ing to have to..........immediate transfusion......Gonna need......get me some of...do we ha...frozen plasma......if that's all we have...antibody panel checks out......'

She was laid on a hard platform, in a world of light and steel and glass. The slits of her bruised eyes saw shadow after shadow pass above her, working with an almost drone-like fluidity. Someone opened her eyelids to check her pupil dilation, and there was a gasp.

"By the Goddess – she's awake! She's not just alive – she's awake! Put her under - NOW!"

Pain returned...more pain than a body should be able to feel. A sudden wave of semi-conscious nausea welled up inside...she heard her own rasping voice as she forced it out of her burned throat,

"...am I...dead?"

A matronly Englishwoman answered,

"Not if I can damn well help it."

Two more seconds, a pinprick...and she was sinking yet again into a world of wooly numbness and scalpels.
Chapter Two

The FOB's medical center had been the recipient of every single remaining piece of medical apparatus that was available after the Reaper's retreat to the Citadel. It was the only section of the base that was clean, sterile and cutting-edge...the morbid reality being that demand for morgues was greater than demand for hospitals in the war against the Reapers.

The small cluster of individuals sat in silence – the silence of death's waiting room. How long had passed? Hours? Days? Time had no meaning in this place. Only life meant something here. Their finite world of resignation had been shattered and was lying at their feet as they watched entourages of emergency medical personnel and supplies get bustled into the room that contained Shepard. Not one of them had managed to bend their minds to the fact that they were once again thinking about her in present – and not past – tense. Instantaneously, each one of them realized how very much they all stood to lose. This one woman embodied the last hopes – the last breaths of Earth...of life itself.

EDI clutched Joker's hands in her metallic ones, trying to process his newfound speechlessness. James alternated from pacing like a caged bear to sitting depressively still, breathing heavily. Major Coats had spent time with them during part of the night. With an overwhelming sense of helplessness, he largely refused to sit, and simply stood against the back wall of the infirmary silently, lost in his own thoughts. Lastly, an asari priestess had slipped silently through the door and taken up a motionless vigil in the far corner of the room. Her blue-skinned hands held a delicate string of wooden prayer beads with the stillness of a statue. Nobody needed to question the purpose of her presence.

Motionless, Garrus watched everything, saw everything, heard everything. It was the subtlest things that gave him most pause – and most fear. A life support machine emitted a faint, but regular tone. At one point he heard Chakwas raise her voice...but not for long. The sickening sound of laser suturing equipment could be hear intermittently. And still not that voice...the one voice that he would give anything to hear. As time slipped by, the periods of silence grew as the moments of raised voices and commotion dwindled.

Organic and synthetic surgeons arrived fresh-faced in their white outfits, laser-magnifiers strapped to their foreheads, only to leave a few hours later bathed in sweat and blood. With each of them, Tali found another reason to shift uncomfortably in her seat. For one of the first times ever, she felt discomfort inside her suit – hot, cold, and anxious. Redundancy weighed heavily on her – on them all. It seemed absurd that the one person who had been tasked with leading the galaxy's struggle against the Reapers now lay fighting for her life just a few walls from them. Two days ago, they had left Shepard and the remaining Hammer teams to face the might of Harbinger in a suicidal rush to the beam. What had they been thinking? How could they function without her? How could they win without her? She had carried each and every one of them through personal struggles and all-out wars. Another hour had passed deep in thought. The quarian stood and laid a hand on Garrus' shoulder.

"I need some air – you going to be alright?"

He gave an almost imperceptible nod, and Tali exited the medical center for the first time in ten hours. The sun had risen, a watery globe of white above a thin film of cloud......a new day, waiting for a new purpose.

The turian's vision had become fixed – his brain processes had slowed to a near-stop. He had no idea how long he had been sitting in this chair, nor did he care. Even as something screamed inside him to stay awake, Garrus felt the clumsy grasp of slumber overtake his body......and his eyes began to close. It was so quiet...so still in here... No – no more dreams...please...in the distance, burning and bathed in blood, he could see the mountains of Palaven....

With the force of a biotic body slam, the door to the room that contained Shepard flew open just as the sun had begun to sink towards the horizon once more. The air in the infirmary's waiting area seemed to reverberate with a shockwave designed to do only one thing. Jolted back to full consciousness with racing pulses, Garrus, EDI and Joker scrabbled to their tired and sore feet as the last surgeon – Dr. Chakwas – made her presence known. She struggled in the process of discarding her soiled scrubs, lifted them over her head and threw them in a corner with feverish abandon. Her shock of grey hair was disheveled, matted with sweat and somebody else's blood. Wiping her face with the back of her hand, she turned around to look at those who remained. Slowly, the edges of her mouth curled upwards, and she nodded...

~

A rough, three-fingered hand smoothed her hair, washing the dirt of death from her forehead. It trembled as it traced the edge of her cheek, feeling the synthetic scars that had reappeared once more. Ritualistically, the hand went back and forth from the crystal clear bowl of water. The room was silent but for the sound of dripping water as the turian slowly revealed an image of the woman he loved from underneath the dirt, blood and grime.

"Never again..." Garrus murmured as he completed his tender work, and sat back in his chair, lost in thought. He ran his eyes across her scored face – the organic surgeons had worked miracles...the synthetic surgeons had worked realities. The charring and bruising on her neck, chest and arms had almost healed, courtesy of 22nd century intergalactic medical advances. Deep bone-structure molding techniques had transformed her shattered skeleton back from its painful state. New blood coursed through her veins, and despite the telltale glow of synthetics deep within her scars, the color of human life had also returned to her cheeks. Machines still monitored her every breath, every heartbeat, but the fact that Chakwas had left the infirmary in search of some sleep spoke reassuring words to Garrus.

Realizing the exhaustion that was creeping up on him once again, he leaned forward silently and placed the object he had been toying with on Shepard's breast. A shattered, burned N7 plate to sit atop the crisp, pristine blanket that covered her small form. It rose and fell with each breath, as if displaying to the world that there was life here still. With every minute, every hour that passed, her breathing regulated further, life returning to her body by the even-handed grace of medicine...

The turian had fallen asleep in the small hours of the following morning, slumped against the medical equipment that monitored her condition. His hand still rested on her bedside, where he had lost consciousness while holding hers.

But just as one fell asleep, so the other began to wake. Falling on deaf ears, the advanced medical monitoring equipment chimed the newfound cognizance of its ward. With the twitch of an eye, the spasm of a muscle – Karen Shepard began to regain consciousness. At a meticulously measured pace dictated by yet more machines, she stirred without pain for the first time in what seemed like an age. True awareness – rather than tortured existence – returned to her.

Opening her eyes and flinching against the bright medical lighting, she squinted as she glanced around, taking in her surroundings. The sterile atmosphere was overpowering, lonesome. There was nothing but silence. Good god – is anybody left? Horrific thoughts flooded her mind.  What if I'm the last one? What if the Normandy was destroyed after the beam evacuation? What if...

Turning her head, her eyes came to rest on Garrus – sleeping a sleep of nervous exhaustion against the machines that watched over her. Her eyes welled with tears as she scanned the turian's careworn face. There was still something worth fighting for. With muscle-tearing effort, she managed to lift a hand to his arm, and shook him gently.

"Hey..."

Her voice was croaky, broken. But it didn't matter – it reached him somewhere in his dreamstate like a lance of searing plasma. His eyes flickered open in a split second – and looked directly into hers. Another second and he was crumpled before her, weeping.
Chapter Three

She shuddered as she recounted the psychological torture she had undergone at the hands of the Reapers before their assault on Earth. The small group of Shepard's closest allies had gathered in the Normandy's medical bay, looking on while Dr. Chakwas tended to some last aches and pains of her patient. James' jaw was slack as he listened to her recant the painful story of her attempted indoctrination.

"You...you mean you actually saw all of this?"

His voice was incredulous, disbelieving. Shepard nodded distantly,

"Yes. Everything. After the rush to the beam, after Harbinger decimated the Hammer forces, I was effectively knocked into an hallucination. They were trying to break me...destroy my will, I think. It almost seemed desperate on their part. Like they had for the first time got a sense of their own mortality, perhaps. So much so that they would waste time trying to subliminally convert us."

Chakwas completed a last application of intravenous antibiotics and removed the syringe from Shepard's arm, drawing a wince from her patient. James, Tali, Garrus, EDI and Joker sat clustered around her as she sat on the edge of the bed. Their expressions ranged from saddened to pensive to outright disbelief.

James retorted again, "But that's...that's totally idiotic! They try to break your brain by putting you into some dream with a child who claims he's the Catalyst? They figured that they could make you just give up on destroying them? That's beyond believable! Who would believe that??"

Shepard cast a flinty look at James; her latest brush with death hadn't extinguished her propensity for fiery outbursts.

"It was real to me, James. Do you understand? I saw – felt – everything that happened in my head as if I was actually there. And not just the Reapers' suggestions about the Catalyst..."

Her voice tailed off, memories of past terrors returning to her, "...It had been going on for far longer than that. Weeks – months, maybe. I can't tell...maybe since we left Earth originally. By the time we arrived back at Earth with the Crucible, I hadn't slept without nightmares in weeks. I was exhausted, I couldn't think straight. I was nauseous most of the time...and I heard things...voices..."

She looked at Garrus as he laid a hand on her shoulder, his expression sorrowful.

"They were trying to break you, even then. I...had no idea."

Shepard looked at them all in turn, her eyes grimly dark.

"I don't think any of us had any idea. That's why the Reapers succeed in indoctrinating people...they manipulate the mind and their suggestions are insidiously flawless. They don't just rely on sheer brute force to conquer each cycle. Maybe it's because of my brushes with the beacons, or the Reaper artifacts...but they had been with me for...longer than I care to say."

Chakwas finished replacing medical implements on the steel tray behind her and turned to face her, a frown lining her forehead.

"Shepard, you should have told somebody. You should have told me! Maybe we could have fought this together...helped you."

Shepard shook her head and sighed in resignation.

"Don't blame yourself, Chakwas. Nobody should. If the Reapers are in here..." Shepard tapped a finger to her aching forehead, "There's nothing anybody can do..."

Sliding off the bed, she straightened her back and rubbed her shoulder – the aches from her surgery were beginning to fade. She looked at the tiny group of close friends around her and pursed her lips in resolve.

"I do know one thing. I'm here. They failed. That has to count for something..."

Cold metal touched her grasp as Garrus slipped her Predator pistol back into her hand. The first weapon she had held in this new life. She lifted it, regarding it with a strange contemplation. In one fluid motion she reloaded the weapon and holstered it at her waist.

"I need everyone to gather in the war room. We are the nucleus of this cycle, and I will be damned if I have passed through Harbinger's fire and death to stand here and wait out a Reaper invasion until we all become husks. We have the Crucible – now we need to figure what to do with it."

With nods of approval, the group broke up and disbanded – moving with more purpose than they had in days. Tali activated her omni-tool, sending summons to the rest of the Normandy crew to meet in the war room immediately. A small buzz of communications noise heralded their ponderously accelerating plans. As they exited the medical bay, Shepard looked around the eerily quiet mess hall and crew deck, a sudden cold washing over her.

"Where's Kaidan?"

~

'KAIDAN ALENKO. ALLIANCE SPECTRE.'

Eyes shut against the mournful expressions of the others, Shepard clutched the dogtags until their battered and blackened metal dug into her flesh. Her head was lowered as she leaned on the console in the silence of the war room, tears sliding down her cheeks at the loss of yet another longtime friend and ally.

"How many more?"

She asked in a trembling voice to the tiny assembled group in the Normandy's war room. From nothing, there was suddenly a terrible, black rage in the pit of her stomach. Slamming the dog tags on the war panel, she shrieked the question once more,

"How many more?!"

Her rhetorical question echoed amongst the holographic panel readouts, the consoles, the impotent real-time feed of the Crucible's schematics. Silence answered her. The tiny crew could do nothing more than cast their cheerless gazes back at her, sharing in her pain. EDI, Joker, Garrus, Tali, James, Cortez, and a handful of others. That was it. Shepard paced the line of consoles tirelessly, her skin crawling. Only hours after waking up in hospital, she now strode the Normandy's war room almost as if she had never been gone.

James sought something to say.

"Uh...Anderson's alright, Shepard. He was in pretty bad shape – they had to remove him from the front lines, but...they think he'll make it..."

Shepard gave a slight nod at his attempted placation, toning down her pacing after seeing the utter hopelessness of their situation reflected in the rash, aspiring-N7's eyes. She glanced at Garrus – at a total of six paces from her, it was probably the furthest he had been from her since she had awoken. She sighed.

"And Liara...Javik?"

Tali piped up for the first time since Shepard had gathered them in the war room.

"Fine, Shepard – they're both fine. They've just been...working on...something."

Ignoring the perplexity of the asari and Prothean's absence, Shepard fell to examining the Crucible readout on the center console, her eyes distant. A simultaneous display of the Citadel with Reapers a-thousand-fold around it reminded her of their situation.

"Well whatever it is that Liara's 'working on' with the Prothean – I'm going to have to get word to them. I need them..."

James cleared his throat, shifting his weight from one foot to the other.

"So...should we contact Hackett? He was wanting to talk with us as soon as we knew your status."

Shepard hadn't heard him, however. She had begun circling the holographic war room display, arms folded, her expression thoughtful. Her eyebrows had come together in a silent frown. She gestured at the Citadel.

"So what's the theory? What are they doing?"

Garrus punched in some values to the console and brought the image of the Citadel into the foreground of the display. He took his place next to Shepard at the head of the console.

"We're not sure. All we know is that immediately after the beam site explosion, Harbinger and its detachment of destroyers left the surface of the planet..."

He pointed a slender finger at the trajectory Harbinger had taken, as the display recanted perfectly the joining of Reaper forces around the Citadel.

"...they rejoined their other forces and simultaneously withdrew all their ground troops from Earth. The harvest continues, the Citadel remains locked in orbit..."

Shepard bit a fingernail while processing everything she was being told.

"We already know the likely outcome of another beam assault – I don't fancy dying again...it's getting kind of old. The Citadel is likely crawling with the Reaper's ground forces from Earth. The Crucible remains on the far-side of the Sol Relay with Hackett and the Sword fleets. What are the allied casualties like?"

Tali immediately brought up stats on her omni-tool, shaking her head slowly.

"Staggering, Shepard...they're staggering. Most confirmed fatalities are tied to krogan and turian ground troops, the asari have also taken catastrophic losses. Thessia has fallen. The quarian fleet lost twenty percent of their entire flotilla in the initial assault to get Hammer forces down to the surface. Not as many human casualties...but we think that...that's only because of the harvest..."

Tali continued with her mournful readout of the war of their end days, but Shepard's gaze had become distant once more. Her brown hair framed her still-pale face with harsh clarity, a flash of N7 red down her right arm providing some of the only color in the room. Her synthetic scars glimmered a pale gold, mirroring the holographic displays before her in the war room. She looked from Garrus, to Tali, to EDI and Joker, and to James. The other Normandy crew members flanked their central group, listening quietly. The hope that had swelled upon the ship when Shepard had strode onto the Normandy had flickered and waned...their eyes were dark, hollow, and tired. They had nothing more to offer than their bankrupt, burned-out bodies. In each of their gazes she saw a hundred more family members dead, displaced, gone.

Not one more.

She flicked her gaze from the Crucible display to her crew, each one of them as devoid of hope as she was. Shepard cast her thoughts back years – to the triumph over Sovereign at the Citadel, to the destruction of the Collector base two years later. Days had come and gone where they had prevailed over any and all threats, sometimes only through the grace of having each other. But the Reaper threat that had been dogging each individual in this room for more than three years had emerged and was spreading like a slow cancer. Hopelessness and inevitability were just as worthy foes as the Reapers in this war to end all wars.

Her chest burned with dry tears. Something that was either going to consume her or the Reapers – determinism laced with hatred and sorrow. Suddenly stifling and hot, she unzipped her hoodie, threw it in a dark corner and whirled to face the group.

"Goddamn it this won't do!"

A fire burned in her eyes to match the scorched tracks of the synthetics under her skin. She turned her back on the crew and leaned on the panel displaying the Crucible – their one, last, lost hope. Silhouetted against the pale blue of the schematic, she squared her shoulders and dropped her head, her hands grasping the console so hard their knuckles became white. Garrus approached her, laying a hand on her back.

"What do we do, Shepard? We're so close...so near. What do you need?"

Slowly, she brought her eyes up to level with the Crucible, its ageless, perfect design glittering in her eyes like some god of salvation, tempting them to try...anything.

"Everyone...I need everyone."
Chapter Four

The morning was cool, the rain had ceased and there was a thin, golden mist hanging around the base, waiting to be dispersed by the rising sun. Forward Operations Base had become a hive of frenetic activity since Admiral Hackett had put the call out to all allied forces to pool their resources for Shepard's plans to muster every single mind they had. Hackett understood Shepard. Her commanding officer during the Reaper war, Hackett had provided an immovable, indomitable will for the greater good of the Alliance and the wider galaxy. And when the call had come in from Shepard, he knew that when she said 'everyone', she meant everyone.

A large swath of the landing bay had been cleared off, ships and smaller fighters were repositioned, and soldiers worked feverishly to lay out communications equipment, vid-com portals and seating for an undetermined number of people. Seats, bashed tables and holo-screens were placed in no order around the clearing. A small elevated platform at the head of the enclosure had been set out in front of the vid-com equipment. The early morning's atmosphere was chaotic, unfocused, and yet strangely determined. Doing something was far preferred for most over doing nothing, and all the forces that had been pent-up at FOB since Hammer's failure to reach the beam had surely had their fill of doing nothing. Against the inspiring backdrop of the Normandy SR-2 in its Alliance colors, commanding officers of all races and creeds began to gather.

Private Medlock waved signaling flags above his head as he simultaneously drew on his morning cigarette, manually guiding down the first fighter in the expected procession. He knew little – except that they were expecting an innumerable amount of arrivals today, orders coming straight from Admiral Hackett via Commander Shepard. As the small, fast vessel touched down, the wash from its miniature element zero drive core sent dirt and debris scattering across the field. The private eyed its sleek lines and dark blue asari hull with interest – he'd never seen one this close before. The engines hadn't even spooled down when the side door flung open, and the soldier's contemplation of the fighter ceased immediately as its occupant exited the vehicle. With slow, deliberate steps, the maroon-clad, bewitching asari Justicar approached him and shook his hand.

"Thank you for guiding my vessel down, private."

Her eyes danced with the power of a millennia of biotic power as the Justicar Samara walked off at a relaxed pace towards the Normandy's enclosure. The pilot of the asari vessel immediately took off again, being under strict instructions to clear the landing zone for further arrivals. And arrive they did...

~

As she donned the last piece of her N7 armor, Shepard gazed out of the port observation window at the spectacle that was unfolding before her eyes. At her behest, the FOB was being flooded with individuals from her past. Individuals she had asked for by name.

"Samara's here, Shepard," Garrus informed her as he dismissed an omni-tool message from his arm. He drew close behind her as a thunderous noise came from the corridor behind them, then a scream.

"Fuck off, James!"

He grinned and laughed under his breath,

"And Jack, too, apparently."

He turned his attention to Shepard, her face clouded by thought and worry.

"You okay?"

Shepard took the turian's hand in hers, holding it to her chest.

"This is all I know how to do Garrus – gather those closest to me. Something has to come from this...because I sure as hell can't do it alone. It's this or nothing. Now or never."

He laid a hand on her shoulder and turned her to face him – his visor's blue heads-up screen casting its familiar glow across them both. Emotion flooded his voice.

"You're not alone. You have me...and while this aging turian might not win any beauty contests, you know that he loves you. That he will do anything for you. You will never be alone – you hear me?"

For a brief moment, time stood still. She felt the fast beat of his turian heart next to hers as he clutched her to him, squeezing her hands in his. Pressing her forehead against his cool metallic skin, she breathed shakily.

"I love you, Garrus Vakarian."

He ran a hand down her cheek, wiping away the stray tear as it slid down her skin. He nodded towards the window,

"It's time, Shepard."

~

The Normandy enclosure – or 'Camp Able' as it had been christened by the Alliance's self-proclaimed historians – was awash in a spectrum of life. Clinging to the last bastion of hope – they came and gathered. Commanders, admirals, lieutenants and troops of every race. There were no longer any boundaries, factions or races. There was just life – and its unity against that which threatened it. Familiar faces blended with strangers as the allied forces convened at noon under a wash of sunlight.

Her blood and heart were on fire as Karen Shepard exited the Normandy towards the gathering. Her N7 armor caught in the sunlight as she was flanked by those closest to her. A nervous tick in her jaw was the only outward sign of her anxiety as she arrived at the forward comm table, her Kuwashii visor resting over her left eye and bringing everything into sharp focus. Her eyes flicked over the crowd – so many had come. Hackett was more than adept at gathering might.

Samara had embraced her firmly the moment she stepped from the Normandy; the human biotic known as Jack sat in a ragtag fashion watching her as she approached the front of the gathering. Wrex stood at the back with his large platoon with a familiarly perfect krogan standing just behind him. The squad of geth primes and hunters who had delivered Shepard from the destruction of the battlefield stood off to the side in regimented fashion. And somewhere near the center of the large gathered crowd, a small, lithe figure in a white body suit watched quietly. Miranda Lawson smiled gently as she watched the familiar figure of Shepard take the front table.

Unannounced, the four vid-comm portals glittered and flickered to life – beaming the allied forces' greatest leaders to their leagues of gathered might. Admiral Hackett, Admiral Anderson, turian Primarch Victus, and salarian Councilor Valern all cast their glittering blue gaze out upon the amassed forces as Anderson spoke first.

"My god Shepard...are you a sight for sore eyes!"

She leaned against the forward table under a strung panel of monitors, and smiled at the tired-looking admiral.

"I could say the same about you, sir!"

Hackett stood next, and began pacing.

"Shepard it's damn good to see you! I have no idea how you managed to survive Hammer's decimation, but we've gotta figure out what the hell we're going to do here. Sword and the Crucible are still here, and we're safe for now. But we still don't have a clue what the Reapers are doing and we have still have no idea what the Crucible will do if we manage to get it docked with the Citadel..."

Shepard nodded as Hackett brought brevity to the groups gathered before her. She glanced at Garrus sat across the table from her, took a deep breath and turned to the amassed crowd.

"You all know why we're here, and you all know what's at stake. No one person is going to do this alone. If we don't come up with something – a way to bring the Crucible to the Citadel – then everything has been for nothing. We're asking...I'm asking...for your help. All of you..."

She looked at the hull of the Normandy as it shone silver in the midday sun, inspiring words from inside of her that she never knew existed.

"I look out on all of you, and I see myself reflected. We have passed through death and grief and pain, and we are still here. We still breathe, we still fight, we still love and we still hope. Not one civilization has come as far as we have against the Reapers, and I will be damned if I'm going to let them take us the way they took the others...the Protheans and all others who came before them. Our cycle holds the responsibility of ending this! I have seen what we are capable of, I have seen what we can surmount. I have spoken with Reapers and died twice. If we ever want to prove to ourselves that we are greater than the sum of our parts...now is the time!"

~

The deliberations passed from the day into the night, and ignored headaches and sore bodies. Ideas and plans had formed, been discarded, been reviewed and given up on. Everything from using salarian STG squads as strike teams inside the Reapers themselves to distorting the Citadel's mass effect fields in some way to force the arms open had been discussed. Wherever they turned – one fact remained. The overwhelming might of the Reapers prevented them from acting on these plans.

"What about another beam rush? I mean...with respect, it almost worked..."

Shepard shook her head grimly,

"It won't work. Harbinger would be on us before we even got to ground zero."

A holographic schematic of the Citadel superimposed itself above their heads. The Reapers still hung in orbit around like a death knell. The late hour and tired faces gave rise to a slew of suggestions from watery minds,

"Isn't there some way of overriding the arms from here? Why don't we have access to that sort of technology?"

"Could the combined fleets of Sword maybe leave the Crucible behind and make a mass effort to punch through the Reapers?"

"Is it somehow possible that we could harness the Sol System mass relay to destroy the Citadel and the Reapers?"

"Can we just detonate the Crucible? I mean – it might kill us, it might not...but it also might destroy the Reapers."

"Don't be an ass, Govan..."

"Days have passed...are we even sure they still intend to kill us all?"

Shepard listened to the spiritless gathering's suggestions and ponderings, leaning on her hand for support. She looked from Garrus to Tali, James, EDI, Joker, and out into the larger crowd. So many faces – both familiar and strange – is this all we have? Sighing, she clambered to her feet again.

"None of that's going to work! This isn't a problem you can just throw firepower at...we have to have something definable. We have to have something concrete...the Crucible is out there – it is literally waiting for us."

Wrex suddenly bellowed from the rear of the group.

"None of this matters unless we know what that gigantic globe we built does, Shepard."

A few of the krogan and turian forces nodded and grunted in agreement, emboldening the krogan leader to more words.

"Now I'm certain that no krogan's going to come up with the solution, but we're not the brains, we're the brawn..."

Shepard nodded at her old, brawny friend as he sauntered towards the front table. His magnificent red crest glistened like a ruby in the base's nighttime lighting.

"What does he think?"

Wrex jabbed a thumb at Hackett's projection.

"He's the one who's been working on this Crucible thing..."

Hackett sighed, sifting through the datapads that surrounded him. Even via vid-comm, Shepard could distinguish the fine lines on his face, the graying beard that he scratched. He replied,

"The Crucible is ready, Shepard, but our problem is that we still don't know what it does. As best we can tell it manipulates dark matter within a framework of eezo tubes...but without deploying it on the Citadel we just don't have a clue. I'm...sorry."

Abruptly, everything went black in front of Shepard. She shook her head, casting down the sheaf of papers she had been flicking through and the datapad that displayed the statistics of the Crucible.

"So what are we supposed to do – wait them to death?! I am not sitting here and waiting for them and I am not letting our remaining worlds do that either!"

She walked the aisles between the fragmented groups of troops and specialists, casting her eyes over table after table of piles of papers and datapads, holographic displays and schematics of everything from the Citadel to Alliance fighter jets. Stopping short of the platoon of geth, hands on her hips, her small form was engulfed in the turnout of troops.

"So that's it, is it? We've been here twelve hours, and so far...nothing."

She looked around at the various races assembled before her, friends new and old, former enemies banded together in unfruitful alliance.

"I'm asking all of you – each and every one of you. Whatever depths we have – whatever our backgrounds – leave nothing unsaid. We have nothing?"

There was silence across the hushed gathering, the only sound being the rustling of papers in the breeze that flowed through the camp. Then – a voice, small and clear and soft.

"Not quite."

~

The pale-blue-skinned archaeologist emerged from the crowd, and stood before Shepard like the memory of a ghost. It seemed an age since she had seen her last. Shepard felt pinpricks on the back of her neck at the light in Liara's eyes.

"Spill it, T'Soni."

The asari was reluctant as all gazes turned to her. She faltered in front of the vast crowd. Shepard softened her tone, pleading with her.

"Liara...please."

She gently guided the introverted asari to the forward table, to join the rest of the Normandy crew. She was thin – much thinner than last Shepard had seen her. Not having eaten or slept for four days, Liara shakily made her way to the front and was helped by Garrus to a seat. Her normally pristine laboratory uniform was unusually crumpled, old. A hushed, reverent silence had fallen over the crowd – even Jack and some of the more rowdy young soldiers were holding their breath. The light of hope was so rare now that it stole the tongues of every man, woman and machine present.

Liara sipped the glass of water that Tali had fetched her, listening to the breeze whistle through the base's tents and the Normandy's wings. Her hands shook visibly...but they were steadied by Shepard's as the human lent strength to her.

"What do you know, Liara?"

Clearing her throat, steeling her nerves, the asari's timeless, melodic voice pervaded the furthest reaches of Camp Able.

"I...I'm sorry for my absence, Shepard. It's hard to explain..."

Sighing, she allowed her thoughts to unravel.

"I have been convening with Javik in his quarters for four days now. It has been...taxing."

Every soul present listened to her intently. The asari had spent three full days with the last Prothean alive – locked away in his quarters inexplicably. Nobody present could guess at the nature of the exchange between a fifty-thousand-year-old Prothean and the archaeologist who had devoted her entire life to the research of his extinct species.

"Think back with me, Shepard...before our assault on Earth, before you were hurt. I guess the archaeologist still gets the better of me sometimes. I had been going through some of the Prothean data discs and information we had accumulated. I...I don't know why – something was compelling me to. After we landed here at the base, I had little to do with my time except lose myself and my sorrows in my research."

Shepard nodded slowly, time seemed to have slowed down. Glancing sideways, she noticed a few familiar faces had drawn closer in the crowd. Wrex, Grunt, Samara, Miranda – they all approached the table at which the asari sat. Her story as it unfolded drew them all into a surreal, still dream world. The lights of the FOB at night sent odd shadows flickering through the crowd. Somewhere across the scorched earth and dark, rubble-strewn streets of London, Big Ben chimed out another midnight with lamenting tones.

"This goes back years, Shepard – before Saren brought Sovereign to the Citadel. Do you remember the Prothean VI on Ilos?"

Shepard nodded in acknowledgment.

"Vigil?"

It was a name that echoed from Javik's time, a time before any of the species present had pulled themselves from the primordial murk. Liara continued, "Yes, Vigil. I have copies of the data we acquired from it. It talked of the demise of its people, and the last Prothean researchers who had made the one-way journey through the Conduit to the Citadel during their own war with the Reapers, to seal the relay and prevent future Reaper invasions. But...the more I read and researched, the more something seemed...out of place in the data."

Many of the closely gathered sat forward now, hanging on the asari's every word. A few of them had been present for the mission to Ilos – the covert research world of the Protheans that had carried Javik's civilization's last hopes of stopping the Reapers. That last hope had ultimately ended with the destruction of their people and harvest of their bodies. Liara continued as if in a trance, her voice had become distant, separated from body and earth, almost mirroring Vigil's own tone.

"Vigil's data referenced the Prothean researchers that had sacrificed their lives to travel to the Citadel. But when I began looking more closely at the data, some of the words it used didn't make sense. A Prothean researcher by the name of Ishnavaya was present among their number. But when the data spoke of him, it used a strange pronoun..."

Shepard shifted in her chair, straightening the ache out of her back. She cleared her throat slowly,

"I remember. Vigil told us that the last Prothean researchers had used the Conduit to travel to the Citadel, to close the relay and seal the Reapers in dark space. They succeeded, didn't they?"

Liara nodded in agreement.

"Yes – they did succeed. But...I suppose I'm a little obsessive. Facts and terminology tend to weigh on me. So I enlisted Javik's help in decrypting some of the data from Vigil. We sealed ourselves in his quarters and I...I melded with him."

The asari seemed preoccupied, casting her mind back millennia as the assembled forces watched the unfolding scene. The line between Javik's civilization and their own – although separated by 50,000 years – seemed as if it was becoming blurred, indistinct.

"Javik's mind is complex and ancient, Shepard. I didn't even know if melding with a Prothean would be possible...it could have killed me. My kind have never conducted a joining with a Prothean...and their minds and memories are extremely elaborate. But by the grace of the goddess – it worked. I was able to imprint a fundamental knowledge of the Prothean language and culture onto my own mind."

Garrus sat with his arms folded, a dark expression shrouding his face.

"That was a dangerous thing you did, Liara."

She nodded, her exhausted body shaking in the cool of the pre-dawn hour.

"Yes, it was. But it was necessary. With the knowledge of Javik's language, I was able to decipher some of the data files from Vigil more completely."

Shepard and Hackett both leaned forward in their seats even further as Liara continued.

"'Ishnavaya' is the Prothean word for defiance. I asked Javik if it was considered normal for a Prothean to be given this name, and he flatly denied that it would ever have been used so. The pronoun used for this 'researcher' provided the last key. It was an it, not a he. Ishnavaya was not one of the Prothean researchers to give up their lives traveling to the Citadel all those millennia ago. Ishnavaya was what was being brought to the Citadel by the researchers..."

Shepard listened stoically.

"Well...that's very fascinating, Liara, but what was it? What was it that they carried with them onto the Citadel?"

The asari rose from her chair, glancing uneasily at Hackett and Anderson's silent, unmoving forms as they watched, listened, absorbed.

"I...we...don't know. All of the files that speak of this Ishnavaya entity are piggybacked by vast caches of junk data – completely indecipherable information that was written fifty thousand years ago, in an encrypted Prothean programming language. All I know is that every single piece of the non-linear information we obtained from Vigil centers around an entity or object named Ishnavaya, we just didn't know it at the time. We thought it was junk...we didn't make the link."

Shepard had bitten into her lip while listening to the asari...her mind working painfully slow. She sat back in her seat, pursing her lips into a perplexed, crooked grimace.

"'Defiance', huh? The VI...Vigil...said that not even the Prothean civilization at large knew of its existence. Ilos was a covert base – somewhere that the Protheans sent their top researchers and scientists to work on a solution to the Reaper threat. They didn't even communicate with the outside world. Correct?"

Liara nodded slowly, an urgency in her dark eyes.

"That's correct, Shepard. And while the researchers at Ilos succeeded in closing the relay that provided the Reapers with a back door into the galaxy, I cannot help but feel that this was in some way secondary to their primary mission. They took something to the Citadel, Shepard...we just don't know what it was."

Hackett's vid-comm image had become complicated by other forms – faces had bled into the projection behind him. Some of Fifth Fleet's top crew and researchers had gathered behind him in the late hour...listening to the crackling embers of a conversation that seemed forbidden. A salarian scientist aboard Hackett's vessel extricated himself from the group behind Hackett, his thin amphibious face seeming ludicrous in the night's darkness. He cleared his throat unnecessarily.

"So, whatarewetalkingabouthere? Are we talking about a simple dataset of encrypted files or something more convoluted? The fact that this information stems from IlosandtheProtheans renders it...most desirable."

Liara sighed, looking at her feet.

"I...I'm afraid I just don't know. I've learned enough over the ages in my Shadow Broker capacity to know that this is not merely a by-product of the Prothean VI, however. The data it gave up was spidered with this encrypted material, but there's so much junk attached to it...it would take years to unravel."

Shepard stood abruptly, pacing the forward section of the gathering. Her brow was a dark scowl, her eyes brooding. Memories of Vigil and their mission to Ilos were looping through her mind – maybe there was something she had forgotten? Something they missed?

"How could we have overlooked this??"

Liara talked to the ground, not wanting to meet the commander's gaze.

"To be honest, we didn't know we were overlooking anything. We didn't exactly devote a lot of time to checking Vigil's files for typographical errors..."

Shepard looked off to the side, her tired pupils becoming unfocused. The breeze stung her eyes as the whole camp became a blurry globe of starbursts. Blinking rapidly to dispel the momentary phase of exhaustion, her attention rested on EDI. She stopped her pacing.

"EDI? Do...you think you could make sense of the data?"

EDI – the unshackled Artificial Intelligence of the Normandy – looked at Shepard earnestly through her digital visor.

"It's possible, Shepard."

She rose and approached the front enclave, all eyes suddenly resting on her. Joker's left eye twitched as he watched her go, Miranda expressed particular interest from the front rows of the now mostly-vertical crowd. EDI reached Liara quickly in the long, graceful strides of her mobile platform.

"Do you have the data, Liara?"

Liara nodded. There was a brief exchange of omni-tools, and EDI inserted a minute, silver disk into her left arm. Slowly, the AI lowered herself into the chair next to Liara. Bowing her synthetic head, EDI's visor dimmed as her mobile runtime booted the data files Liara had given her.

"Scanning... ... ... ."

A million files flooded her fixed, artificial eyes, strobing with alarming speed across her visor. The AI ceased all external processes as the data files flooded her system. Shepard glanced from EDI to Hackett's video projection, and finally to Joker. She stepped back a few paces, licking her dry lips in the cool air. The entire camp – the entire base – had fallen silent. Seconds turned to minutes, minutes seemed like hours. The stars wheeled above them as the hundreds-strong throng clutched to the single filament of hope that had been thrown to them.

After what seemed like an age, EDI's body reanimated, her visor cleared of the confusing stream of indecipherable glyphs, and she jerked her head up. He tone was....incredulous.

"I cannot do it."

Throughout Camp Able, bloodstreams ran cold. Someone from Jack's group cursed softly in the half-darkness. A few of the krogan lumbered from the camp, and Shepard felt numb.

"What do you mean?"

EDI rose, the base's floodlights catching her silvery figure with stark clarity.

"I cannot do it, Shepard. This data – this encryption – was written fifty thousand years before my creators invented fire. It is as if it were written in a different medium – not just a different language. It seems a solid-state, imaged imprint of the Prothean researchers' minds. Each mind held the memories of countless of their ancestors. While it can be stored on a disk – it cannot be read any more than you can take down Harbinger with a slingshot."

~

Shepard looked at EDI through the corners of her eyes, her cheeks sunken, her hands suddenly clammy in the dew of early dawn. Her skin was awash in goosebumps. She wanted nothing more than to sink into the shadows behind her – dissolve and cease to exist. The cruel twinge of dashed hopes was displayed on each and every face in the gathering. She shrugged, almost relishing the return to the status-quo.

"So...that's that. Any other suggestions? Hackett?"

She threw the words over her shoulder as she turned on her heel to walk away from the main table. Half a step later, her face was buried in cold metal. An odd noise escaped her as Karen Shepard stepped slowly back. Raising her eyes, she regarded the geth prime with widened, fixed eyes. Its ten-foot-tall frame stood motionless six inches from her face, a soft light glowing from its optics.

>>Shepard-Commander. Prime11a2298-634 requires the Prothean dataset from Dr. T'Soni.<<

Backing up further, she moved slowly, so slowly. Shepard gestured to Liara in a series of quick, silent flicks of her hand. The prime advanced to the edge of the forward table, slowly casting its optics across the individuals assembled there. It lingered on Tali momentarily, then turned to Liara. The asari archaeologist extended a pale blue, uncontrollably shaking hand towards the massive geth prime, offering up the tiny silver disk. It took the disk immediately, and moved to insert it into an uncovered slot on its left arm. I must go to them. Shepard jolted suddenly, Legion's last words echoing terrifyingly in her mind. She interjected her arm between the geth's hand and its own appendage. Her breath was ragged. She grabbed what served as the machine's wrist with white-knuckled determinism.

"What are you doing??"

The prime stopped, regarding Shepard with its unblinking stare. It had been stopped more by the sudden statement that she had made, than the constraints of her grasp. She met its stare with her own ambivalent eyes. The machine responded,

>>Prime11a2298-634 requires the dataset....<<

Shepard almost didn't let it finish,

"Why? What are you going to do?"

The prime paused briefly, its optical lights flickering with the communication of millions of its kind.

>>Consensus determines that assimilation of data by Prime11a2298-634 carries a 50.642% probability of decryption succeeding. Geth carry additional software which could possibly aid in deciphering the Prothean communication.....<<

Shepard's grasp on the geth's arm loosened, her vision blurred as she remembered,

"The Reaper code..."

The synthetic resumed its motion and inserted the tiny disk into its port.

>>Affirmative.<<

It generated a holographic display in front of the table, on which the same stream of glyphs and Prothean junk data scrolled. Liara, Shepard and the rest of the Normandy crew had stood, now, and formed a semicircle around the prime. Keeping a distance between herself and the scene, EDI was watching with undivided attention...a strange thoughtfulness flashing across her metallic face. The prime's optics flickered as the data streamed faster, its head twitched oddly on its long neck.

>>Dataset requiring additional runtime and memory...re-routing localized power.<<

Somewhere at the back of the congregation, there was several muffled thuds as two geth hunters and a prime fell to their knees, and keeled over in the dirt. Some of the soldiers looked around uncomfortably – confused at what was happening. Shepard watched everything that was happening intensely, but with a distinct feeling of déjà vu. Garrus had stood and took his place next to her, his hand resting on the butt of his rifle. Shepard shook her head slowly, reassuring him, and brushed his hand off the weapon.

A strange, guttural noise emanated from the geth prime before them. The familiar synthetic white noise had been joined by something else – something tangibly alive. Millions of its kind lent their processing power to the one unit in front of them as the prime harnessed every circuit, every piece of ROM and every acquired piece of perspective they had gained since the synthetic race's inception.

Suddenly, the holographic screen in front of the prime slowed and dulled, extinguishing the majority of the light at the forward table. Before the dissolved into static, something shifted on its display – a fragmented pattern aligned. The screen vanished abruptly, and the camp was silent and dark. Shepard flicked her eyes in the half-darkness from the prime, to EDI, to the geth at the back of the camp, and back to the prime in front of her. It remained motionless, its optical circuits dark, its head bowed in a perpetual stoop. To all intents and purposes, it was lifeless.

Suddenly, their ears picked up on a rapid rush of communication – a bolt of white noise. The air seemed to crackle with sulphur, and the prime's optics blazed to life. It raised its head.

>> Prime11a2298-634 has completed the requested process. Decryption complete.<<

Shepard's jaw became slack, she was being pulled towards the prime by an unknown force.

"What...what do you know?"

>>Subject Ishnavaya carried by Prothean researchers from Ilos to the Citadel before complete extermination of Prothean civilization. Primary purpose of Prothean research base on Ilos was to construct the Ishnavaya program and transport it to the Citadel in order for future cycles to discover, hopefully in conjunction with a successful construct of the Crucible. Prothean researchers assigned the Ishnavaya program the pseudonym 'Catalyst'.<<

The assembled individuals had stopped breathing, stopped moving – all physical functions had ceased. The entire base was as if in stasis, spurred by the disbelief at what they were hearing.

>>Protheans were unable to pool sufficient resources to complete a build of the device known as the Crucible. They transported the Ishnavaya dataset to the Citadel with the last of their kind to await the next cycle. Subject Ishnavaya is...a virus."

~

Nothing was static anymore. The camp erupted with the sound of a thousand whispered conversations, theories. Hackett's video link was nothing more than a constant stream of bodies moving in and out of its viewpoint flailing datapads and reams of paper between them. Anderson sat with his broken limbs, the old soldier slowly absorbing everything that was unfolding.

The geth prime's dissemination of the data from Vigil had cast ripples throughout the camp and beyond. It had complied with Hackett's immediate request to transmit the decrypted files to Fifth Fleet and the FOB's mainframe, and now stood to the side, silent. The dawning day had brought a heavy dew, and the damp combined with exhaustion had forced many of the gathered troops to retire for some much-needed sleep. It was as if the existence of a hope – albeit a vague one – gave them the security they needed to admit their own weariness. Throughout the following morning, personnel came and went as they found rest wherever they could. For some, however, the renewed feeling of hope had brought nothing but the incessant need to drive forward.

Shepard watched as EDI booted the decrypted filed from the prime onto the overhead holographic display. An intricate web of Prothean data appeared, and the AI shook her head in wry surety.

"It is the most audacious piece of programming language that I have ever seen, Shepard."

Hackett had reinstated his watch over them after forty minutes of shut-eye, his salarian comrade still hovering in the wings of the video projection.

"So what do we have here, Shepard? We need some way of knowing what this all means before we can continue forming plans..."

Shepard, EDI, Joker, and rest of the Normandy crew still remained huddled at the forward table. Further out from them, a core of dedicated individuals had formed – faces old and new from their pasts. Whereas before there had been a myriad of hushed and distant conversations – now there was only concentration. Focus. EDI manipulated the decoded data at lightning speed, her visor glittering with the river of data it streamed.

"Admiral Hackett, sir – this is incredible. It is as if the last twenty years of Prothean civilization had been dedicated to nothing but the formation of this virus. It would take our top researchers decades to even begin the framework of something so complicated."

She pointed out several key pieces of code within the larger pattern on the display,

"This virus has been 'written'...if you can call it that...to exploit the Reapers' mass effect fields. Exploit them in a way that we never thought possible. It will enter the Reapers' mainframes through a faster-than-light transfer provided by a burst stream much like the manipulation of energy when a mass relay is used. It will literally saturate them with dark matter, and the resulting disruption of the fields would prove...catastrophic. The Reapers would literally tear themselves apart."

Shepard shook her head as she absorbed the unraveling information, her pulse quickening.

"And the transmitting device?"

She had a feeling, as the words left her mouth, that it was a question to which she – and the extended group around her – already knew the answer. The hyperactive salarian scientist aboard Fifth Fleet broke the silence.

"The Crucible."

Eyes scanned data, arms folded, some started pacing with the urgent need to do something.

"Are we sure about this?" Hackett asked of his colleague. The salarian scientist was one of the top lead researchers of the Crucible project. He nodded as he stood with hands meshed in deep thoughts.

"We're entirelysure, sir yes. Resonance testing on the Crucible at early stages of development showed an extraordinary capacity for reflection and transmission through dark matter acceleration. Given the complexity of the Prothean Defiance virus, it is entirely probable that it has been designed to be transmitted across space. The Crucible is – in effect – a massive antenna."

James snorted, the first input he had had in more than a day of painful waiting and listening.

"So.....what? We've built ourselves a giant fucking radio?!"

The Fifth Fleet scientist regarded James with an expression somewhere between insignificance and contempt.

"If you wish to use such crude analogies – yes."

Shepard had risen to her feet, and now regarded the display of the Defiance virus with detached coolness. Her mind – although reeling from lack of sleep and the horrors of war – was beginning its organizational processes. She spoke directly to the salarian on Hackett's vid-com as he looked on.

"This is it, isn't it? This is the missing piece of data that will take us from blind optimism to planned execution."

He nodded in quick confirmation as Shepard continued, picking up pace.

"The arms remain closed. We know we have to bring the Crucible to dock with the Citadel. Now we know why. Where would the virus be? And what would it be contained on?"

Hackett scratched his temples, frowning deeply. Liara was wracking her brains through all of the accumulated knowledge of the Protheans she held in her, but the answer came from a newcomer.

"A memory shard."

The last surviving Prothean approached the Normandy crew's forward table with the deliberate steps of one whose footfalls had first been heard 50,000 years ago. As he approached, Shepard regarded Javik with a respectful silence. Liara rose from her seat.

"Javik...how...how are you?"

The Prothean settled all four eyes on Liara, his expression ever cool and detached.

"I am.......better, asari. No thanks to your 'joining'."

Liara shrunk away from him, crestfallen. Javik stopped at the head of the table, it appeared he had been watching the proceedings for some time.

"My people did not rely on the storing of 'data' as you do in these primitive times. We instead utilized memory shards as a means of imprinting the fabric of our conscience onto a physical device."

He turned to Shepard abruptly, his yellow eyes piercing in the daylight.

"I believe that is the answer to your question, commander?"

She nodded gratefully.

"Yes, it does. Thank you Javik."

The Prothean did not acknowledge her thanks. Turning away, he left the gathering, his contribution made. Shepard continued unabated.

"Alright. We know what. We know the Ilos researchers took it onto the Citadel Where?"

The group was silent once more as minds worked in unison – memories stretching back into history and shared experiences. Shepard imagined the last, desperate journey the Prothean researchers had made to the grotesquely transformed Citadel in their times. Had the arms been closed then, also? Had they faced death by the hands of swarms of Reapers forces once inside?.....

"Well, I do know that our arrival through the conduit on Ilos to the Citadel wasn't exactly....smooth."

Garrus recalled. He had been with Shepard all those years ago, had accompanied her to Ilos, where they had used the conduit to transport themselves onto the massive station. His words stirred Shepard's memory.

"No, it wasn't. We damn near ended our mission by flipping the Mako into one of the Presidium's lakes."

Garrus nodded slowly, his intense gaze holding hers.

"I doubt, Shepard, that the Protheans found their arrival much better."

She was lost in the memories of the day Sovereign had attacked the Citadel.

"The conduit...the Presidium..." She murmured quietly.

Liara's soft voice added, "That would be most probable, Shepard. The researchers had brilliant minds. They were more than likely able to extrapolate that another species in a future cycle may utilize the conduit in the same manner. There's a reason it is located in the Presidium – it's the proverbial heart of the Citadel."

The asari looked into the distance, after Javik.

"It is possible that Javik may prove vital in locating the memory shard with the virus, Shepard. He is the last surviving Prothean – the last member of a race that used memories as a way to store their history. He may be able to narrow our search for it...once we get there."

This last gave rise to a thunderous laugh from Wrex, who had drawn closer to Shepard's table.

"Hah! Once we get there? The arms are still closed..."

Shepard regarded the schematic of the Citadel with grim resignation. The arms remained sealed shut, Reapers clustered around it like hive workers.

Hackett's voice was tired, monotone. "The last piece of the puzzle, Shepard. And it's gonna be the most stubborn, too..."

~

Shepard's ears picked up on the whispers and downtrodden exclamations of those gathered around them.

'It can't be done, how are we supposed to do that?, there's no way.'

Casting a sharp look out at them, she was relived to see it was mostly the soldiers she didn't recognize. Her voice came out tainted with ice as she prowled the perimeter of the groups gathered close to her.

"The matter isn't open for debate. I don't care about the odds we face, I don't care about the number of Reapers between us and the Citadel, and I sure as hell don't care about being careful. The time for all that has passed. Not one person will stand here and tell me it can't be done. We have to get onto the Citadel. How do we do that?"

Nervous hands toyed with datapads and schematics as Shepard's statement-question echoed in their heads. A grey shroud of water vapor had slid between the sun and them – toning down the color of armors and skins and weapons. She clenched and unclenched her jaw as a ringing started in her ears. Jack cleared her throat lazily as she draped her body across a chair.

"None of you will stand up and admit that the only link between us and the Citadel is the harvesting beam. It's staring us in the face but nobody wants to own up to it...it's the only way..."

Shepard cast a hard look at Jack, and was about to rebut with harder words when a quiet voice came from amidst a nondescript group of civil soldiers and engineers.

"Eh...well, technically that's not true."

Shepard peered into the mass of gray-uniformed soldiers as the average-framed man extricated himself from the throng. Her tone was incredulously happy.

"Bailey?!?"

The displaced Citadel Security Commander shook Shepard's whole arm warmly as she guided him towards the crew of the Normandy at the front of the clearing. He still limped from the gunshot wound he had suffered at the hands of Cerberus during their attempted coup on the Citadel, but he seemed energetic compared to most present. As he positioned himself at the forward display table, he stopped briefly, and clumsily accepted a stoic salute from Garrus. A former C-Sec officer himself, the turian went about as far back with Bailey as Shepard did. Bailey cleared his throat again,

"I...uh, I'm sorry, Shepard. I wasn't part of all this until a few hours ago. Since I'm basically off-duty now..."

He gestured up into the sky at the Citadel,

"...I've been doing some searching for my family."

Shepard nodded in sudden, muted understanding.

"How the hell did you get here, Bailey?"

The C-Sec commander sighed, his blue eyes darkening slightly.

"Well – it was rough, I can tell you that. But when it became more than clear to everyone that the Reapers were coming full-throttle for the Citadel, they initiated a mass evacuation of the station. It was something we had planned for, talked through for years...but never attempted. It went...fairly well...I guess. I was on the second-to-last shuttle before the Reapers begun closing the arms."

He shuddered, then, recalling that last crazed flight from the Citadel.

"For every shuttle that made it through the swarms of Reapers, five didn't. I saw them.....saw them go down..."

He looked down suddenly, becoming agitated and shuffling his feet in the dirt. Shepard could see the reflectivity of his eyes grow as they moistened. She felt emotion and sorrow welling inside her – sorrow for Bailey's suffering – and laid a gentle hand on his shoulder.

"It must've been absolutely horrifying. I'm...I'm so sorry, Bailey."

Sniffing thunderously, he looked up with gratitude, nodding.

Yeah...I know Shepard. I know."

His face creased with a wavering smile. So much lost. So much to fight for. He looked into Shepard's eyes and saw his own story mirrored a thousand times. But there was something else there – something he hadn't seen in so long. A brow creased with determination, eyes on fire in their depths with an unstoppable hunger for vengeance.

"Help us. Help us beat them."
Chapter Five

Half a mug of strong, military coffee inside him, Bailey uploaded yet more data to the holographic display at the forward table. Still sniffing, his pale blue eyes watched as unfamiliar schematics of the Citadel blazed above him. Every single person present had gathered closer – pointing, querying as they saw a map take place. Bailey pointed lasers at the schematics and the image of the Citadel closed its arms. It was now an identical rendition of their predicament. Entering a few more values from his omni-tool, Bailey enlarged the lower-left quadrant of the huge space station, and a small, red thread glowed on the diagram. Shepard craned her neck.

"What...is that?"

Bailey drew a deep breath as more detailed levels of data superimposed themselves onto the display.

"You remember when Saren attacked the Citadel, Shepard? When they closed the arms?"

She nodded quickly.

"I don't think any of us are likely to forget."

Bailey cocked his head in acknowledgment.

"That battle was the first and only opportunity that most of us had had to see the Citadel transform from open spread to arms folded. While you were up there saving all of our asses, we were down in C-Sec running scans and diagnostics on each and every single circuit board, mass effect field and hydraulic system we could think of and find."

Open mouths stared at the projection as he continued, pointing over and over to areas and systems on board the Citadel that not one of them recognized.

"With the arms closed, the Citadel is a different beast, Shepard – Admiral Hackett."

Bailey made to continue but Hackett, having been re-introduced to the discussion, cut him off.

"Why the hell didn't any of us have this information, commander?"

Bailey licked his lips, his mouth suddenly dry.

"We informed the Council of our findings and scans after the threat from Saren and Sovereign had passed. They made the 'executive decision' that the data was too volatile and exploitable to have out there for just anyone to see. So we were instructed to keep it under lock and key at all times.....as is C-Sec's job and obligation."

Turning gratefully back to the display, Shepard re-focused the drive of the group.

"So, what is this line you've highlighted?"

Bailey smiled slowly and nodded at her, bringing the holographic blueprints of the thin red line he had highlighted into sharp focus.

"At best guess – a service tunnel."

Murmurs and hurried whispers escaped the crowd, Shepard glanced at Garrus from under her visor, sharing thoughts without speaking. But James was more than happy to speak now,

"What the fu...I'm sorry...what? The Reapers need 'service tunnels'??"

Bailey shrugged, letting the data speak for itself as both Shepard and Hackett tamed James with looks.

"Well – just because they're the Reapers – doesn't mean to say they're not bound by the physics of the universe. I guess even the Reapers have to build contingencies into their structures. It stands to reason that they'd want a fail-safe access to the Citadel with the arms closed."

Shepard almost broke Bailey's last sentence, the same muddy plan forming in her head as was in all of their heads.

"How big is it??"

Bailey's voice was lower as he answered.

"Not huge, Shepard. Probably only big enough for large shuttle carriers. Certainly not a cruiser...or the Normandy."

Nodding, Shepard licked her chapped, dry lips, a strange rhythm coming from somewhere inside her. Something sacred that she had almost lost. When she spoke, it was as if it came from a different part of her – a part that had been constructed for this one moment. Her lips moved without her willing them.

"Two teams will need to get on board. One to locate the Defiance virus, and one to open the arms and allow the Crucible to dock. We will need the two fastest personnel carriers in the Alliance. More than that, there's going to also have to be a decoy force that draws the Reapers attention for a few minutes until we get inside the service tunnel. Otherwise, we're vaporized."

Hackett was already working, Anderson just sat looking at Shepard, a wistful look gracing his worn face. Not one person in the camp was left seated – standing they felt together, involved. Troops were dispersing, commanded by their adrenaline and not their superior officers.

~

Breath coming from her shuddering lungs, Shepard embraced the reality of their plan as she was left with a core of individuals around her. Samara's peaceful temperament belied the feeling of the moment, Miranda waited patiently, knowing through experience what she was entering into. Each and every individual from her past lent her strength to talk, to plan.

"Both objectives are as important as one another. If we fail at either, then we forfeit the entire galaxy's future. You all understand that."

It wasn't a question, but many nodded regardless. They had the calm of dignified sacrifice in their eyes, and not for the first time. They would follow this woman to whatever end. Shepard spoke again.

"I will go with the first team to locate the memory shard. Javik will be with us – without him, we don't stand a chance in locating it. Liara – you'll need to be with us, too. Your biotics and background in Prothean archeology will be indispensable."

The young asari stepped forward from her position at the rear of the ground, nodding quietly.

"Of course, Shepard."

Shepard looked into Liara's eyes, and saw weariness, and pride. Love and pride and gratitude for her asari comrade overwhelmed her.

"The second team will need to make their way to Citadel Tower, to get the arms open. Jack – I want you there. Miranda – you too. Whatever waits for them up the tower, you can bet it's not going to be pleasant. If those arms don't get opened...it's all over. The second team..."

She turned to Garrus who stood next to her, as ever, her racing mind causing her to overlook an odd flash that passed across the turian's face.

"Garrus...I need someone with them. Someone I can trust – again. They need you."

He regarded her with an odd expression, his voice was stone.

"No."

Her blood ran cold as she looked at him.

"What..."

He turned away from her for a moment, his breath quick and shallow, clenching and unclenching his fists rapidly. Whirling on his heel to look at her, his normally cool voice was broken.

"No, Shepard. Don't ask me to do this. I won't. I can't. Too long have I lived for the many and not for the one. I've passed through too many second-and-third chances with you. If we go to our deaths, I go with you."

As far as she was concerned, as the tears collected in the corner of her eyes, the camp was deserted but for her and the turian she loved. She swallowed without effect, and nodded shallowly. Laying a hand on his arm, she conceded quietly.

"Okay. It's okay..."

A few moments elapsed where only the swirling wind could be heard ruffling the assembled tents in the camp. Miranda was the first to break the silence.

"With respect, Shepard – you don't need a 'leader' for the second team. We're hardly likely to get lazy over this."

Then, an English accent came from behind her as more voices lent themselves to the plan.

"I'll go with them, Shepard. After five days in Big Ben, it'll be a vacation."

Major Coats offered his hand to the last hope of the allied species. His noble gesture was accepted, even as Shepard heard the faltering unease he failed to conceal.

Lifting her hand from Garrus' arm, Shepard looked over at Hackett silently. The same black, troubled look had veiled his face as had hers.

"Who do we ask to be the decoy fleet? How...how do we ask that of anyone, sir?"

Hackett met her gaze with the wisdom of his decades as Fifth Fleet's Admiral.

"I uh...I can put the word out, Shepard. We – we have many good commanders and many valiant captains. There will not be any shortage of those wanting to help in any way possible, I can promise tha..."

But he was cut off prematurely by another voice – a synthetic one. Shepard screwed her eyes tight shut as she listened to the next sacrifice of the geth.

>> Prime11a2298-634 wishes to communicate that the geth can man a moderate sized fleet of ships remotely, with minimal loss of sentient hardware.<<

She turned and looked at the overbearing prime as it stood to the side of their group. Slowly, the Normandy's crew opened up to accept them into its conclave.

The synthetic continued.

>>The Geth have one dreadnought and several fleets of cruisers stationed in orbit on the opposite side of this planet. They can be mobilized with a small crew of our technicians within 1.362 hours. Shepard-Commander – please instruct.<<

Exchanging glances, Hackett and Shepard nodded in acceptance of the prime's suggestion.

"Shepard – I've got to take my leave and brief Fifth Fleet to make sure we're as ready as we can be before tomorrow. Make your preparations – we've got two striker-class shuttles headed your way. Get the geth in place a few hours before the departure window opens up – I'll transmit additional details via datapad. Hackett out."

The gathering had thinned ever further as the sun began to slide towards the horizon on another tired day. Shepard lingered with her crew until all others had left with their orders. Silently watching as pieces of the epic game they were about to play fell into place, disbelief numbed her body. Three days ago, they had nothing more to hope for but the frantic beam-rush that had essentially killed her. Now, there was something...something tangible...something more than blind, dumb hope.

But still the horrors of the war plagued her. Uneasy, twisting memories of the searing wind of Harbinger's beam as it blistered her lungs and swept her world. Of her blind, torn body sprawling in the crater of rubble and burned-out armored vehicles. Of blackened rocks still hissing with unnatural heat as they burned into her back, and of a synthetic voice...

She jerked slightly as a shred of recollection entered her. Blinking rapidly, she turned to face the prime as it stood amongst them motionlessly. Once, the geth were a feared proponent of the Reapers, having been corrupted and influenced by them. Now they all shared the gift of fully evolved Artificial Intelligence bestowed upon them by Legion - the first individual geth to cooperate with living beings. They had welcomed the quarians back to their home plant of Rannoch enthusiastically, and become a vital part of the allied forces in the war against the Reapers.

Shepard walked towards the geth prime with slow, deliberate steps. She stopped barely six inches from it, its optics bathing her in white light. Her unwavering eyes glistened in its cold incandescence.

"'Shepard Commander', huh?"

A small smile flicked the corners of her mouth. Garrus, Tali and the rest of the Normandy crew watched the exchange with the silence of anticipation.

>>Affirmative.<<

The prime didn't move as it spoke, but its tone seemed altered, strained. Shepard pressed the topic.

"Prime, your kind's sacrifice will not go unmarked in this war. We...I want you to know that. What you have offered to do is valiant and self-sacrificing."

The machine's optics seemed to refocus on her face.

>>Affirmative. Please initiate assembly of remote fleet when required.<<

Pursing her lips, Shepard was about to give in to her aching bones and numb mind when she stopped, her eyes running down the frame of the machine. It stood tall, stiff, its rifle stowed on its back. But that wasn't what gave her cause to stop breathing. The metal of its arms was stained the rusty color of dried blood. A memory – a vision flashed painfully through her mind. A vision of rubble and death and blood. Her blood. She touched the cold metal of the prime's arm, her senses remembering as they felt the machine beneath her hand. The contact of her fingertips with the cold metal seared indelible memories onto her conscience. She looked up into the prime's face.

"It was...you. You are the one..."

She faltered as pained recollection flickered across her face.

"...that brought me here."

The geth broke from its unbending forward gaze and turned its head in her direction.

>>Affirmative.<<

The tone of the machine was unmistakably similar to that of Legion's. Shepard lost herself for a moment in that day on the surface of Rannoch, when Legion had sacrificed himself to give each of his kind the gift of true individuality. True life. She could still see, through a haze of her anguish, Legion's form as he had fallen to his knees and died before her eyes...as he had sacrificed himself to unshackle his fellow synthetics. Her eyes burned.

"Legion..."

She whispered as she ran her hand over the stains of her near-death, stains that were mirrored now by the trickle of tears down her cheeks. A quiet transfer of geth data could be heard from all of the synthetics present. The prime moved under her touch.

>>Legion's sacrifice exists within us all. I...am sorry for his loss. The Geth's contributions in the war with the Old Machines would not have been possible without his actions.<<

The rest of her crew watched the exchange between organic and synthetic with a look of awe and sorrow on their faces. Shepard breathed deeply, the night drawing darkness to the base once more. Hearing the new, clumsy way in which the machine referred to itself only inspired more gratitude within her, only made her recall Legion's last words with agonizing clarity. Her emotions pooled to the surface as her lips quivered.

"Thank you, prime. Legion's sacrifice will be recorded in history when the war is over – I assure you."

Then, a thought entered her head as she almost left the geth. She turned to face them again.

"I have a team of the best individuals coming with me to the Citadel. But...I would be honored if you would accompany us on this journey. Your expertise, your mind and your conscience would be greatly valued. Will you come with us? Will...will the unit in front of me come with us?"

Another soft transfer of data between the geth units was heard as the Prime processed the thoughts of its kind...then,

>>Affirmative. We will comply.<<

~

Coats stared onwards as James opened the Normandy's armory to him.

"Bloody hell...I should have enlisted in the Navy!"

James cackled as he shifted crates and began gathering his personal weapons.

"Well...it does have its benefits, I must admit. Even with having to put up with Joker's bad comedy."

The Normandy's armory was buzzing with activity as the crew made evening preparations before dawn and their desperate flight to the Citadel. The plan weighed heavily on all of their shoulders, but still the small thread of hope glistened before them, ever giving them strength.

Row upon row of polished, prepared weaponry and armor was laid out before them, but it served only as a reminder of the task ahead of them. Coats picked up a pristine Mantis sniper rifle, running his hand over the scope in admiration. However, two seconds later, he was slapped on the back by James. Shaking his head, he held out a Widow rifle to the young major. A weapon with tank-stopping force, the Widow sniper rifle could fell a Brute with one well-placed shot. Coats simply walked away cradling the Widow, a numb look of disbelief on his face.

Faces old and new graced the Normandy as she became the hub of outfitting for rest for the groups bound for the Citadel at dawn the next day. Jack had taken over the starboard observatory, which had displaced Samara briefly until she discovered that she found the company of the young, rebellious human biotic comforting. Tali and Miranda were reminiscing quietly in the mess hall, and Liara and Javik had forged an uneasy allegiance over the dissemination of more of the asari's Prothean data disks. The geth prime that had saved Shepard's life spent time in the AI core, apparently conducting a mutual exchange of data with EDI's memory banks.

Shepard glanced frequently at her datapad as she walked the mess hall, coordinating communications between the Normandy, the geth and Fifth Fleet. She watched as Joker and EDI spent time with the crew – finding a rare opportunity to humanize themselves after the events of the past few days. Although unhappy about the arrangement, they had both conceded that their presence on the mission to the Citadel would complicate matters beyond the point of rationale. The short range of EDI's mobile hardware platform did not extend to reaching the orbiting Citadel, and Joker was still nursing several slow-healing fractures in his arms and legs. His brittle bone disease was taking its toll. Shepard had stressed that they were both needed back on Earth regardless – EDI's ability to interpret data, transmit communications and locate information was seen as an essential contingency to the mission to the Citadel. Once the arms were opened, communications would be possible – and EDI would prove a vital connection between Fifth Fleet, the Crucible and the teams on the Citadel.

The datapad's screen blurred in her vision so much that reading it became impossible. Rubbing her eyes with the back of her hand, Karen Shepard leaned against a table in the mess hall. Swaying on her feet, a sudden sensation of weightlessness overcame her – a cold bead of sweat slid down the back of her neck, and exhaustion gave rise to nausea and a sickly wave of panic. Are we ready? Can we ever be ready?

A moment later, a familiar, rough hand steadied her back.

"When was the last time you slept? Or ate, for that matter?"

Garrus' voice was filled with soft concern as he led her from the table and out of the mess hall. She allowed him to guide her away from the activity and frenetic preparation just as she allowed herself this one last moment of humanity, of life. Her quarters were so quiet, so cocooned from the outside world. On this last mortal night, they ate together, laughed together, cried together, and fell asleep together – knowing full well that when the morning dawned, their lives may be left to be measured in hours.

~

Steven Hackett stood silently on the deserted bridge of his flagship. 4:00AM had come and gone, and the vague outline of Earth was almost visible in the far distance. His old eyes watched timelessly as the sun continued its march, unveiling the skin of the Earth as it banished night into day. The bridge's holo-display had been prepped by the night crew, and now displayed a broad map of the Sol System, showing his fleet's location, Earth, the Crucible, the Citadel, and the geth fleet.

He massaged a spent piece of chewing gum between his molars out of habit as he maintained his faithful vigil on the ship's bridge. As the hours passed, with tired eyes he saw the day's operations begin to awaken and blaze on a hundred-fold monitors. He heard the slow ramping up of communications chatter as his finest flight lieutenants and officers returned to their posts after a few snatched hours of sleep – even as they rushed to their posts with half-drunk mugs of coffee, their rich, dark blue navy uniforms told the admiral that they were as ready as they ever could hope to be. This old human has seen too much.

He moved from his shadowy corner and turned to his yeoman, giving the familiar nod that brought the central control console of Fifth Fleet's flagship to his fingertips. It was time.

Rolling slowly in the void, the distant, dawning sun caught the underbelly of the great ship – casting shards of silver out into the endless blackness of space. The massive forms of the Alliance dreadnoughts, and the dwarfing Crucible that they audited were collected together in the same pocket of space – drifting in synchrony as if planets. Waiting.
Chapter Six

The entirety of the troops going to the Citadel were assembled a little before 5:00AM in the bowels of the Normandy. They stood straight, proud and resolute. Javik, Liara, Samara, the geth, Coats, Miranda, Jack, Tali, James. EDI and Joker stood to the side, their speech low and reverent. There was nothing else to hear, except for the occasional rattle as a rifle was adjusted, or a helmet checked. EDI had distributed some of their most sophisticated communications equipment to several of their number, but apart from that – they carried little. All available carrying space in their small packs was reserved for medi-gel and water. In the lowest deck of the ship, they had no sense of time or of the progressing dawn outside the hull.

The elevator chimed softly, its door sliding open smoothly. Karen Shepard arrived to the armory with Garrus Vakarian – their continued partnership with each other giving the others present a direct reminder of what they fought for. Shepard's black, white and red N7 armor stood in stark contrast to the turian's blue and silver plating. They both appeared as tall and powerful and dogmatic as they ever had. For a brief moment, they stood silently, Shepard casting her gaze of the assembled and readied teams. This is it.

Swallowing hard, she stepped from the elevator and joined her comrades. Walking amongst them, before them, she saw the same look in each and every soldier's eyes. Hope – hope that the bringing back of her life had brought to them. The overwhelming difference that one person can make to the lives of those they touch. She stopped at the head of the groups and looked out over them all.

"What we are all asked to do and expected to do today is undeniably the single, greatest test ever set at the feet of living beings in the history of our time. We have been given the ultimate gift – the gift of hope..."

She pierced their ranks with her dark blue eyes, eyes that would not cry anymore. Could not.

"I look out on all of you, and I see that hope...that gift. We have become the beacons of our species' existence, and thousands other untold species that have not yet had the chance of life. Because THAT is why we fight – we fight for life. Not for you, or me, or glory – we passed that point a long time ago. We fight for the unlived lives, the untold stories, and the retribution of this genocide we are witnessing."

Liara clasped a pale blue hand over her mouth, weeping quietly in the back. James clutched his shotgun a little tighter, his other hand latched firmly onto his dogtags. Even Jack's hard expression had softened, allowing the fine lines of her pained existence to seep through underneath her tattooed body. Shepard's words only served to bolster their raw, charged emotions.

"I've had enough of war. I have had enough of fighting, and of death. But finally our way is clear! Each of us are here because we represent the pinnacle of our experience, and we proffer it to the infinite stars so we can have this chance – this one opportunity to finish what Javik's people started..."

Shepard glanced at the ancient Prothean in acknowledgment, and he nodded in approval of the gesture the human had made to his people. Her jaw set, Shepard drew a slow, steady breath.

"You all know your significance and the expectations upon your shoulders. Let's bring the fiery reign of the Reapers to an end once and for all! The shuttles are waiting – we leave in ten."

With the electrical aura of those who know their actions will echo down the void of millennia, the individuals assembled gathered their weapons and thoughts and made for the elevator to take them outside the Normandy.

Shepard remained with Garrus, EDI, Joker and the geth prime in the armory for a few moments longer. Joker patched in a comm-link to Fifth Fleet and Admiral Hackett while a geth data stream could be heard coming from the prime at a furious pace. Shepard went before the machine once more.

"Prime – is the geth decoy fleet ready and armed?"

Its optics once again blazed pure white light over her face.

>>Affirmative. Geth dreadnoughts and fighters forming the decoy force are positioned along the termination line of this planet. Their fuel cores and batteries are at maximum capacity and armed.<<

The prime turned its mechanical gaze towards Shepard, its facial plates made a gesture that could have been likened to flamboyance.

>>We are ready, Shepard-Commander.<<

She laid a hand on its hulking form in deep gratitude.

"Thank you Pr...no. This won't work. You have to have a name. I can't keep calling you 'Prime'...what can we call you?"

The synthetic regarded her silently, its data streams with its consensus working intensely in the background. But the answer came not from the geth. A clear, mechanical voice came from behind Shepard.

"'And Osiris rose from his bier through the hope of new life after death, being brought from death by his wife to be the father of new beginnings.'"

EDI stood behind them with a smile on her synthetic face. A wave of déjà vu overcame Shepard as the prime assimilated her input immediately.

>>Egyptian mythology, symbolizing life after death. We acknowledge – this is an appropriate metaphor for this individual unit.<<

And with that final exchange giving rise to small smiles on all of their faces, their last cluster of individuals left the Normandy for the outside world.

~

The rushing sound of the miniature FTL drives on the two fast carrier shuttles assaulted her ears as Karen Shepard marched with renewed purpose and vigor off the Normandy and through the lines of assembled troops outside at the FOB. She felt as if the gaze of the world was upon them under the grey, cloudy dawn as she made her way off the ship for the last time and walked towards the shuttles. A thousand stiff salutes caused her heart to surge painfully – no words were needed anymore. The grim understanding of what they were undertaking was displayed across each and every face present.

She reached the shuttles quickly and nodded as she saw the two separate teams in front of her. Her group – the team responsible for locating the memory shard with the virus – consisted of herself, Garrus, Javik, Liara, and the geth Osiris. The team responsible for reaching the top of Citadel Tower and overriding the arm controls included Samara, Tali, Coats, Miranda, Jack, the biotics, and James. So few of us.

She turned to salute and shake the hand of each of the fast-shuttle pilots who had turned out for a brief moment of introductions. Their steely Alliance gazes and the rigid way they carried themselves reassured her – Hackett had flown in two of his best surviving pilots, clad in their rich Alliance navy blue uniforms with gold trims and flight pips. There was a light in their eyes as they saluted her. Each of their handshakes conveyed more than words ever could – a firm, unbending grasp which would do its utmost to deliver them into the maw of the Citadel.

Shepard slung her supply pack into the shuttle she would travel in, but there was suddenly a giant movement behind her that she sensed rather than saw. Turning, she looked directly into Wrex's face. The huge krogan warlord regarded her with his signature grin spanning from ear to ear, proudly showing his formidable row of teeth.

"Hang on a minute, Shepard – so THEY..."

He gestured to the arm team, "...get biotics and sharpshooters, and YOU get a few soldiers?? I don't think so..."

Shepard knew what was coming, and shook hear head firmly, patting the huge krogan on his chest.

"Wrex...I'm sorry. I can't allow you to come with us. You are far too valuable to your people...if this plan works, if life continues – you'll be the only one who can lead your people to peace now that the Genophage is cured. You're the only one I trust to do that..."

Wrex snorted and laughed, giving Shepard a slap on the back that almost knocked her over.

"HAHaahahaa!! I wasn't volunteering MYSELF, Shepard! I was volunteering the kid..."

Shepard frowned, having trouble making sense of Wrex's statement for a moment,

"The...kid..."

She had been so focused on the task at hand, but then she saw the other krogan waiting behind Wrex – his silver armor distinguishing him from the others of his clan that were present. She squinted as Urdnot Grunt came forward with his massive shotgun slung nonchalantly over his right shoulder.

"Shepard! Looks like we're partners in crime again."

Smiling the smile of one who knows there is no point in resisting, Shepard warmly welcomed Grunt to her team and guided him to their shuttle.

Clambering up the access step, she cast a final glance back out at the crowd. Farewells would have stirred her volatile emotions to breaking point, so she grasped the latch and pulled the bulkhead closed in one fell swoop. There was now only the mission, just the way she liked it.

With a powerful spooling up of their engines, the shuttles left the FOB's landing field with their precious cargo bound for the Citadel. Some of the occupants had strapped themselves in, but Shepard remained at the front directly behind the pilot, her hands grasping the back of his headrest, watching through the forward window with intense concentration. Nerves infused with adrenaline fluttered in the pit of her stomach as Shepard heard their craft spool its powerful engines. Electronic noises and chimes of holographic warnings flooded the small compartment as panel after panel of readouts, monitoring data and ship vectors flared to life. A sudden crackle of white noise heralded Hackett's disembodied voice as communications were started on their secure channel.

"Okay Shepard – it looks like this party is starting to swing. The readings of the position of the geth fleet check out perfectly. They're a meticulous bunch, I'll give them that..."

Osiris acknowledged this comment with a flicker of his optical circuits as Hackett continued.

"Once you're onboard the Citadel, we all know there will be no comms until you get those arms open – so arm team you need to really get a hustle on. I want that window of time where we have no comms to be as short as possible. EDI will be monitoring frequencies and will respond immediately when the arms are open – she will liaise with Fifth Fleet and the Citadel teams once comms are possible. Shepard.....you know the score. You know your job, and I know you can do it. Get after it. We'll be waiting for you. Hackett out."

There was a sudden silence in the interior of the shuttles as the communications subsided – part of the planned blackout before the advance of the geth decoy fleet. The shuttlecraft quickly reached and entered the cloud deck in Earth's atmosphere and were buffeted as they came to a stop inside the towers of vapor. They had reached the staging point, the point at which they were to wait and watch, and listen. In the second craft, Coats fought a nervous tick in his left eye while absently rotating the scope on his rifle back and forth. James caught his eye briefly – the stoic soldier's face was unusually set and grim. Tali sat strapped in, the quarian's shoulders rising and falling with her rapid breaths.

In Shepard's shuttle, the same uneasy quiet had settled upon all of them. Each of them now strapped in, waiting, wondering. The window for the geth fleet's attack and decoy run drew closer – so close. The white light from Osiris' optics flickered over them all, making their complexions appear even more pale than they actually were. Garrus sat to Shepard's right, his head bowed slightly, his turian clan facial markings freshly painted and glistening blue. Time seemed to stand still...

With small but ever-increasing impetus, the shuttles' windows were faintly illuminated by warm orange glows. A second later, distant rumblings pealed through the air as the first discharge of combat in five days wracked Earth's orbit. A quick burst of static was heard in all of their ears.

"This is Hackett - geth fleet has commenced the diversionary attack run on the Reaper forces surrounding the Citadel. We have strong confirmation of 80% of the enemy force's concentration and fire being drawn. Threshold has been reached – operation Anvil has begun."

~

With neck-snapping speed, the two shuttles containing Shepard and her teams were brought from a hovering standstill to a breakneck ascension out of the cloud deck by their capable and fearless pilots. There was no 'here we go', no 'brace yourselves', no warning or signal. The time for preparation had passed. The shuttles had one shot and could not afford to miss their chance. One second and the cloud deck was falling away beneath them. Two more and the small, lightning fast shuttles were shedding the last wisps of vaporized ice crystals as they climbed into the vacuum of Earth's orbit. The rising sun had become an angry globe of plasma, ever watching, ever silhouetting. It was against this blinding light that they climbed relentlessly towards their goal – the Citadel.

Once their bodies had adjusted to the high rate of acceleration, Shepard wasted no time in shedding her harness and striding to the starboard row of windows. As she looked out with Garrus joining her, she caught her breath in ragged gasps at what she saw. The very fabric of space was being torn asunder by the massacre of the geth fleet.

The Reapers had responded immediately and viciously to the mid-sized fleet heading their way, and their red beams of pure energy were slicing through vessel after vessel as if they were made of paper. One massive Reaper had physically collided with a dreadnought, causing the geth ship to crumple into a collection of metallic debris within seconds. The Reaper continued on into the void, away from the shuttles, as if seeking out the source of this unexplained attack. It was consecutively fired upon by another large geth ship – its main gun barely making a dent in the side of the Reaper.

The night sky was filled with electrical sparks, orange fireballs and the heavy, relentless red beams of the Reapers. A small shower of explosions peppered the carapace of one of the Reapers, and Shepard clenched her gloved fist at the loss of an entire geth fighter squadron. Synthetic, organic – it mattered not. It was life. She looked over at Osiris as he stood silently.

"I'm sorry..."

She broke off her sentence, realizing how disposable it sounded. But it had reached the prime regardless.

>>Shepard-Commander – remorse is unnecessary. The units lost were aware of the mission parameters and had agreed that the loss of their hardware was necessary to further our objective.<<

She nodded shallowly, and turned to the window once more. Their angle of attack was sharp, their flight path cut relentlessly towards the massive, closed Citadel. They were close enough now that Shepard could see the explosions of the battle with the Geth ships reflected in the massive station's silver skin. In an instant, the shuttle's windows were illuminated by an expanding fireball little more than a hundred yards from them. A geth fighter had broken from its squadron and sacrificed itself to impale a Reaper attack probe before it had managed to get a first shot off at the shuttles. The fight was closing in on them.

Her breathing quickened, her body sweating beneath her armor.

"We're almost there..."

The teams were suddenly buffeted hard by an unseen force, so much so that Shepard fell to one knee to keep her balance. Garrus overbalanced and reeled backwards, his armor scraping along the floor of the cabin. Stowed guns clattered together, and Grunt's helmet was sent tearing towards the rear of the compartment. There was a crackle of broken communication from the cockpit.

"Buffeting from the Citadel's mass effect fields...hold on..."

The icy voice of their pilot provided a reassuring tone in the murky hold in which they sat. Other orange glows shone through their windows, but they were below them and removed from them. Shepard drew in a breath to say something, and then...blackness.

A blackness darker than the void of space had consumed them. Shepard remained on one knee on the floor of the shuttle, steadying herself in the pitch dark with her hands. She heard Grunt as he let out a low growl, Garrus cursed as he fell over a rifle that had broken free of its restraints.

"Stop moving!"

She whispered feverishly. The forward speed of the shuttles seemed to decrease slightly, then...there was light.

"We're in."

The shuttle's interior lights blazed, and all of the occupants looked around in disbelief with an almost hysterical feeling of accomplishment. The pilot again signaled back to them.

"Initial entry of service tunnel successful – proceeding with sub-ward transit of station."

Shepard looked around as she lifted herself up from the floor, catching the eyes of all of her teammates. She risked a tiny, incredulous grin which lifted the corners of her mouth. Grunt cackled as if this success was not of any surprise to him, Liara clasped her hands in silent prayer to her Goddess. Shepard altered the frequency of her in-helmet communicator.

"Arm team – are you with us?"

There was a faint crackle, then she heard Jack's voice come back at her.

"Are you kidding? We're gonna to be up your asses if you don't get a move on! Too close, man...that was too close."

Reassured that their inter-shuttle communications were established and working, Shepard sat back down in her seat as Samara's calm voice carried to their ship.

"We are lucky Shepard. I think we may have only had a few more seconds before the Reaper forces began concentrating on us. Now that we are inside the Citadel, if they want to take us out it's going to be more of a surgical extraction than an all-out assault by Harbinger. They won't risk the destruction of this station...it facilitates the harvest and the harvest is everything to them."

Shepard nodded silently, adjusting her visor in the subdued cabin lighting.

"Luck's good enough for me, Samara."

The shuttle's engines had settled at a steady pitch and whine now as they steadily and swiftly traversed the massive station. At best guess, Liara had proposed that their service tunnel ran underneath Zakera Ward, and terminated somewhere on the Presidium where their mission would begin. The Presidium contained not only the small-scale conduit through which the Prothean researchers had entered the Citadel 50,000 years ago, but also Citadel Tower – the only structure on the station that provided access to the arms control.

The second shuttle again signaled Shepard – it was Tali this time, but her voice was broken, riddled with fear.

"What...is...that??"

The back of her neck prickling with cold sweat, Karen Shepard clambered to her feet once more and reached one of the shuttle's windows as quickly as possible. The shuttles had activated their exterior floodlights to aid the pilots in finding their course, but this had also allowed for the illumination of the sides of the service tunnel. She squinted in the murky light, grimacing as eyestrain overtook her. Blinking again, she refocused on the fast-moving sides of the tunnel as they slipped past her vision. Forty-foot square, there was little room for maneuver. But there was something else there...something too organic. Wiping the glass of the window with the back of her gloved hand, she peered again out at the scene. Her mouth opened slowly as her brain processed what she was seeing.

"Oh...my...god. It's the keepers!"

Everyone now clustered around every available inch of window space, looking out upon the unbelievable scene. The service tunnel was carpeted, blanketed, and painted with walls of the seething green organisms. Pulsing with an insalubrious rhythm, the masses of the Citadel's keepers swarmed over and on top of one another in a fashion strongly reminiscent of an insect nest. Not one person present had guessed that the keepers numbered this many. During peacetime, these strange, aphid-like caretakers of the Citadel had worked wordlessly and tirelessly to keep the station in working order, their strange way of life never having been questioned thoroughly. Now – the awful truth had been ripped open and laid bare for them all to behold. Hundreds-of-thousands strong, they worked incessantly, and more than one of the shuttle's occupants were able to make out – to their dismay – that the mysterious creatures were moving and carrying objects within the green rivers of their bodies. A human hand here, a dismembered torso there, and around them innumerable transparent tubes of crimson liquid were carrying their unholy cargo towards the center of the station. Curses and the sound of gagging were the only communications that came from the second shuttle as Shepard gritted her teeth, fighting a rising anger inside of her. When she spoke, her voice was loud, strong and it surprised her.

"This whole station is one big Reaper harvesting machine. This atrocity will be brought to an end. You have my word. Are you all with me?"

James shouted through the mic at her from the other vessel.

"Damn fucking straight, commander."

She turned her back on the window and look forward towards their pilot.

"Pilot – how far have we made it?"

The flight lieutenant punched up some numbers on the cockpit's holographic display unit, a map of their progress glowed with clarity.

"We're making excellent time, commander. ETA to the Presidium outlet...ten minutes."

Shepard straightened with determined swiftness, looking around at her team as they were borne towards their objective.

"You heard the man. Prepare yourselves."

She needed not to look at her teammates to know they followed her request – she trusted each one of them with her life. The sound of assault rifles being unlocked, armor being tightened and the clearing of throats was all she needed to hear. Her gaze had wandered outside of the window once more – her vision was a blur with the rapid scrolling of the monstrous service tunnel's bloody decorations. But then, a hand rested on her shoulder. Garrus coaxed her away from the scene and towards him. The turian was resplendent in his blue-silver armor, seeming even taller than usual in the cramped shuttle interior. He fondled a lock of her hair behind her neck, looking into her eyes earnestly.

"Come on...ignore it."

She embraced him for a moment, gratefully closing her eyes in the half-darkness as they stood at the front of the shuttle's cabin. She heard him breathe deeply, felt the strength that he ironically drew from her small, human frame. He held her face to his, his cool skin resting against hers for a moment. Stretching her neck, she placed a kiss on the turian's cheek – saw his flamboyantly painted mandibles react to her closeness once more.

"Stay close to me."

Her request came as their embrace concluded. Garrus looked at her intensely through the electric blue glow of his visor.

"Always."

A rapid inter-shuttle radio communication ended the solitary moment of silence.

"Termination of service tunnel in thirty seconds, ETA to drop zone two minutes."

No orders were required to any of the individuals present. The prime, Osiris, widened his stance – his mechanical legs steadying his massive frame for the landing. Straps were released, helmets were donned, harnesses thrown off, and weapons shouldered. A moment later, the two tiny forms of their shuttles burst forth from the service tunnel into the Presidium of the Citadel like two well-placed shots from a sniper's barrel.
Chapter Seven

Karen Shepard stepped tentatively from the transport shuttle onto the bloodied hell of the Citadel. Fires dotted the great station everywhere she looked, and the tinny smell of blood assailed her nostrils. Both feet firmly planted on the Presidium now, she motioned to the rest of her team to follow under the wash of blue from the craft's thrusters. Garrus leapt from the shuttle next, followed by Javik, Liara, Grunt and lastly Osiris. There was a resounding metallic clang as the geth landed on the platform, and Shepard looked around with clenched teeth for any signs of their having been noticed. There was, however, no evidence of enemy presence amidst the curling smoke from the fires and the metallic walkways and corridors. They were alone.

Casting her eyes upwards, Shepard made the 'down and clear' gesture to the second shuttle, and with a thumbs-up from the pilot it soared onwards through the tattered sky of the Presidium towards the vicinity of Citadel Tower. She watched with parched eyes as the tiny craft was engulfed in the ruddy, smoke-filled air as it continued on its journey. Suddenly she felt a tremendous feeling of being alone. Their physical separation from the other team preyed on her consciousness, the weight of responsibility on her shoulders seemed that much more potent.

Above the clouds of smoke and death, Shepard's vision was led towards a sight that would otherwise have been breathtaking. Far beyond the Presidium's ring, the arms of the Citadel were closed shut, forming a glittering, burning tunnel six cities long. The station still had power, and the electrical grids of each arm still formed their glowing webs across the surface of the place that was home to millions.

So intent on watching the departure of the second team, Shepard hadn't noticed their own shuttle had put down next to them and was spooling down its engines. As her other team members ran checks on their omni-tool medi-gel dispensers and weapons, she frowned as she approached the pilot after he had exited the cockpit.

"What are you doing? You need to get out of here..."

The Fifth Fleet airman regarded her calmly and shook his head.

"Sorry ma'am, our orders are to hold at our landing zones until the last possible moment."

Shepard looked at him incredulously, and pointed to the destruction and devastation around them.

"Are you crazy?? You won't last five minutes once the Reaper forces discover us here! If you leave now you'll still have a chance at getting out of here in one piece..."

The pilot folded his arms in stubborn resolve.

"I'm sorry, commander – our orders come directly from Earth's central command..."

She continued to stare at him as the shuttle's engines shut off automatically.

"Who gave that order?"

The Fifth Fleet pilot's tone was matter-of-fact as he inserted a thermal clip in his handgun.

"Admiral Anderson, ma'am."

Falling silent, Shepard felt a twinge of regret at the chafing edge to her voice. Anderson's last, symbolic gift to them had come in the form of a chance of escape...of living through this nightmare. The man who had given her the Normandy now gave them all this one last chance at life. The pilot in front of her had not only taken this mission, but agreed to Anderson's plaintive request that they lay down their lives if need be for the chance at bringing them back. Humbled, she grasped his shoulder firmly.

"Thank you. But you must promise me that if all hell breaks loose up here – if all else is lost...you will leave."

He saluted her as she turned towards her team members and away from the shuttle.

"Aye ma'am."

She nodded to him and left the landing zone to join the rest of her team. They had taken up position on one of the Presidium's many tiered viewing decks, and were looking out over the great central hub of the station with saddened and fearful expressions. What had once been a utopian space full of glittering metal, blue ponds and landscaped grounds had now become a nightmarish abyss. The lakes burned, the sky was filled with blackness and debris, and in the lower reaches of the Presidium they could make out tangles of snaking tubes and pipes that hadn't been there before.

As Shepard removed her assault rifle from her back, she caught a sudden motion out of the corner of her eye. Whirling on sharp nerves, she pointed the rifle into the shadows of a destroyed storefront. A keeper scuttled away from them, its four green legs leaving bizarre, bloody footprints in its wake. It apparently seemed far less concerned with their presence than they were with its – it was hard to determine whether it had even seen them.

Drawing a shaky breath, she turned back to her team. Garrus was letting the scope of his sniper rifle do the work as he surveyed the far side of the Presidium, across the burning water. Grunt and Osiris kept a watchful eye on the other masses of darkened, shattered shops that lined the level of the Citadel they had landed on. Liara looked up at Shepard as she approached their small cluster, closing a small holographic data screen on her omni-tool.

"Shepard – it appears that Bailey's calculations were roughly accurate. We have arrived at approximately the correct location on the Presidium, although – I must admit – a few floors higher than I had envisioned..."

Shepard cast her gaze out over the viewing deck, nodding as she looked at the vast, cavernous Presidium awash in fire and blood.

"I thought it looked a little high...but we'll just have to make the best of it."

The young asari concurred with her as Javik joined them.

"Javik and I were able to bring some blueprints of this area of the Citadel on my omni-tool – if correct, we're ten floors above ground-level. But there's a large central stairway nearby that served as one of the Presidium's main pedestrian entrances...hopefully, it's still in tact."

Shepard processed Liara's information quickly as she loosened the holster on the Phalanx pistol around her waist. She looked over at Javik, his ancient Prothean armor glittering blood red in the air of war.

"Javik – you alright?"

He made a shallow nod, his four eyes blinking in the smoky atmosphere.

"Yes, commander – I only wish we could start our search for the shard in earnest..."

She motioned for Grunt, Garrus and Osiris to join them.

"I know. Do you think that you stand a good chance of locating the memory shard once we get down there?"

Javik hunched his shoulders in a shrug that touched an irritated nerve in Shepard.

"If it's down there, yes. Shall we..."

The words had barely left his mouth when the relative quiet of their hushed discussion was shattered by enemy fire from an unseen location. The slugs tore into the metal walkway they were gathered on, peppering the viewing area relentlessly. Their eardrums throbbed with the pealing, resounding bursts as Shepard ducked instantaneously, pulling Liara down with her to avoid another salvo. A few shots glanced off Garrus' armor as he dove behind the metal wall of the viewing area, cursing. A moment later, Osiris opened fire with automated reflexes, unloading several rifle shots into some of the upper balconies before they even knew their attacker. Shepard yelled.

"Osiris - get over here!"

The geth ran in its ungainly manner to the cluster of companions as more bullets fell like hail around them, throwing sparks across the floor that they clung to. Grunt gritted his huge teeth viciously.

"Where the hell are they shooting from?!"

In frustration, he unholstered his handcannon and discharged it in a wide arc above his head, a deep growl emanating from his throat. Shepard grimaced amidst the chaos, raising her voice above the endless suppressing fire.

"Garrus – can you get a bead on them??"

The turian was taking cover on one knee, cradling his sniper rifle under one arm.

"Not like this..."

"Wait!"

Liara had risen and stood amongst them – she was now the tallest and most prominent member of their cowering team. Shepard was about to haul her back down to the ground when the asari spread her hands wide, and the fierce blue glow of her powerful biotics poured from her palms. A moment later, their entire group was surrounded by a glistening blue canopy of dark matter protection. It muffled the air and deadened the shots that still came at them. Shepard, Garrus and the others stood hurriedly.

"Good work, Liara – now where are they..."

>>Target acquired.<<

Osiris extended his rifle and brought it to bear on a balcony of the Presidium five levels above theirs. As he took aim, Shepard and the rest of her team could make out the unmistakable forms of a squad of marauders above them......the grotesque perversions of turians that had fallen to complete Reaper assimilation. Their powerful, out-of-control assault rifle fire still rained down on them, even as shots from Osiris tore into their armor and studded the balcony wall behind which they stood. A blue flash next to Shepard told her that Garrus was also taking action even as she reached back for her own sniper rifle,

"They're mine..."

The turian shouldered his Mantis sniper rifle with a fluid motion, staring down the scope with the intensity of years spent honing this very specific skill. His blue visor scrolled its targeting system continuously into his left eye, turning his pupil into an orb of electric blue. One shot from his barrel, then another pounded into the group of marauders. An indoctrinated head exploded, its body slumping to the floor dead. Three more sniper rifle shots along with a barrage from Shepard and Grunt's own weapons, and the rest of the group of marauders was destroyed before they had a chance to reload.

Straightening her tensed back, Shepard ejected a thermal clip from her assault rifle as Liara's protective biotic cocoon dissolved from around them.

"Why do I feel like we let our guard down? Come on..."

With the constant pressure of time slipping by, Shepard and her team picked their way through the debris and blazing fires towards the stairwell that offered them a way down. As they strode quickly through the metallic corridors, they caught glimpses of motion and hints of life in the darkened offices and burned-out administrative cubicles. The relentless work of the keepers continued...

~

Tali'Zorah vas Normandy hauled herself desperately out of the oily lake, looking back with horror at the gutted, upturned shuttle as it floated in the Presidium's once-beautiful waterway. Their pilot's body had been impaled by shattered pieces of the craft's roof, his lifeless form lay slumped half-inside the stricken vehicle. Her grief, however, was stolen by the earth-shattering shriek of their assailant. The Reaper harvester that had forcefully collided with their shuttle had alighted on the opposite bank of the lake, its sickly, torn wings fanning the smoke from the fires around it. It let out another shriek – almost like a battle cry, and began crawling its way towards the scene of the second team's crash landing.

As if in slow-motion, Tali pulled her sodden body to its feet, unlocking her shotgun with painfully slow fingers. But before she could act, from somewhere behind her there was an immediate wash of pure blue light, and then an unrelenting stream of raw biotic destruction streamed from Samara's outstretched hands, impacting the harvester's left wing with a devastating explosion.

One by one, their team re-assembled under the stress of instant battle. James came up for air next to Tali, coughing and spluttering the turbid water from his lungs even as he single-handedly discharged rounds from his assault rifle in the vague direction of their assailant. The quarian crouched by his side, dispensing an application of medi-gel from her omni-tool directly onto a deep gash on the soldier's leg.

Suddenly, the air around them crackled with sulphur as the harvester, although wounded, pummeled their crash site with a wash of red from its main laser turret. Shards of metal and curtains of the stinking water showered across all of them, sending Tali and James sprawling on their backs. A figure raced to them from a pile of broken crates, and Miranda suppressed the harvester's advances with a sheer biotic force field while shepherding the others to the cover of the crates she had been thrown into during their crash landing. An ugly bruise was beginning to blossom around her left eye.

"James – are you okay?"

She glanced at his leg, the brutal gash had healed courtesy of Tali's first aid and was now scarred over and dry.

"Yeah – I'm fine, but we've got this little problem..."

He held his assault rifle above his head facing backwards and let off six rounds of semi-automatic fire at the advancing beast,

"...of this freakin' harvester to take care of!"

Snatching a frag grenade from his ammo-belt, James pulled the pin out with his teeth and spat it on the floor. He threw it hard in the direction of the Harvester.

"Get down!!"

His words were drowned out by the huge concussion of the grenade as it exploded directly in front of their enemy, immediately shattering its front legs. The harvester let out a disgusting shriek and sat crouched not thirty yards from them, beating its wings to attempt to right itself. It released a salvo from its ugly, blue-tinted maw cannons – the modified Reaper weapons turning most of the crates into mangled heaps of metal. Miranda looked around, blanching visibly. There was no other reachable cover. Just as she was preparing to summon a biotic barrier to shield them from the harvester's onslaught, there was a cacophonous scream that came from behind their advancing enemy.

"I...WILL...DESTROY...YOU!!!"

Subject Zero – 'Jack' – emerged from the pile of twisted metal that had come down when their shuttle had caught a gantry beam before crashing. Her entire body – from teeth to fingertips – pulsed with unbridled biotic vehemence. A tiny flick of her wrists brought the majority of the collapsed beam into motion, and it collected above her head, absorbing the glow of her biotic power. In an instant, the debris sorted itself into metallic spears and rods of all shapes and sizes and was propelled with bone-crushing force directly at the back of the harvester's head and neck. Four tremendous blows struck home, tearing its neck into three separate pieces. Falling dumbly to the ground, its body writhed briefly as the glow of Reaper energy within its veins flickered and died. The prevailing silence was deafening. Jack lowered her hands from above her head, and spat in the direction of the abomination. Straightening her leather jacket, she turned to the others and made an out-of-proportion bow.

"And so ends the lesson."

Amidst sighs and the wiping of sweating brows, the second Citadel team regrouped after their disastrous arrival to the vicinity of Citadel Tower. Coats had been the last to pull himself from the murky lake, and gratefully received care from Miranda for a large gash across his left temple. Tali activated her omni-tool's communicator, dialing in their designated frequency.

"Shepard – it's Tali, do you read us?"

There was nothing but static on the incoming transmission, a static that was more foreboding than any silence. The quarian had thought her spirits couldn't sink any lower. Frantically adjusting the minute frequency differences on her omni-tool, she tried again to raise Shepard's team.

"Shepard? Liara! Garrus?? Anybody out there??"

The static persisted as James looked at her forlornly...but then,

"...ali? Tali is that yo...?"

All present breathed a little easier with the small reassurance that their inter-team communications were – to some degree - working.

"Yes Shepard – it's me. We weren't able to establish communications after landing. We've had a bit of an...incident."

The static gave way to Shepard's voice, her tone was concerned.

"What's happened...can't hear clearl...ryone alright?"

Miranda tuned her omni-tool's communicator into the first team's frequency.

"We're okay Shepard, but our shuttle had a run-in with a harvester en-route to the tower. We crashed into one of the lakes...the shuttle's gone, as is our pilot..."

The air turned blue as they heard the disembodied voice of Shepard cursing in the smoldering air.

"Shit, Miranda...s...rybody okay?"

Tali adjusted the output of her communicator to try and compensate for the interference inside the Citadel.

"Shepard – is this any clearer? We're all okay – a few cuts and bruises, but we're moving."

The signal came back much stronger courtesy of the quarian master-technician's adjustments,

"Okay...thank god. That damn harvester took out your shuttle?"

Tali replied as Miranda and Coats signaled the team to assemble for moving out.

"Yes, we didn't stand a chance. Our pilot sacrificed himself to allow us all to evacuate the craft before it crashed into one of the lakes...but we...we took care of the damned thing afterwards."

They could hear heavy footfalls on Shepard's end of the transmission now – a notion of movement that they couldn't see. Their commander came back to them one last time.

"Goddamnit!...sorry. Alright...look. At least the team made it. Keep moving and keep in touch."

And with that last communication, the second team began to make their arduous way towards Citadel Tower – the one place on the Citadel they knew contained the ability to override the arms command controls and open the enormous station up to allow the Crucible to dock. Their crash landing had placed them much further from the tower than they had originally planned. Striking out into the hub of the Presidium and sending the foul keepers scuttling for the shadows, they embarked upon their daunting mission.
Chapter Eight

Liara T'Soni knelt at the edge of the torn metallic chasm, looking down through ten storeys of utter devastation. She shook her head sullenly.

"I...I can't believe it. This place has changed beyond all recognition – the stairwell is no longer here!"

The rest of the team halted at the edge of the enormous drop-off, Shepard taking in breath through clenched teeth.

"This is not good. This is...not good."

A foul breeze rushed past their faces as they regarded the sheared sides of the gaping, ten-storey high shaft of debris that was once a grand entrance to the Presidium. They could make out keepers skirting the edge of the abyss, using gantries and access ladders to move about the destroyed area far below them. Shepard could make out more large tubes and pipes that seemed to pulse with their own life force, ever moving the crimson liquid that they carried. Most of the group had already made the connection between the putrid stench and the visible evidence in front of them. Grunt spat over the side of the hole as Liara made to pull up more schematics on her omni-tool, but Shepard took hold of her arm firmly, her face set in a grimace.

"No Liara – we don't have time."

Looking around the edges of the lacerated, formerly grand staircase, she stowed her rifle on her back and plucked her smaller Phalanx pistol from her waist.

"If the keepers can move about this place, so can we. There are enough service ladders and gantrys around the sides – we can make it. Come on..."

She motioned to the others to follow her as she strode towards a relatively in-tact metal access ladder that led over the side of the gaping chasm and down to the next floor beneath. Moving with austere purpose, she swung over the edge and gripped the ladder, sliding down it quickly and easily. The others followed, albeit slightly more carefully. The ladder creaked anxiously under Grunt's huge weight, but held...much to the relief of the others. The krogan moved fast, burdening the slippery metal with his massive body for as little time as possible.

They reached the next level below quickly, accompanied by the almost constant sound of metal debris falling from the sides of the chasm. Shepard had already proceeded onto a section of suspended walkway that led to another way down, testing each section with gentle footsteps. The stinking breeze whipped pieces of her hair into her eyes, and underfoot she noticed that most surfaces were becoming slick with a wet substance. Touching a gloved hand to the walkway, she saw it came away coated with blood. Grimacing, she looked up to continue but instead jolted to a halt. At the end of the section of suspended walkway they were traversing sat three keepers, their bloated, green bodies crouching over something indistinguishable in the half-light. Shepard ceased her progress, and looked back at Garrus and the others directly behind her.

"What do we do?"

Garrus didn't have an answer, he only twitched his mandibles in deep thought. Javik shifted uncomfortably on his feet. Grunt, however, had no issues making suggestions.

"You want a hint, Shepard?"

He readied his shotgun with a malicious glint in his red eyes, bringing the massive weapon to bear on the alien life forms at the end of the gantry. But Shepard lowered his massive arm with her hand.

"No...wait."

She stared at the green, spider-like aliens ahead of her – a quizzical expression on her face. A mystery older than any of the existing civilizations, the Citadel's keepers were an entity unto themselves. Nobody knew their purpose on the station – the races that had populated the Citadel having accepted them as a dog accepts fleas. Shepard edged towards the small cluster of keepers, her pistol drawn, her stance readied. Craning her neck, she struggled to see what they were doing.

It wasn't until she came within ten feet of them that they ceased their work and reacted to her presence – turning sideways and fixing her with their empty, round black eyes. In an instant, she saw their blood-soaked hands, and the corpses amongst which they stood. A lifeless hand dripped crimson blood over the side of the platform, a human torso laid beneath one of them, slit open like a hunt kill. One of the keepers advanced towards her, clicking its carrion-coated claws with anticipation...

With a low, torn noise from her throat, Shepard brought the pistol to bear on the grisly scene. Round after round she unloaded, expelling her rage and anger and disgust in each slug as it barreled into the loathsome creatures. Her face was illuminated with steady succession by each discharge of clips, the powerful recoil of the weapon in her wrists something that was delectably tangible and real. A keeper was knocked back and teetered on the edge of the walkway before flipping over the side into the abyss – another fell into a crumpled mass of green blood, and then another. Thermal clips smoldering at her feet, Karen Shepard finally ceased firing, her body shaking with rage. Lowering her weapon, she shook her head jerkily, her gaze fixed forward.

"This has to stop. This harvest will be their last. Mark my words."

Slowly, excruciatingly slowly, they recommenced their onward journey. They picked their way through the mass of keeper and human bodies at the end of the walkway, most trying to blot the horrific scene from their eyes. Relieved, they clambered down another ladder, then another half-open corridor stretched in front of them, running down and onwards. With solid metal under their feet for the first time in a while, the team took stock of their situation and sipped from their water supplies in the stale air. Garrus fielded the first attempt at conversation any of them had heard in hours.

"So do you think there's anyone still alive up here? I mean...even after the evacuation attempts, this place probably still had millions left on it..."

Most of them were silent as they caught their breath and rested briefly in the stable portion of the destroyed grand stairway, but Javik aired his thoughts willingly.

"Don't waste your energy hoping, turian. Those who were left here likely died a quick death when the Reaper forces took over."

Garrus folded his arms deliberately as he leaned against the corridor's wall, his brow showing the creases of his distaste for Javik's words.

"You don't know that. People find a way to survive...all that's needed is a little hope..."

He glanced at Shepard from underneath his visor, only realizing the poignancy with which his words rang after they had been spoken. She cast a small smile in his direction.

"You're right, I hope. Maybe some survived...found safe areas."

Javik didn't answer – he simply fell to inspecting his particle beam weapon silently. Liara looked at Shepard with an almost apologetic expression and tried to steer the conversation to other topics.

"The important thing is that we bring the Crucible to dock with the Citadel. No matter the cost."

Shepard nodded distantly, her thoughts turning to the gigantic device the allied forces had built that now rested amidst Hackett's fleet. It was as full of mystery as their Prothean companion, none of them even knew the mechanisms by which it would function. Grunt snorted at the mere mention of the device.

"Why, exactly? I mean – why does the damn thing have to be brought here?"

Shepard conceded his question's validity.

"I must admit I've wondered the same thing myself..."

Liara activated the data screen on her omni-tool and flicked through confusing arrays of schematics.

"At best guess, I would say that the Crucible is going to utilize the Citadel as some kind of power supply. It doesn't appear to have its own triggering mechanism or fuel reserves – its entire design is centered around the capability to hold in the massive amounts of dark matter it contains."

Garrus gestured, contemplating what she had said.

"So the Crucible's the barrel, the Citadel's the gun?"

The asari nodded at the turian's crude comparisons. Shepard sighed, adding a last statement.

"And we still have to find the bullet. Come on..."

Their metallic footsteps echoed in the silent, torn corridor they had been resting in as they resumed their journey, working their way down the sloping hallway with care. The outer edge of the corridor was torn open, exposing it to the giant stairwell chasm. Pieces of twisted metal and arcing power cables draped themselves around the outer edge of their walkway – it appeared that the interior processes of the Citadel itself had literally torn this section of the station apart. Three storeys below them, at the bottom of the drop-off on the ground floor of the Presidium, they could barely make out the vague forms of the relentless pipes and tubes that had sprung up all over the great station since its Reaper occupation. They moved their unspeakable, dark crimson liquid sluggishly through the rats nest of tubing, all the while seemingly tended by the crawling forms of the keepers.

~

Shepard was contemplating the grotesque view of the huge gash in the station when she heard it. A faint, brief shuffling in her left ear, but before her mind had a chance to react, something impacted her left shoulder with enough force to knock her off her feet. Pain from the impact seared through her arm as she was sent sprawling in the bloody muck on the floor of the corridor, sliding dangerously close to the edge of the chasm of metal and blood. Twisting her back to allow her hand to extract her handgun from its holster, she looked up and saw Garrus and Grunt both beset by mindless husks. They were seething from a darkened corridor that led away from the main route they had been following. She slipped and lost her balance again as she attempted to right herself.

"Shit!," she cursed under her breath as she finally regained her stance, her heart bucking with adrenaline. Grasping her bruised shoulder with one hand, she took aim with the other and shot one of the husks off Garrus as he fought to stay upright. The air was filled with the moaning of the Reaper-converted human bodies that attacked them. Two of the abominations advanced on Liara, their glowing blue veins pulsing with unholy Reaper energy. The young asari raised her hands instantly and summoned a biotic singularity directly in front of her. It distorted the fabric of space it occupied, creating a void of whirling energy that tore the husks apart immediately.

Grunt roared with unbridled glee as he picked two of them off his back with one of his huge hands and threw them back down the corridor they had come from, knocking over even more of their kind that had been advancing. The krogan made to follow up his actions by charging after them, but before he could launch himself into the fray the husks' ranks were shredded by the combined assault rifle fire of Shepard, Garrus and Osiris. One by one the husks fell to the suppressing fire until not one was left standing. An uneasy quiet descended on the team, punctuated only by the ejection of smoking thermal clips.

"Damn things..." Shepard breathed as she blew a lock of her dark brown hair from her face. She motioned for them to continue their journey with haste. A service ladder at the end of the corridor signified their way down to the next level below, but as they stepped past the bodies of the husks they had killed, Shepard's eyes rested on something. Stopping, she crouched over one of the tortured bodies.

"What the..."

Hearing her exclamation, the others stopped in their tracks and returned to where she knelt by one of the dead husks. Frowning, she flipped its lifeless body over so that its dark eyes stared straight at them. This was unlike any other Reaper husk they had seen before. Its arms were clad in a confusing array of Reaper armor, the dark blue, otherworldly metal biting into its flesh. But worse still, its head showed signs of undergoing massive surgical procedures. Several glowing strips of Reaper technology had been melded into its cranium, creating a hideous combination of flesh and metal. Even though the husk no longer lived, the Reaper components of its body still put forth their sickly light as if still pulsing with the will of the Reapers.

>>The Old Machines have been experimenting on this subject.<<

Shepard heard Osiris assert as she straightened up. Javik spat on the pitiful specimen at her feet.

"It deserves nothing more than our disgust. Complete Reaper assimilation..."

The Prothean walked away in disgust, but Liara now stooped over the body, frowning.

"It....looks like they have been experimenting with ways to couple biotic amplification devices to organic specimens. Look at the cranial distortion..."

She ran a finger over the misshapen head of the creature thoughtfully,

"It's crude...but this is exactly the sort of 'experimentation' that brought about the first human biotics. It's little more than torture..."

She looked over the husk with sad eyes, and stood up from her examination. Shaking her head, Liara frowned still.

"But why would they want to do something like this? Why would they attempt to augment husks with biotics?"

Garrus shrugged as he stared down the darkened corridor from where they had burst.

"Don't know...it hardly seems worthy of their time. Husks are mindless shells – there's little battle prowess and even less sentient thinking. Come on..."

He motioned to Liara as the rest of the team had begun progressing towards the access ladder that led to the lower floor again. Looking around, the turian did a quick double-take.

"Where's Shepard?"

Liara, and then Grunt and Javik and Osiris looked back at them. For a brief moment Garrus felt the dissolving effects of panic begin to set in, but then a flash of red N7 armor caught his eye. Shepard was moving down the corridor from where the husks had advanced, picking her way between their bodies slowly.

She braced her hand against the metallic sides of the corridor, following its contours as it led her inexplicably onwards and inwards. All she could tell was that something awful – some dread perception told her to proceed. Cables writhing with dark blue energy snaked around her feet, threatening to catch her ankles...but she continued. The others had fallen in step behind her, only knowing that the same pulsing vibration that drew their commander in was also affecting them.

Hastily erected Reaper technology had completely taken over the side-corridor now, emanating its cold harsh blue light on them all. The further they proceeded, the more disturbing their surroundings became. Terrifyingly sharp instruments had been discarded in the tunnel, the bluish light hinting at blood smatters on their blades.

Only a few steps more, and the bodies began appearing. A husk's body was strung up by metallic bindings to the wall, its body pierced by hundreds of small tubes, its lifeless eyes dripping element zero onto the floor. Proceeding slowly, her assault rifle still drawn, Shepard saw another body laying in the detritus on the floor. It would have been humanoid, had it not been for the pattern of Reaper technology spidering up its torso, fused to its skin with bloody rivets. Its sunken cheeks and hollow eye sockets were locked in a perpetual scream.

As the terrible pulsing in the corridor around them grew almost unbearable, it opened out into what had probably once been an embassy office. Debris and disintegrated computer equipment were piled up along the sides of the room, shattered datapads laid under broken desks as if some great hand had simply swept the room clear. But it was the new contents of the room that caused each and every one of them to stop in their tracks, grow weak at the knees.

With sore eyes, Shepard looked into the darkened recesses, and saw the source of the power they had felt. Huge tanks of unrefined element zero cast a ghastly green glow over medical and surgical equipment stained with human blood. Bodies of husks lined the walls, the floor, and lay on the operating tables. All were dead, having endured countless similar experimentations as the one they had found out near the stairwell. Their arms were lacerated and encased in Reaper armor, their skulls had been pierced and punctured by the addition of Reaper biotic implants.

As she slowly edged forward, Shepard caught a glimpse of even more bodies, forms that seemed more human than the others. Their legs and arms had been warped by catastrophic exposure to the raw element zero that had been pumped into their bodies. Some had had their flesh burned away and ribcages exposed, some were little more than grisly lumps of flesh and bone molded around Reaper technology.

"By the Goddess..." Liara invoked behind Shepard, holding her white overcoat's sleeve to her mouth. Garrus was silent but stuck close to Shepard, a haunted shadow framing his eyes. For once Grunt was speechless, feeling useless amidst the willful carnage of innocents. The geth Osiris was scanning the entire scene with his optical circuits, the hum of data exchange from his memory banks kept to a minimum. The six team members stood in the center of the cadaverous, warped room – six small pockets of life in the midst of the butchery.

Her breaths coming in short bursts through her mouth, Shepard rounded a large bank of twisted medical equipment, finding a large operating table with six specimens lying on it. Keeper tracks led away from the table in the blood-soaked floor. The human-husk morphs on the table were in various states of dead conversion. Some bled the familiar Reaper energy from the gaping wounds in their skulls, others were ghostly white but still had an air of humanity about them. Tubes inserted into their arms collected and transported the crimson liquid of life away from their bodies, while others introduced the bilious, bright blue Reaper blood into their forms.

She looked up at the overshadowing medical equipment that hung above the wretched table, its tainted surfaces and cutting blades freshly stained with blood. Then – a motion. Out of the corner of her eye, a movement caught her attention. Looking back at the husks on the table, with horror she saw one of their black-and-blue arms twitch feebly, its fingers shaking with excruciating, voiceless pain. The table began to rattle as its body began convulsing directly in front of her. Shepard backed away slowly, fighting the rising bile in her throat. Her throat was ragged from her heavy, labored breathing, the hand that held her assault rifle shook so that it was useless.

"For the love of god...some of them are still alive!," she rasped savagely. Garrus cursed softly next to her. Turning with shuttered deliberation, Shepard looked at Garrus and Grunt, her face pallid.

"Torch this place. End it."

Shepard led Liara, Osiris and Javik out of the claustrophobic, nightmarish room at a hurried pace. Garrus and Grunt remained, affirmed in what they must do. The two warriors looked at each other, and nodded. Slowly they unhooked several incendiary grenades from their respective ammunition belts, and activated them without further thought. As they strode out of the abominable room, a salvo of six plasma detonations heralded the end of the tortured lives within. The warm glow of cleansing fire consumed the darkened corridor as the team members made it back to the relative solace of the main stairwell, the floor under their feet quaking with the explosions of the incendiary grenades.
Chapter Nine

Coats scanned the area surrounding Citadel Tower through his sniper rifle's scope, sweeping his vision across the entryway, the steps leading to the grand building, and the Presidium's plaza in front. Fires burned fiercely in several locations – it appeared that several upper sections of the Presidium's viewing galleries had failed and collapsed into the ground level. The once-beautiful waterway that ran through the Presidium now had an oily layer of scum floating on it, the fountains having long-since ceased operation. But it wasn't the squalid pools of crimson water or the destruction that caused him most alarm.

As Coats continued to survey their objective, he lost count of the number of Reaper troops he detected. Several detachments of marauders languished by the largest pile of debris on the entrance steps – mindless husks meandered like a plague on the plaza in front. With a shudder, he also noted the contorted, wispy forms of three banshees as they floated across the entrance door to the tower. Using captured Ardat-Yakshi Asari, the Reapers had created a powerful, repulsively seductive biotic commando for their ground operations.

With a beleaguered sigh, Coats removed the scope from his pale-blue eyes.

"There's a lot of them across there. Banshees, marauders, husks..."

Miranda was crouched next to him at their hidden vantage point across the Presidium's lake. She bit her lip.

"Is there another way – another entrance?"

Tali risked looking over the metal wall they hid behind at the dwarfing Citadel Tower.

"Unlikely – the tower's a sheer structure, and it's not exactly assailable. I don't believe backdoors were built into its design..."

The quarian looked over at Jack and Samara. They had taken up position a little further forward, waiting for a plan to become clear. Jack risked a brief radio communication to Coats' section of the team.

"Well?? We're wasting time here...there isn't any other option."

Coats nodded, running his tongue across his teeth.

"I know...I know. I just wasn't expecting such a heavy garrison..."

Tali's omni-tool activated as she programmed a barrage of attack drones into it, her voice perpetually playful.

"Think of it as a welcome party. I mean...this is Citadel Tower – the heart of the Presidium. Did we really expect this to be simple?"

Samara's matter-of-fact voice came to them from her position with the other biotics.

"The quarian is right. We are faced with no other option. I would suggest haste."

A nervous tick flickering in his jaw, Coats swallowed hard and released the safety catch on his heavy Widow rifle. He looked at Miranda briefly, and she smiled and nodded at him in reassurance.

"Alright. This is the only way we are gonna get this done. Jack – Samara, wait for my first shot and then hit them with everything you've got before advancing with us. I'll pick as many of them off from this location as I can before it gets too hot. Tali – try and flank them on the right with Miranda and see if you can get close to the entrance console. James – cover them down the center."

Staying behind their cover, the small knots of the arm team rearranged into their designated roles. Tali and Miranda positioned themselves on the far right in preparation to take the flank, and the biotics ahead of them crouched, ready and tense. Coats could hear the readying of weapons, the subtle sound of Tali's geth plasma shotgun as it energized slugs of superconducting projectiles. His own M-98 Widow rifle hummed as its powerful laser sight tracked every movement.

Carefully, he slid his heavy rifle over the top of their metallic cover and took position, readying the one, single, powerful shot that would initiate what he knew was going to be brutal, chaotic battle. Molding his left eye to the scope, Coats made a gesture with his left hand briefly to tell the others to hold. Grasping the cold, thick metal of the weapon with both hands now, his fingers fell into place on the trigger almost unconsciously. Beads of sweat glistened on his forehead. The sounds around him seemed to become muffled as his entire body became an extension of the rifle. Soon, all that he could hear was his own heartbeat as he brought the laser scope tight in to a squad of heavily armored marauders. Their grotesquely mutated metallic heads seemed alert, they were scanning the entire Presidium as if they were aware of a detached presence around them.

The state-of-the-art scope of the Widow rifle tracked each target independently, offering Coats numerous headshot opportunities within a few seconds of each other. A bead of sweat trickled down the back of his neck, the eyepiece of the rifle was becoming clammy. His pale blue eyes remained focused and unwavering as he fell into a familiar, unblinking rhythm, and squeezed the trigger...

The single, enormous shot from the Widow rifle tore the air around them asunder. A marauder's head exploded, followed by the husk's head behind it, and the single, true, devastating slug from Coats' tank-busting rifle ended its split-second journey embedded in the shoulder of a banshee. As the two bodies of its allies fell to the ground, the banshee began her familiar screech, reeling to the left from the impact of the shot to her shoulder.

Coats righted himself from the almost-deadly kickback of the rifle shot, steadying his hand for another. The battlefield had been defined, now, and had come alight with a savage mixture of bullets and biotics. James was advancing eagerly up central steps towards the enemy troops, his assault rifle pummeling every enemy that moved with a barrage of fire. The biotic members of their team had spread out, preferring combat on more individual terms. Jack vaulted a pile of metallic debris, her clenched fists crackling with biotic prowess as she sent a shockwave of dark energy hurtling towards the nearby squad of marauders. They were sent in all directions, sprawling on the ground. Another lone shot reverberated amongst the chaos as Coats picked off a marauder that was advancing towards Tali and Miranda. It crumpled in a heap on the ground instantaneously, dead. Husks swarmed from under the shadow of the tower on the command of one of the banshees – her eardrum-piercing shriek carrying on the waves of battle, creating pockets of vertigo in the ears of all who heard it.

Tali picked up pace with Miranda as they worked their way along the right hand side of the tower's steps. A marauder caught a blast from her shotgun full in the face before she even had a chance to slow down, and they continued. Miranda's body glistened with a summoned biotic barrier, and shrugging off bullets and blows she was able to clear them a path through the endless husks towards the entryway to Citadel Tower.

But then – the quarian stopped. A puzzled expression would have been visible on her face if not for her mask. Time, the battle, everything seemed to have frozen. Looking down, she saw the source of the strange sensation. Blood poured from a bullet puncture to her envirosuit just below her right knee. Reality set in with sudden, compounded presence. Crying in pain, she sunk to one knee, gasping for breath.

Whereas time had been frozen for the quarian, it sped up unendingly for the others. Miranda fell back when she realized what had happened, and raised Coats immediately under a hail of fire from a squad of marauders at the top of the steps.

"Coats we're getting pinned down here! Tali's been hit! Get the hell..."

Her transmission was cut short as Jack scrambled to aid their right flank. A succession of barriers was summoned, protecting the injured Tali as Miranda unloaded her entire Carnifex handgun into the nearest three marauders, knocking all of them to the ground and killing two. Their guttural, metallic speech was close now. James was commanding the central portion of the battlefield, aided by Samara's biotic powers. Assault rifle in one hand, shotgun in the other, he dual-wielded the weapons with gleeful abandon. A banshee caught the discharge of his shotgun in her chest, causing her biotic barrier to disintegrate, and an entire team of husks were shredded to pieces by the powerful rounds coursing from his Vindicator rifle.

"Flush 'em out!!" He roared above the banshee's pained scream.

She turned her blue, flaming hands to James and still advanced towards him, but one last deafening shot from Coats' rifle brought her down decisively. The young major then left his trailing position and caught up with Tali and Miranda down the right flank. He activated his omni-blade just in time as a husk threw itself on top of him. Bringing the deadly blade of pure energy thrusting upwards into its unprotected body, he threw it to the ground in disgust as he made it to Miranda and Tali. His voice grew hoarse from shouting above the flashes of biotics and hail of marauder fire.

"We've got to get to the entrance console! Can you carry on?"

Tali nodded, finishing a hasty field dressing of her leg injury. An application of medi-gel had stopped the bleeding, and the quarian had secured a crude seal around the puncture in her suit. Standing tentatively, she nodded at Coats and followed behind Miranda and the major as they crept ever closer to the entryway to Citadel Tower.

Barely yards from the entrance console now, Miranda, Tali and Coats were stopped in their tracks by a wall of marauders, their metallic, armored bodies blocking the way imperviously. It was clear that they were acting on orders of some kind. Freezing air washed over them as a banshee skirted around James who had also made it to the top of the steps...an uneasy stalemate seemed to be playing out.

The marauders seemed to be relishing in watching the banshee as it slowly approached Tali and the others, floating on a stream of unseen energy. The nightmarish siren of the Reapers unfurled her elongated fingers slowly, a perpetual, freakish grin on her lipless face. She fashioned within her hands a ball of pure biotic destruction, holding it shamelessly above the heads of those who were destined to die by her hands.

But she stopped, ceased her advance. The banshee sensed something. Something inexplicably more interesting than the simple soldiers in front of her. The apparition whirled to find Samara standing directly behind her, resplendent in her red Justicar's armor. The ancient asari raised her hands slowly, enveloping herself in a glistening protective barrier, a halo of psychic power playing above her head. Her square jaw was locked in a grimace of distaste for the perverted Reaper-Asari that stood before her, and she launched herself effortlessly into the air towards the hideous banshee.

"Even the Ardat-Yakshi do not deserve this!"

In an instant, the immeasurable powers of the two were locked together. Samara met the banshee's ball of biotic destruction head-on with an uncurbed stream of plasma unleashed from her outstretched palms. The white-hot light from their confrontation burned the vision of all present, illuminating the battle around them with stark, burning with light and dancing shadows.

~

The bullets still flew. James unleashed another assault rifle barrage on the door to the tower now that he was unhindered by the stalking banshee and peppered the stubborn marauders with splintering slugs. The tattooed form of Jack was visible at the center of a throng of husks as she dispatched one after another with blasts of biotic aftershocks. With the battle circulating around Samara and the banshee like some bizarre star system, Coats, Tali and Miranda had made it to the entrance console.

Shoving the body of a marauder aside, Coats swore under his breath at the sight of the panel. It hung by the thinnest of wires, dangling down the wall.

"Shit! Now we know what those damn marauders were doing up here..."

Miranda glanced over at the panel while unloading her pistol at the endless husks that advanced towards them.

"Tali – get on it!"

Coats looked at her as if she was crazy.

"Are you insane?? Look at it!..."

He flipped the fried circuit board with a defeatist attitude, his face contorted in rage and anger mostly directed at himself. But before he could follow up with more negativity, a geth shotgun was thrust into his hands and he was being pushed aside by the quarian.

"Cover me."

Her small body crouched by the decimated entrance console, Tali already had her omni-tool pulled up and was running diagnostics on the circuit boards. Her lithe fingers worked quickly – too quickly for a human's eyes to follow. A shower of sparks bounced off her arm as she cut into the metal panels of the tower's wall with her omni-blade.

Dully, Coats turned and fired three rounds from Tali's shotgun into the face of a husk. He looked back at her incredulously.

"Tali – will this work??"

The young quarian – having spent what she considered too much time with James – answered only with an extended middle digit at the young major. Shaking his head, he gave in to her protests and defended their position along with Miranda, James and Jack. Coats heard the dying shriek of the last banshee as Samara broke its body over her knee with finality. A round of slugs from the remaining marauders they had forced down the steps tore into the structure of the tower above them.

"Bosh'tet!"

Tali cursed as the hail of bullets shattered her concentration. She breathed quickly under the stress as she remained crouched by the butchered panel. One of her hands held a seemingly random collection of wires, the other worked a miniature welding blade over a burned-out circuit board with delicate precision. Activating her communication radio, her thickly accented voice was broadcast to the whole team.

"Keep those marauders off me!!"

Samara nodded from the crest of the flight of steps, and with a small gesture, the entire platoon of enemies that had been firing upon their position were swept into the nearby lake. James whooped his approval as he kicked a husk away from him before blowing its head open with his shotgun.

"Come on – let's get this done!"

But only Miranda had noticed the resign with which Tali had slumped against the wall. She touched the quarian's shoulder, and Tali looked up at her.

"I can get us in, Miranda, but this thing is so fried, there's no way I can automate it to seal us in there! They'd literally be on our heels all the way to the arms control..."

Coats heard the predicament and looked at her with a haunted stare.

"What are our options?"

Another shower of slugs peppered their location from a fresh platoon of marauders that had taken up position where the team had once hid, but this was the least of their concerns. The hulking forms of five brutes could be seen loping across the flaming Presidium towards the tower. The Reapers had melded krogans and turians with sick efficiency, creating an almost unstoppable, armor-plated killing machine. Their giant metallic claws reflected the flames dancing across the Presidium's lake as they crashed towards them. Tali wrung her hands, her mind going into overdrive.

"I...I, I don't know! The capacitors are shot – I've only got about five seconds of fidelity left on this thing. Even if we all get through...it's not going to seal! I..."

She looked around in dismay, her breathing ragged. Moving her head from one team member to the other, she straightened her spine purposefully.

"I'll stay. I'll stay out here and seal you all inside. It's the only way."

James looked back at his team mates clustered around Tali even as he threw a frag grenade down the steps to keep the brutes at bay, a wild expression on his face.

"What?!? Are you crazy?? You'll be eaten a live out here!"

Coats brought an air of seriousness to their heated shouting.

"Tali – what if they've sabotaged the arm controls as well? We've got to have you with us..."

Tali stood quickly, brandishing her soldering tool in their faces.

"If I don't stay here to seal you in there, you won't MAKE it to the arm controls!"

Summoning another glistening barrier with the last reserves of her biotic strength, Miranda searched the panel with worried eyes.

"There has to be another way!!"

But she could tell even as the words left her lips that there wasn't. Her barrier disintegrated under heavy fire from the marauders, their ranks having been replenished three-fold. A slug grazed Jack's shoulder as she fell back against the cold metal of the tower.

"Fuck!"

Clutching her smarting shoulder in pain, she dropped to the ground to gain cover from the almost constant barrage. Samara had now fallen back to the entrance console also and had unholstered her shotgun in preparation for what was to come. She watched the cluster of brutes closely – they had almost made it to the tower plaza.

"Our time is running short."

Coats looked around, his eyes caked in soot, his forehead dripping with sweat.

"So what do we do?? We've got to get inside, but we can't let them in after us! It'd be a massacre!"

A large panel of metal crashed to the ground from above them, the suppressing fire from the marauders was ripping the tower's skin off. The situation grew dark, the cold clutches of depression began to wrap their minds. Tali shook her head, looking at Coats.

"It's the only way, major. You won't last five seconds if I don't seal you all inside. I...I'll be...alright..."

But suddenly, her soldering tool was snatched from her hand by large, human fingers. Jumping, the quarian looked up into James' eyes. His blackened face was streaked with blood and smoke, but there was a serenity about him that none had ever seen before.

"This thing..."

He held the tool up in the flaming light, examining it closely, and gestured to the makeshift control panel Tali had constructed in the wall of Citadel Tower,

"...in there?"

Another bullet pounded the wall behind him, but he didn't even flinch. Tali shrunk away from him, terrified.

"Yes...but...James, you can't..."

The big human swept her words away as surely as he ushered her close to the sealed door of the tower. He looked at the others, his eyes burning with resolve.

"Don't wait."

But Tali clutched his arm, trying with futility to grab the tool back from his grasp. Her voice quavered with emotion, her words were frantic, her hands shook.

"No – no James you can't...you can't do this! We...we need you!"

He took her by the wrists and handed her off to Coats who had also taken up position around the door, sadness and pride in his pale human eyes. James hoisted his assault rifle, ejected a spent thermal clip, and shook his head softly.

"I'm just a soldier, Tali. I'll seal you all inside."

The quarian wept as Coats grasped her shoulders, but through her tears she worked to prime the rickety control panel at their backs. A brute had crashed onto the tower plaza, its roar wracking the sulphuric air. The noise spurred Tali's work onwards even as she struggled to speak through her tears.

"We...we'll need to be quick. Five seconds is all we've got. Damn it I...I'm sorry. I can't do any better than that. Get – get around to the door..."

James looked at Coats, Miranda, Jack, and Tali with a sanguine smile underneath his soot-crusted face. He placed Tali's soldering tool between his teeth, and gripping his assault rifle with renewed resolve he turned his back on his team and faced the throng of marauders and brutes that were slowly advancing up the steps towards them. Samara placed her firm hand on his shoulder, a prayer to her Goddess slipping from her lips before she took up her position by the entrance door.

An electronic tick begun as Tali's omni-tool tracked the power surges in the tattered circuitry, the quarian watching the spikes and dips of power with expert eyes.

"We're in."

With a wretched scraping noise, the doors to Citadel Tower slid open just far enough to allow access to the inside.

Coats, Miranda, Jack and Samara all piled through in three split seconds. The mocked-up entrance panel fizzed with arcing power surges. Tali gifted the soldier she left behind with one more second, one moment of time with her hand placed on his muscular back as he unloaded round after shattering round into the marauders, her soldering tool still clenched between his teeth. Then she, too, slipped inside the doorway, hearing it close behind her, singing its sordid metallic song as it sealed shut once more.

They heard a brief sound of tearing metal, then a thud, then there was nothing else to hear. In the half-darkness of Citadel Tower, the gasping weeps of Tali were all that was present as she crumpled to the floor beside the sealed crack of the door, her body shaking from the shock of the soldier's sacrifice.
Chapter Ten

Karen Shepard took a deeper breath as the open space of the Presidium spread out above them once more. Their nightmarish climb down the destroyed stairwell had taken its toll on all of them – knees were buckling, eyes were straining, and emotions were frayed. There was an uneasy silence about the area of demolished storefronts in which they now found themselves. Far above them, debris from the wrecked Citadel ward arms still fell in slow-motion in the vast central concavity, spiraling crazily in pockets of the station's distorted gravity.

Garrus pointed as the team proceeded down a flight of steps that led to a long, once-elegant walkway that swept the sides of the Presidium's lake.

"Spirits! We had drinks there last week..."

Shepard cast a melancholy look over at the former café. The pile of burned barstools and shattered counters stood as a morbid reminder of the ways the war had changed their lives irrevocably. Thoughts of their last dock at the Citadel before its occupation by the Reapers flashed before her. Memories of a short scrap of shore-leave time spent with Garrus, of the way the turian had managed to make her feel normal, even briefly happy before the Reapers had hit, of the way he had embraced her as if he would single-handedly hold their world together...

It was with relief that she led the team away from the area and on towards the location of the Conduit – the memories were too vivid, too painful. It was far easier to immerse herself in the task at hand than perseverate on what they stood to lose if they failed. The twisting walkway followed the Presidium's lake constantly, weaving its way along the heart of the Citadel. With their location now familiar, it wouldn't be long before they arrived at the Conduit – the microscale mass relay that had linked the great station with the Prothean world of Ilos...

It was all too slowly that they saw the pair of Reaper brutes as they rounded another gradual corner of the skyway. Their monstrous forms were meandering aimlessly, their perverted heads scanning the area, watching. Shepard stopped dead in her tracks and held her arm out to stop the rest of her team from straying any closer to the two hulking brutes, but it was too late. They had seen them, and her team had no ballistic advantage whatsoever in the close quarters of the walled skyway.

"Look ou...!"

Shepard didn't even have time to finish her hurried warning before her team was shattered apart by the brutes as they charged headlong into their midst. With chilling synthetic roars, the massive, Reaper-mutated krogan sent each of them sprawling across the ground as they barreled into them. Liara and Javik were sent flying backwards from the force of the impact and Grunt was brought to his knees while still trying to ready his shotgun. Osiris took the brunt of a great impact from the plated shoulder of one of the charging brutes, his metallic body scraping the ground with sparks as he was flung across the walkway. Garrus had managed to avoid the collision with the monstrous beings and now backed away, slowly readying his sniper rifle. Shepard had been separated from the others and was getting back to her feet on the other side of the brutes while their attention was focused on the rest of the team.

Their metallic-organic bodies glistening with grotesque Reaper energy, the brutes advanced readily towards Liara and Javik, their enormous claws lofted above their heads ready to strike. The asari created the strongest biotic barrier she could muster to protect herself and the Prothean while Garrus backed up further still, struggling to get a lock on the enemy at close range with his rifle. He swore under his breath as a burst of green energy signaled Javik's other-worldly biotic powers were being brought to bear. One of the brutes caught the Prothean's powers directly on the jaw and fell to the floor, struggling with the twisting, burning streams of Javik's energy.

Forgotten for the moment, slowly, silently Shepard drew her assault rifle as she crouched behind the brutes. Holding her finger up to her lips briefly, she signaled Garrus and the others to keep them busy while she readied incendiary rounds in her weapon. But the process was lengthy, and the energizing of the plasma rounds in the barrel of her rifle made enough noise to be heard by the one brute that was not immobilized by Javik's biotics. It whirled around, fixing Shepard with its warped stare and growling from deep within its metal chest before beginning its lumbering charge with ever-gathering momentum.

Shepard threw her assault rifle to the ground in an instant and activated her omni-blade for close combat, the glowing two-foot long blade of pure energy crackling to life just as the brute loomed directly in front of her, but it was too little too late. Even as she thrust her arm upwards to bring the blade of burning energy home into the monstrosity's metallic ribcage, its enormous claw caught her by the shoulder and lifted her off her feet. Recoiling as the beast's horrific Reaper energy pulsed next to her, Shepard tried to reach the handgun at her waist, tried to gain a foothold on its jagged, serrated armor, but it was futile. The next second, the wind was knocked out of her body as the brute crushed her against the wall of the walkway. She gasped with ragged pain.

"Garrus! ..."

Only when the other brute finally succumbed under Javik's smothering biotic powers did the others realize with horror what was happening on the far side of walkway. Garrus watched the scene play out in slow-motion, his eyes feverish, and he looked around with desperation.

"It's got Shepard! Grunt!"

Snarling, Grunt threw his weighty shotgun to the ground as he responded to Garrus' commands. But even as the huge krogan lumbered towards the brute that had her pinned to the wall, Shepard heard the sickening sound of her armor as it splintered underneath the unstoppable force of the brute's tremendous claw. She gritted her teeth as the metal compacted and cracked, a biting, vice-like pain entering her body.

"Uhhnng..."

She was losing consciousness from the excruciating pain as the brute exerted even more force, trying to squeeze the life out of her. Vaguely, she registered a reassuring roar in her ear as starbursts filled her vision from lack of oxygen. Grunt had seized the brute from behind and was attempting to forcefully lift it off her. Every sinew, every muscle in his perfect krogan body rippled and strained with the strength of thirty men as the brute was slowly and painfully pulled away from Shepard. With a deep bellow, he hurled the brute from him and sent it crashing through the edge of the walkway and down into the flaming debris of the Presidium.

Freed from the clutches of the brute's massive metal claw, Shepard slid down the wall and sunk to the ground gasping for air. Her head reeled from having the air knocked out of her, and her shoulder was shredded by her splintered armor. Grasping her arm in pain, she hunched over on her knees, unable to move. Garrus was first at her side. He picked her up in his arms as she writhed in anguish, her breaths coming in painful, involuntary sobs.

"Liara!"

The turian motioned frantically for the asari as he rested Shepard against the wall of the walkway. Blood oozed from her shoulder, staining his arms crimson as he knelt beside her. His hands shook as he removed shards of her armor from her shoulder, instantly drawing shrieks of pain from the woman he loved.

"Spirits! I know...

Shepard's face was contorted in agony as she clawed desperately at his hand to stop it, her breaths little more than tortured wheezes. Garrus shared each one of those pained breaths with her.

"...I know Shepard, I'm sorry. Hold still...get me some medi-gel!"

Liara arrived nursing a bruised hand just as Garrus had shouted for her once again. Blanching visibly at the sight of Shepard's crushed shoulder, she worked hastily to disperse the medi-gel into her body. Within seconds merciful anesthetic soothed the pain, and coagulants targeted her lacerated flesh. A minute later, the medi-gel's derma-regenerators had reduced her pain to a manageable level and stopped the bleeding. Oxygen returning to her, Shepard laid her forehead on Garrus' chestplate, her breathing easier, slower and exhausted. For a moment, the team sat huddled on the broken and blasted walkway, their minds catching up with what their bodies had endured. Their journey was taking far too long for any of their liking...

~

Shepard listened to Miranda's voice as she patched communications through to the arm team.

"Affirmative, Shepard – we've managed to get inside the tower. But...James. He's gone. We lost him...he...he stayed outside the door to seal us in here..."

Miranda's quavering voice trailed off, losing its impetus. The hollow strike of another loss resounded inside her like the chime of a ghastly clock, measuring out each of their lives. Shepard clenched her fist in grief.

"He didn't make it?"

Coats came back to Shepard as her team finally approached the Conduit plaza on the Presidium.

"He sacrificed himself, Shepard. He was...insistent."

Drawing a ragged breath, Shepard looked from Garrus to Liara to Grunt. Her voice was small.

"Thanks to him, you're inside. That's what we've got to remember. We've just made it to the Conduit plaza – keep in touch."

Deactivating her omni-tool's communicator, Shepard joined the rest of her team as they gathered and recuperated briefly in the shadow of Conduit – the statue of a mass relay that had hid its secrets from them so many years ago. The finely crafted rendition of the relay was still in tact, but now it sat in a pond of blood-stained water rather than the pristine lake it once occupied. This was the scene of their chaotic arrival onto the Citadel during their pursuit of Saren, and it had also been the scene of the arrival of the last Protheans as they had carried the memory shard containing the Ishnavaya virus onto the great station.

Rubbing her shoulder painfully, Shepard couldn't justify sitting or resting. She looked at Javik as he regarded the Conduit thoughtfully.

"Javik – do you...feel anything?"

The green-skinned Prothean glanced sideways at her with his four yellow eyes and shook his head silently. Even he seemed daunted at the task before them. He looked over at Liara.

"Your asari believed that we should begin our search here, but this place is immense. Finding where to begin could be impossible..."

Sighing in temporary resignation, Shepard leaned next to Liara on the only in-tact railing separating them from the pond containing the Conduit. Wiping sweat and soot from her forehead, she sipped from a water canteen silently. Where do we start?

Osiris had moved as close as possible to the huge statue of the relay and proceeded to scan its every detail with his optical elements. A nostalgic, soft laugh escaped from the Liara. She glanced at Shepard, gesturing to the tiered, burned-out area of parkland they stood in.

"When I was a teenager, I used to sit down there. On those rocks."

Liara smiled, remembering back to another century.

"I used to get so bored waiting for my mother as she met with dignitaries in Citadel Tower! I remember...I remember one time, I even brought scraps of actual paper up here with me and made rubbings of the patterns on them..."

Shepard smiled at her fondly, their friendship seemed to reach back centuries even though they had only known each other a few short years.

Liara continued, "I used to drive the C-Sec guards mad...clambering over their landscaped rocks and climbing their decorative trees. Now, those trees are burning...now they're all dead."

The asari's face turned dark, depressed. Not even her youthful buoyancy could pervade this place.

Javik's voice behind her shoulder made her jump visibly.

"What patterns?"

The Prothean's objective stare shook Shepard and Liara from their reminiscing. There was something tangible, urgent in his voice. Liara waved a hand down to some of the decorative boulders that had been worked into the Presidium's landscaping.

"Nothing very revolutionary. Swirls, waves...that kind of thing."

The asari's questioning gaze met Javik's frown without registering. But the Prothean regarded her intensely, his eyes narrowing.

"Centuries before I was born, my people's ancestors used to carve glyphs onto solid surfaces. It was...before we learned how to utilize memory shards and send messages directly into the minds of others."

Shepard eyes grew unfocused beneath her visor. She looked down the burning tiers to the collection of rocks Liara had referenced.

"Where did these rocks come from, Liara?"

The asari shrugged, her eyes wide with bewilderment.

"I...I have no idea Shepard. They're ancient – our people found the Citadel, they didn't build it..."

But enough had been said for Javik. The Prothean took off towards the large collection of rocks by the lake with zealous pace – leaving Liara, Shepard and the others scrambling after him.

"Javik!"

Shepard called out to him but he had already reached the boulders Liara had talked about. Leaping up on one of the smaller ones, he crouched down, touching its surface with his hand. He closed his yellow eyes, his brow creasing in strained concentration. Shepard arrived to the cluster of rocks next, followed by Liara, Garrus, Grunt and Osiris. She looked up at the Prothean, not even daring to hope.

"Javik – surely you don't think..."

But Javik held up a hand, silencing her. Hardly risking drawing a breath, the others looked on as the 50,000-year-old Prothean's body began to glow softly with a green energy. His hands upon the rock's surface trembled with the power of memories, of ancient knowledge...

"It's here."

~

Shepard looked over at Grunt – the krogan had positioned himself between two of the huge rocks, his back against one of them, his feet pressed against the other. He nodded at her grimly, signaling his readiness. Returning to Liara, Shepard laid a hand on her shoulder.

"Ready?"

The pureblood asari had been in a distant trance, and jolted back to reality at Shepard's touch. She nodded faintly,

"I'm ready, Shepard."

As the fires of war burned around them and the lakes ran red with harvested human blood, Liara T'Soni slowly raised her hands, outstretching her palms towards the rock under which Javik had sensed the memory shard. A soft blue glow started to emanate from them, and slowly it grew, expanding, encompassing her entire body. The rocks around Grunt began to resonate with the same energy, the blue phosphorescence of the asari's considerable biotic powers beginning to affect the cluster of rocks and dirt.

Shepard held her breath for longer than she should have, feeling helpless and useless. She was no biotic, and she was no krogan. Possessing neither strength nor biotic prowess – she wondered briefly how humans had advanced as far as they had. Her clenched fist dug its nails into her palm, as if the very action would lend some kind of strength to Liara's tremendous, arduous task.

The asari's breathing became labored, her hands became claws as her knuckles grew white in mid air. Her knees began to buckle under the immovable force of her unseen task, and still Shepard looked on helplessly.

Looking down at his feet, Grunt registered that small cracks had appeared in the tightly-packed dirt. He felt a small tremor beneath him, and began pushing the rock with all his might. It had no effect on the rock's position, but it felt pleasing to him to expend some of his pent-up energy. Suddenly, Liara collapsed to her knees, sobbing and gasping as she gulped lungfuls of air.

"I...I can't do it, Shepard! One biotic...it's just not enough..."

Shepard grasped her by the arm, helping her to her feet once more. She looked around feverishly...there had to be something else. Her eyes rested on Javik.

"Javik – do you think you could...try?"

The Prothean looked from Shepard to Liara, and saw for the first time the pain and terror in the asari's eyes. Not terror for the war, or her own death – terror as she stared her own failure in the face. He stepped forward, his head held high.

"While it isn't my expertise – I will try. Come, Liara..."

The sound of the ancient Prothean calling her by her name for the first time rung like a clear bell inside her. Nodding with renewed energy, Liara took her place with Javik close to the rocks. Deity and disciple, side-by-side. Shepard looked on as their combined bodies summoned blue and green biotic energy, the air around them crackling with narrowly-directed power. Grunt resumed exerting his tremendous weight against the largest rock that was their focus, his body almost hidden within the swirling colors of the asari and Prothean's telekinetic powers.

Seconds once again seemed to turn to hours. With dark eyes, Shepard looked at Garrus by her side. The turian only shook his head with awe, flicking his mandibles in deep concentration. They now felt the low rumbling under their feet as one of the smaller rocks dislodged itself and fell to Grunt's feet. The krogan growled in frustration, still pushing against the rock with all the physical force of his perfect genes. And still they tried. Javik stood with a wide stance, bracing himself as he turned every mental cell he possessed into biotic energy. Clenching his teeth, his brow was contorted into a painful grimace, his eyes were screwed shut. Liara raised her hands, as if seeking some small piece of extra energy. Her palms blazed with the electric blue power of her species, sweat ran freely down her crest and forehead. Slowly, ever so slowly, she began to sink down onto one knee again. Her shoulders shook as if they were supporting the entire Presidium, her eyes were black, blank and locked on the rocks in an unseeing stare. Still the rocks remained, unmoving in the veritable hurricane of biotic force.

Shepard looked from Liara to Javik to Garrus and back again. She licked her cracked lips, breathing quickly.

"It's not working...for christ's sake, it's not working!..."

Her panicked brain swam with ideas and flights of fancy as she tried to think of another strategy for unearthing the memory shard, but just as she was about to grab Liara's arm to break her concentration, there was a flurry of movement to her right. Almost blinded by the blaze of biotics, a body pushed her away from the asari. Shielding her eyes, Shepard barely made out a hooded figure striding towards Liara and Javik. The individual laid an elegant hand on Liara's shoulder, and the asari's silhouetted body slowly raised up from her knelt position. Shaking no more, she extended both hands towards the rocks, and the resulting flare of energy that streamed from her fingers was magnified threefold. The third person released Liara from her touch and turned her own arms towards the rocks, lending whatever power she possessed to the fray. Crawling backwards on her hands and knees, Shepard squinted as Garrus helped her to her feet a safe distance from the spectacle.

Raw plasma fell around Grunt as he still pushed the massive rock. It rocked hopefully from the force of the krogan's efforts and the biotic firestorm around it. He pressed his armored head against its cool surface, lending every inch of lateral force he could muster. Slowly, amidst the searing energy, he heard the tearing and cracking of dry dirt as the massive boulder began to move. With an earth-rending roar, he picked up momentum. Aided by the combined force of the now three biotics he rolled the rock cleanly away from where it had stood.

The silence was deafening once the searing, burning light of the biotic show of force had disappeared. Grunt stood grinning, hands on his hips, looking proudly at the rock as it laid in the walkway where he had left it. Javik had helped Liara to the ground and they now both sat staring dumbly at what they had just accomplished. But there was only one thing going through Shepard's mind...the mysterious third biotic that had shoved her away from Liara during the ordeal. She closed on the figure quickly, registering a feminine body and a suspicious, tight jacket. Then, an oddly familiar voice,

"The rules still remain the same, Shepard..."

The figured cast her hood back dramatically, and turned to face the commander with a flamboyant whirl.

"Don't. Fuck. With. Aria."

Shepard's jaw would have hit the ground if at all possible at the sight of Aria T'Loak – the rebellious asari who once again governed Omega with an iron fist after Shepard had assisted her in its liberation. Her face was bruised and dried purple blood crusted a deep gash on her check, but the crooked grin with which she regarded Shepard hadn't changed a bit.

"What the hell are you doing here?!" Shepard cried, but inside she felt like bear-hugging the woman. The ridiculous sensation of running into a familiar face under the present circumstances made her feel more invigorated than a full night's sleep. She listened to Aria's story as Liara, Javik and the others gathered around them.

"Well – I had been languishing in Afterlife designing my new rule of Omega. Then that goddess-forsaken place got closed down when the Reapers hit, which frankly came as somewhat of a relief..."

Shepard smiled and shook her head – Aria's attitude hadn't changed a bit.

"So...in the chaos that ensued, with this 'place' being towed into Earth's orbit, I was unable to make it to any of the evacuation shuttles. So – here I am! Lucky for you..."

She glanced at Liara and Javik coldly.

"You don't think I'd let one of my own kind be bested by a fifty-thousand-year-old fossil, do you? I'm not entirely useless."

Aria suddenly regarded Shepard with an oddly out-of-place expression she couldn't quite pinpoint.

"Well it looks like you're in need of my 'help,' Shepard – without me, you wouldn't have had a chance at shifting that rock. Care to fill me in on the details before we all die? Or are you just here for some recreational archeology?"

Lips pressed in firm resolve, Shepard grasped Aria's shoulder firmly and activated her omni-tool, dispensing medi-gel to the Asari's facial wounds.

"Of course. But if we have our way – nobody's going to die..."

The two locked gazes, an understanding of equally strong-willed women being exchanged. But their reunion was cut short by Grunt's shout.

"Shepard! I think we found it!"

Each of the team members rushed towards the decimated rocks, sending cracked pieces of Prothean hieroglyphics scattering in their haste. Osiris had already taken his place at the edge of the shallow depression and was illuminating it with his searchlight.

Hesitantly, almost afraid to hope, Shepard walked up to the place where the rock had been. Javik was crouched on the edge of the crater regarding something intently, his lips moving in silent, subconscious remembrance. A small, steel canister laid in the center of the hole, half-covered with loose black dirt.

"We did it," Shepard breathed as she clambered into the depression of dirt and shattered rocks and picked up the small canister eagerly with hands that shook. With a hasty grasp, she turned it around until she found a small metal clasp. The lid of the metal device popped open for the first time in 50,000 years and inside, she could see a small, slim object which omitted a faint green glow in the darkened receptacle. Upturning the canister quickly, her heart in her throat, she looked up at Javik as the memory shard containing the Defiance virus fell into her hands.

"We did it Javik – look!"

No sooner had the cool, metallic memory shard fallen into her palm, than the moment was stolen and shattered by a blood-curdling wail. It was horrific, tormented, agonizing – it tore at their ears and pierced their souls. Her veins running cold as ice, adrenaline coursed through her body as Shepard drew her pistol and whirled to face the banshee...

But there was no banshee. Instead, she saw Liara sink to the ground clutching her head as if it were about to split apart. She shrieked again, a lung-rending, sickened howl. Writhing on the ground, the young asari's eyes were shut tight in excruciating agony. Shepard moved towards her, to try to help in some way...but her movement was halted as Aria instantly mirrored Liara's ordeal, stumbling to the ground as she clawed at her temples, screaming.

"Aria!...what the hell? ..."

Shepard's words fell on deaf ears as she knelt by the two asari, helplessly trying to find out what was plaguing them. Still the unnerving screams escaped their mouths, tore into her very soul. She grasped Liara's hands, trying to stop her from injuring herself as she flailed in tormented pain. Shepard looked over her shoulder.

"What do we do? I don't understand."

But in doing so, she saw a sight that drained the last reserves of hope from her body. Javik and Grunt had both collapsed simultaneously, wailing and writhing in anguish. Grunt had curled his legs up to his chest, clutching his knees as he shook violently.

"No...not the tank...I can't..."

The huge krogan was uttering words that made no sense, but were undeniably a part of his past. Liara was the next.

"I can't help you...no, mother. I won't..."

Panicking, Shepard tried to lift the asari to her feet.

"Garrus – help me up with her..."

"What?"

Shepard raised her voice above the numerous screams and sobs of her team.

"Give me a hand with her..."

"What do you mean?"

She released her grasp of Liara slowly, a dull fear beginning to rise inside of her, knotting her stomach. Looking round at Garrus, she saw him standing, arms folded, regarding her with incredulous eyes.

"I don't understand what you're talking about."

Shepard moved towards the turian, his blue eyes seemed strangely luminescent. She clutched him by the shoulders.

"Garrus! What's going on? Can't you..."

But her voice was cut off as he shoved her away from him violently. She winced at the pain in her injured shoulder. As the others of her team fought with invisible phantoms, Shepard watched her partner with terror as he spiraled into the same insanity.

"What are you talking about? It was Sedonis! I didn't ask for their lives..."

His voice was cracked, feverish.

"Surely you can't think...no! No! It wasn't my fault!"

She moved towards him again – her hands grasping for his, her mind whirling in dread.

"Garrus – listen to me! None of this is happening!"

He turned, looking at her with a strange, hurt expression. For a moment she thought he had heard her, until, "Shepard...don't say that. I've lost everything else - I can't lose you, as well! I didn't know it was going to turn out like this – I'm not a fool! Please..."

She moved away from him even as he pleaded with her, her eyes stinging with sorrow for whatever it was that he was seeing, hearing. Looking around at the others, she began to hyperventilate. Hopeless anxiety clawed at her throat as she looked over her team members. They were each locked in their own nightmare, their own delusions. Everything she had fought to build, to preserve, fell away in fragments from her mind.

"Garrus?...Liara??..." Shepard stammered, her own mind now clouded by confusion and panic. She looked from one to the other around her. Javik's hoarse cries for his extinct people became weak as he exhausted himself. Grunt's massive body was curled into a ball on the ground, his deep voice silenced by visions only he could see. Beneath her armor, Shepard's clothes had become soaked with freezing sweat, brought on by the terror of being alone. What could she hope to accomplish without them? Was this how it was going to end?

A synthetic voice spoke next, bringing one tiny shred of reality back to her.

>>Shepard-Commander. The organic members of this team appear to be experiencing a neurological malfunction.<<

In the midst of the shrieking of her team and her own confusion, she had almost forgotten about Osiris. The geth prime had come to stand by her, its optics searching her face. It moved its facial plates in a questioning expression.

>>The Citadel's arms remain closed, virus still requiring delivery. What are your orders?<<

She looked from the geth to each member of her team as they continued to be crucified by their own minds, writhing in pain and sorrow on the ground.

"I...don't know. I don't know what to do."

~

Miranda clawed at the cool tile of the tower's floor, her mind wracked by agonizing bursts of pain. An unseen force was tearing her mind apart, burning away her sanity. Crying in terror, she saw apparitions swim through her vision...oily shadows of her haunted past. Her father materialized before her, his perverted grin growing into awful laughter as another form took shape beside him. Oriana – Miranda's twin sister – fell to her knees with her father's gun in the small of her back.

"No...you can't take her, father! She doesn't belong to you! ..."

Miranda screamed, her voice hoarse. Crawling up the steps of the tower's atrium on her hands and knees, she frantically tried to reach the ghosts of her past. Her other team members had all been struck down by the same psychic shockwave and lay on the floor, convulsing with fear and memories and pain. Jack whimpered in a darkened corner, pressing her hands against the walls as if they were a cell. Tali had collapsed, shaking violently, shrieking in her native tongue while still trying to ascend the steps to the tower's control panel.

"She's gone..."

Tears streamed down Miranda's cheeks as she watched her father escort her sister away into nothingness. Weeping uncontrollably, she absent-mindedly activated her communicator.

"Sh...Shepard..."

Her weak voice was barely picked up by the mic. The silence of Citadel Tower was punctuated by the sobs of the wretched as every one of them wrestled with the monsters of their minds. The interior of the structure was darkened – with the ward arms closed, low-level emergency lighting was the only illumination present. Miranda's long black hair fell over her face as she knelt, crying for her sister...

"...Miranda, thank god! Are you still there?"

Through her stupor, Miranda registered that Shepard had contacted her. Sprawled on the staircase of the council chamber, she looked at her omni-tool dully. Clutching it to her as a child clutches a doll, rocking back and forth, she spoke at Shepard.

"Shepard...they've taken her. I've lost her..."

Miranda mumbled into her communicator, the salt of her tears staining her lips. Her commander's voice came back to her – it was strong, but tinged with fear.

"Miranda – listen to me. This isn't happening. Everyone is experiencing some kind of psychic disturbance. None of this is real – you hear me?"

A sharp pain lanced through her head, and she shrieked back at Shepard with rage and pain.

"No, Shepard! YOU listen to ME! He's going to kill her...my Oriana..."

She clutched her head in agony, weeping uncontrollably. The communicator was silent – she was uncertain whether she had even talked to Shepard. After all that had passed, after the painstaking years of covertly shielding her twin sister from her father's greedy hands...she had lost her...

Tali had crawled to near Miranda, her omni-tool perpetually activated. The quarian was replaying the final words from her father before his death at the hands of the geth, over and over. But then, Shepard's voice returned to them. It was cool, but softer.

"Miranda. Are you there? I know you can hear me. Listen to me. I can make sure Oriana's safe. Together, we can bring her back, alright? There is still hope for her, but I need you to do as I say."

Miranda's sobs became muffled, quieter.

"How? HOW, Shepard?"

Coldly, slowly, Shepard gave her instructions.

"The first step towards that is getting those arms open – the arms of the Citadel. Okay? Then – then we'll have a chance of finding her..."

Through the excruciating pain and hallucinations, Miranda pushed herself off the steps with her arms. Her thirst to save her sister was stronger than any other emotion within her. She planted a foot flat on the floor, and shakily got to her feet. Another searing crack of throbbing, consuming agony entered her temples and she gasped as it stole her breath. But Shepard was still there, and she was relentless.

"Miranda – it's okay. I know it hurts, and I know you're trying. But you need to get this done. Oriana's life depends on it...everybody's does."

Clenching her teeth and nauseated with pain, Miranda placed one foot on the next step above. Progress. Looking to her side, between the wraiths of her mind, she saw Tali laying to one side – obsessed with her father's recorded voice. Fathers. Sudden anger filled her body – anger for her dominated life. Grabbing Tali's arm, Miranda dragged the quarian to her feet while resuming her onward and upward climb.

Tali had little time to react and found her body being towed unwillingly up the steps. She growled at the human female, "Leave me be! He wanted this!!"

But something stronger possessed Miranda. With the faint aura of her biotics flickering over her body, she gripped Tali's arm so tight she risked rupturing her suit. The two women limped, shuffled and dragged themselves up the endless steps of Citadel Tower towards the distant control panel. Her head pounding as though it might explode, Miranda dragged her feet forward with singular steps. Every step hurt, every breath hurt, every heartbeat brought another rush of agonizing torture.

Shepard's voice again came to them.

"Miranda – Miranda, are you there? Do you see the control panel?"

Miranda swatted at something imaginary in her vision, but never ceased her forward momentum.

"Yes."

There was the sound of a deeper breath being drawn on Shepard's end.

"You're doing so well, Miranda. You don't have much further to go – do you hear me? You're almost there."

The human – with the quarian in tow – stepped onto the pedestal that contained the soft glow of the station's master control panel. Inching her way along it, Miranda was grateful that Tali had stopped struggling and given in to wherever she was being taken. Oriana's eyes looked at her from the holographic display as they arrived at their destination. She had just hauled the quarian in front of the panel when their minds were wracked by yet another coursing, burning pain. Feeling as if their blood vessels would burst, both women were brought to their knees by tortured convulsions. Tali clawed at her mask desperately.

"We've lost them. The fleet...all gone..."

The quarian cowered underneath the arm control panel, sobbing and shaking helplessly. Again, their commander's voice reached them.

"Tali. Tali – you can do this. You are the strongest of your people and you are not going to let them die. Are you?"

Tali shook her head in acknowledgment of Shepard's statement, but the searing burning pain kept her on her knees.

"Shepard...I...can't...do this!"

Something had broken in Shepard's voice when she came back to them.

"Yes, Tali – yes you can. I know you and I know you can. YOU know you can. I'm asking you to do this for every quarian who ever lived! Please, Tali. PLEASE! Keelah se'lai..."

A silence fell over the scene in Citadel Tower as the two tormented individuals huddled around the arm control panel. Their breathing labored, they could see little of anything in the red, low-power lighting except the holographic display of the panel – always teasing them.

Then, Tali's omni-tool blazed back into life. With arms that could barely support her, her hands grasped the cold metal railing at the edge of the walkway that the control panel stood on. Nerves frayed and sinews burning, she hauled her shaking body to its feet with a guttural moan. The quarian's silvery eyes narrowed behind her mask, and she clawed her way to a standing position directly in front of the panel. Her shoulders heaving with fevered spasms, Tali thumped her arm down on the panel's surface and initiated the interface between her omni-tool and the arm controls.

Miranda had crawled to her feet also and watched Tali with a ghastly smile on her white face...all she could see were Oriana's eyes, smiling back at her. The only sound they could hear through the pain of their visions was Tali's omni-tool as it coupled with the control panel and began unraveling the encrypted security code that contained the commands to open the Citadel's arms. The quarian breathed heavily as she watched the panel's command dialogue scroll on her omni-tool. One after another, the Citadel's vital systems opened up to her. 'Lights'. 'Heat.' 'Air'. 'Gravity'. 'Ward Arms.'

With the last of her energy and a defiant grunt, the quarian punched the activate button even as pulses of raw agony still spidered through her brain. As she sunk to the ground once more, the entire tower shook with a colossal movement as the ward arms of the Citadel began to open.
Chapter Eleven

Stumbling on the wasted ground of the Presidium, Shepard offered up silent, eternal thanks to the other team as she felt the great station shake. When it had come down to it, the love of one woman for her sister and one quarian's stubborn will to let her people live had accomplished what had almost seemed impossible.

She raised her sore eyes to the heavens of the Citadel as a resounding, hydraulic clamor pealed throughout the torn air of the station. At the apex of the wards miles above her, a collection of massive plates was rearranging itself. The arms had begun to decouple from one another.

For the first time in what seemed like years, she saw sunlight. The burning glow from Earth's star seeped inside the station through the minute chinks that now separated the arms. It glittered above her, like some untouchable god, and then burst forth with unabated, blinding power as the arms separation proceeded. Bracing from the tremors inside the station, Shepard watched with awe as each ward's metropolis of skyscrapers was bathed in the warm, unending sunlight. After what seemed like a decade, the motions ceased – the separation process had completed. The Citadel had been opened.

She activated her omni-tool briefly.

"Miranda – Tali, good work. You've done it..."

Even as she spoke, a reminder of the dire situation they were all in came to her. The fevered mumblings of the quarian continued through her earpiece as she relived her waking nightmares continuously. Coming down from the elation of their success with the ward arms, Shepard looked over at Osiris. The geth was scanning the spectacle of the opened Citadel with a constant hum of data exchange. It looked her way.

>>Shepard-Commander. Secondary allied force has been successful in initiating ward arm separation.<<

Osiris looked at the other team members around him as they continued to writhe in pain and terror.

>>However, without accompanying organic allies returning to functionality, the likelihood of completing ultimate mission objective remains below twelve percent. Please advise.<<

Drawing a shaking breath, Shepard nodded – her expression cheerless and uneasy. She moved towards Liara. The blue-skinned asari was hunched over, clutching her head and sobbing with pain. Laying a gentle hand on her back, Shepard tried to soothe her terrified babblings.

"Liara...can't you hear me? I know you're in pain – I...I just wish I could do something. What do I need to do??"

But Liara simply shifted away from her touch, muttering frantically about her mother, Benezia. Chilled, Shepard left her, moving from one of her team members to the other. She tried to get Javik to turn his eyes towards her.

"They're gone – they're all gone...and I had to kill them! I had no choice...no choice..."

Shepard gripped his shoulder, shaking him slightly.

"Javik! Javik listen to me! Can't you hear me? Can't you remember why we're here?"

The ancient Prothean shoved her away from him, then crumpled on the ground as his mind was wracked by agony once more. Shepard's hands shook, cold sweat trickled down her back. Looking around frantically, she saw Garrus pacing back and forth in front of the Conduit. She went to him – a last hope flickering in her eyes. As she approached him, she heard the turian talking to himself in low, frustrated tones. Touching his arm, she watched him with distress.

"Garrus..."

Grasping his wrists firmly, she forced him to look at her. His eyes were shrouded in a hideous blue glow.

"I'm telling you – it wasn't me! I didn't know...he betrayed me! He betrayed us all!"

She shook him firmly, her pulse quickening from the sheer hopelessness of their situation.

"Garrus – listen to me! I need you! Please..."

He looked at her, his face contorted in rage.

"You can't honestly think that. You barefaced bastard..."

His hallucinations continued as Shepard wracked her mind for answers, for one last iota of hope. A tear trickled down her stained cheek as she continued to grip his wrists, her skin prickling with dread.

"Garrus – goddamn it! I love you! Don't give in to this..."

"YOU LIAR!!"

In a rapid blur, the turian lashed out and caught her squarely across the face with his clawed hand. Reeling, Shepard fell to her knees in an instant, her ears ringing from the powerful blow. She shuddered with physical and mental shock as blood dripped from her split lip. Wiping it away with a faltering hand, Shepard gave in to stinging, sharp pain that the body of the man she loved had inflicted upon her. Her breaths coming as little more than gasps, she crawled to her feet slowly and saw that Garrus had resumed his pacing. He was completely oblivious to what had happened. Hope fell away from her, and the world blurred.

"I can't do this..."

Osiris was silent, the synthetic unable to find a way to rectify the unfolding situation. Sobbing, Shepard sunk to the ground again in resignation. Hopelessness and despair clawed at her heart, her mind was numb, frozen. But then, a voice.

"Shepard..."

Breath leeched back into her lungs as she heard Anderson's voice in her headset. She jabbed the microphone in her ear even deeper as if it would bring him closer to her.

"Anderson! Is that you? My god it's good to hear your voice..."

But as Anderson came back to her, it was with sickly, spindly legs that the beast of despair wrapped its grip around her.

"Shepard...I let him do it. I stood there, doing nothing – and let him! He blew that damn place off the map...killed hundreds to get one man. Women, children...so many. I failed..."

Her flesh prickled with incredulous terror, she couldn't believe what she was hearing. She heard in his voice the same plague of insanity she had heard in each of her team on the Citadel. Convulsing with dread, Shepard sprawled on the ground in despair. Clenching her eyes shut, she stared the mental image of the galaxy's destruction in the mouth. Her body was crushed by the inevitability of the coming harvest... It's all hopeless!

"Shepard? Shepard! Do you read me? ..."

EDI's cool, clear synthetic voice injected her with a feathery hope. Back from her wretched brink, Shepard clutched her omni-tool's communicator as if it were her lifeline.

"EDI? EDI! What the hell is going on?? I don't have anyone left up here...something's causing them all to hallucinate."

With the ward arms opened, communications with Earth were now possible. The synthetic's voice came back to her loud and clear.

"Yes, Shepard, I know. Everyone down here is suffering the same fate. My calculations lead me to believe that this is not a local phenomenon. It is highly likely that the reason for the Reapers inactivity for the past several days was their preparations for this new offensive and strategy."

Shepard nodded, spurring the dialog onwards quickly.

"I know – everyone up here is affected except me. Are you alright?"

She could hear communications in the background of EDI's transmission as she spoke again.

"Yes Shepard, I am fine. But I was forced to expel the crew and seal myself in the Normandy in order to initiate this uplink to communicate with you. It was the only way."

A nervous tick developed in Shepard's jaw as she nursed her injured lip.

"What...what do we do, EDI? Have you spoken with Hackett?"

EDI's voice turned uneasy as she answered.

"I attempted to speak with Hackett, but the communication was...unfruitful. However, I have been able to run a diagnostic scan on the Citadel and I believe I have succeeded in locating the source of the biotic energy that is causing this disturbance. There was an off-the-charts spike in energy just a few moments before I contacted you, and I was able to pinpoint it."

For a moment, Shepard stopped and thought. Her brain tried to turn the cogs of some plan, but it was slow work. She ejected a spent clip from her pistol, her voice matter-of-fact.

"Where is it?"

She heard EDI punching up data on a holographic interface.

"It's close, Shepard. Only two or three levels below where you currently are on the Presidium. From the Citadel schematics I have available, it seems the source is located in what was C-Sec headquarters."

Straightening, Shepard looked behind her at the nearest corridor leading down towards the lower levels.

"Then that's where I'm headed. Osiris - "

She looked at the geth, a decisive tone edging her voice.

"I need you to stay with them – look after them."

The towering prime acknowledged her, its optics looking over each of her team members who remained immobilized with fear and pain. Extracting its rifle from its back, Osiris took up a literal position in the midst of the team.

>>We will comply.<<

Nodding, Shepard straightened her visor slightly. Her hands felt for and found her pistol, assault rifle and shotgun at her back. Taking each of them in turn, she deftly ejected their spent thermal clips with the fluid motions of experience and determinism. Her pulse quickened, sweat soaked her clothing as she worked to ensure they were loaded and readied. Jettisoning the heavy sniper-rifle that she never left the Normandy without, her feet felt instantaneously lighter.

"EDI how long will it take me to get down there?"

Adjusting her supply belt, she stepped quickly towards Javik and lifted his particle beam weapon from where he had dropped it. The Prothean couldn't even see her – his eyes were clouded with the same blue glow as Garrus'.

"Ten minutes should do it, Shepard."

Energizing Javik's weapon with a slammed fist on its activation panel, a strange, low hum began omitting from its energy chambers. She bolstered Osiris unnecessarily with an energetic thump on his metallic flank as she passed the synthetic on her way. Reckless adrenaline had infused her body. Her mind was in free-fall – her way clear-cut and unequivocal. Just the way she liked it. Casting one last glance back at Garrus, she strode towards the corridor that led to the lower levels of the Citadel, forging steps that would determine the outcome of the war.

~

Time gnashed at her heels with savage fangs as she flew to the lower levels underneath the Presidium. Racing down corridors and clearing entire flights of steps in one bound, her mind processed everything at light speed. Galactic life hung in the balance, and it was tied to her by the thinnest of threads. That same filament of hope, of life, unraveled before her – waiting for her, leading her onwards. A stairway revealed a sea of keepers beneath her, but with the blue glow of her targeting visor illuminating her face, she unleashed the Prothean's particle beam. She clenched her teeth against the explosion of light as the stairwell was lit by a yellow curtain of energy. The ancient weapon swept the area, annihilating everything that stood in her way.

Clearing the last section of steps without touching one of them, she landed in the mire of dead keepers without faltering. Her blood boiled, her eyes pierced the shadows, and nothing hid from her grim expedition. Sweat plastered hair clung to her forehead as she ran onwards, downwards. Rounding a corner, she barreled headlong into a shuffling group of husks. With a crushing weight, one landed on her back and cadaverous, rotting blue hands clawed at her legs, dragging her down to the ground in a wash of electric blue luminescence. A moment later, they fell in succession to her shotgun as Shepard fired, battered and tore her way out of the throng. When the weapon ran out of rounds, she used its hilt to beat the last of the pitiful, crazed things to a blue, bloody pulp.

Casting her shotgun on the ground and ignoring the deep gash inflicted by the husks to her left leg, she resumed her onward journey with abandon. Torn metal panels and arcing display monitors became a blur as she raced down the third corridor, sensing the closeness of her objective. The foul rhythm that now seemed to pulse in the fetid air of the massive harvesting station spurred her onward still.

Her boots seemed light, her assault rifle weightless as she dodged an incoming slug from a group of marauders and returned fire, shredding their warped bodies to pieces. The targeting matrix of her visor danced in her eyes, her weapon reacted to it almost before it had a lock. Seeing her enemies fall to the ground in slow-motion, she didn't even stop to eject thermal clips as she hurtled past a large intersection of corridors...

"You're there, Shepard. Stop!"

EDI's voice seemed to snap her out of the unending lust for destruction that had overcome her. Her chest heaving, her stance wide, the barrel of each weapon upon her back smoked with ardor. Shepard looked up through a haze of sweat at the wide door in front of her. C-Sec.

She swallowed slowly, holding her communicator in her damp ear.

"Thanks, EDI."

Composing herself for a brief moment, she registered again the sickly, rhythmic pulse reverberating through the floor beneath her feet. The same as she had felt in the destroyed stairwell. Looking around, she saw the same kind of discarded equipment and experimentation devices around her. Disused pieces of Reaper tech littered the corridors and the body of a grossly mangled husk lay in a pile of trash just feet form her.

Reloading her pistol, Shepard swung the destroyed door open and entered the former site of Citadel Security – the one-time hub of the great station's law enforcement. The silence was muddied only by the constant pulsing of unseen energy around her. The shadows of the corners of the room she stood in seemed to seep towards her – seemed to stir with sickly tendrils only seen with peripheral vision. A dull ache began in her left temple as Shepard cast her eyes over the destroyed databanks and office cubicles. There was no horrific surgical equipment here, however – only a faint, soft glow of white-green light emanating from the doorway across the torn room.

Her breaths seemed too loud as she picked her way towards the doorway, and stumbling, she tripped over a massive tube of fluorescent blue liquid as it snaked towards her same destination. An anxious knot twisted in her stomach as she flicked her sweat-soaked hair out of her eyes and pressed onwards.

The second doorway opened into what was once C-Sec's shuttle bay. Cavernous by any standards, it was even more so now that all the vehicles and shuttles had been razed to the ground and swept aside by the immense transformations the station had undergone since its Reaper occupation. Her pistol drawn, Shepard treaded lightly inside the huge hangar and gazed around her in disbelief.

Wide tubes of unrefined element zero entered the place from every doorway, feeding into a structure made of Reaper technology that was suspended from the ceiling. It seemed alive, glowing with an array of tubes and connectors. Its alien purple and blue façade seeming to watch over the entire area with a malevolent aura.

As her eyes continued to be led by the glow of the energy present, Shepard saw massive vats in the murky distance that were emitting the same hideous green glow as the ones they had found by the destroyed stairwell. Only these giant vats of hellishly powerful, unrefined element zero were ten times larger. One small amount of element zero – when refined and concentrated – would be enough to power the Normandy's FTL drives for ten years. The containers that pulsed their terrible aura around her here stretched the height of the massive hangar.

Clambering down the access ladder, Shepard secured her pistol by her side and stepped gingerly over the nest of supply tubes and piping.

"EDI – I'm here. The source seems to be some kind of element-zero hub or...concentrator. It's a little...unnerving. So much energy..."

There was slight static as EDI came back to her – the raw pulse of psychic energy was beginning to interfere with communications now that Shepard was so close to its source.

"...Shepard. Can you...anything that look...a power node...ntrol interface?"

Getting the gist of what the synthetic had asked, Shepard glanced around, her eyes watering madly with the intense heat being generated by whatever foul mechanisms were at work in the lower decks of the shuttle bay. She strode forward, sweat dripping from her brow.

"Found it, EDI. There's some kind of control console here...intact, too. Reaper tech..."

The nearness of her gloved hand activated an immediate blaze of holographic screens and data streams above the panel. As Shepard brought up schematic after schematic, she shook her head in disbelief.

"My god...they're feeding enough eezo through this thing to power a mass relay! Its core seems to be...programmed to react with the unrefined stuff and discharge it as some kind of biotic signal."

Shepard stared in awful wonder at the Reaper structure above her – it almost seemed as if it were being lofted and held in the air by the tubes of element zero alone. EDI's voice crackled in hear ear once more.

"Nobody...galaxy have ever experimented...unrefined element zero. It may...ave qualities we can only guess at. Can you deactivate the mecha...ism?"

Shepard scrolled as fast as she could through the reams of holographic data, settling on one very specific maintenance description.

"I don't know about disabling it, but it seems to have a maintenance protocol. That's a start..."

With a few exchanges of data, her omni-tool inserted the required pieces of code into the console. There was smooth mechanical movement above her head as the pod of Reaper technology was slowly lowered to the ground, coming to rest a few inches above the metal floor she stood on. With its closer proximity, she felt loathsome waves of raw power pulse through her body. There was no question that this was the epicenter of the psychic disturbance her team – and indeed every living being – was experiencing.

Shepard left the control console and moved towards the hub of awful energy, the dull ache in her head becoming an incessant pounding as she inched closer to the source. Time seemed to have slowed down, her feet stopped wanting to respond to her commands. An unseen wall of dark, sickly resistance had placed itself between her and the pod. Her steps were laborious, her breathing suffocating as she fought against an invisible barrier that compelled her to turn back, but after what seemed like an eternity she arrived at the sickly, metallic purple device. The tubes of element zero had slowed their flow to a trickle, small vents in its sides released a frozen, atomized mist.

Unable to see through eyes that watered and burned, Shepard reached out to touch the exterior of the device, and immediately lurched backwards from the aura of terrible energy she felt. Her hand crackled with corrupt, painful power as muscles all over her body twitched without command. Feeling a gut-wrenching desire to run from this place, she had to summon every ounce of mental strength she possessed to locate the small control node on the Reaper device and activate it.

A loud hissing noise escaped from the pod as a hatch unsealed and opened, and a nauseating wave of biotic blackness overcame her. Clutching her temples now as Liara and the others had done before her, her head was wracked with agonizing pulses. Shepard peered through the clouds of black vapor, waving her hands in a futile attempt to clear her vision as the core of the Reaper machine was exposed...

A skeletal hand. No. Her mind refused to process the data her eyes were sending it. Over and over the images were rejected as if something inside her was malfunctioning. Empty eye sockets. Don't. She grasped for the edge of the pod, dizziness enveloping her world of cold sweat. Leave. Flesh and hooks, blades and tendons, wires and tubes and bones and a sightless stare...and Shepard fell to the ground, retching.

~

The crucified body of The Illusive Man hung above her, fixed in place by shackles of Reaper tech. The flesh had melted from his hands, leaving impotent tendons and skeletal claws of bone infused with plates of Reaper technology. His eyes had been burned away by the flood of raw element zero that coursed through his veins, leaving nothing more than hollow sockets of bone and seared cartilage. The unholy glitter of Reaper indoctrination spidered through his flesh, working its way up his torso and mutating his skin to blackened alloy. His veins were now nothing more than protruding vessels of horrific blue power.

His scalp was cut and spliced with the same glowing Reaper technology that had been found on the altered husks, connecting his ravaged flesh to the pod's interior with a series of crude metal rods that coursed with the glow of element zero. It pulsed with its own life, putting out black, almost-tangible waves of psychic energy into the air around her. The labors of the Reapers had been unearthed.

Shepard's eyes were screwed shut, but it was too late to blot out the horrific scene. Even her nostrils betrayed the scene to her, telling her brain of the acrid smell of burnt flesh and vapors of eezo. She whimpered, fixed on her knees to the metal grating floor.

"...is...someone there? ..."

No. She didn't hear. She didn't respond. The black waves of energy pressed down on her, mercifully obliterating her memory of the scene for a brief moment. But then,

"...is...someone...there???"

The man strung before her spoke with a voice laced with blood and eezo. He croaked with the life-force that remained him. She could hear the force with which the words had to be formed. The man still lived.

As she drew herself upright against the side of the pod, a terrible, desperate voice inside her shrieked at her to leave – either that or draw her pistol and end the pitiful man's torture. She regarded the Illusive Man once more, his sightless gaze flicking from left to right, his mouth gaping in a futile attempt to draw breath between blood-soaked coughs. The man who had strived to study and collude with the Reapers – with the hopes of controlling them – had now himself succumbed to the ancient machines' designs for him. Even as his traitorous deeds and the splinter war he had waged against the Alliance flashed before her mind's eye, something broke inside of her. Inhaling suddenly, the bitter taste of regret and helplessness came to her.

"...is...someone..."

Shepard went to his side, and reached one of his impaled, wasted hands.

"Yes. I'm here."

The Illusive Man's head jerked suddenly, his lipless mouth quivered.

"Sh...Shepard??? I...knew you...you'd..."

An injection of eezo from one of the many intravenous tubes silenced the man's voice as he choked in agony. The substance was keeping him alive even as it destroyed his physical form. Shepard's hands trembled as she looked from his face to the massive piece of Reaper technology to which he was shackled. She tested some of the tubes and found that they weren't secured to his body, they kept him in place solely with the metallic cuffs around his wrists and ankles and frequent infusions of eezo.

"Get...me...out of...this...help me, Shepard!"

He had to stop talking to breathe, but Shepard was already working to disconnect the hundreds of tubes that were spliced to his veins. Her pace picked up feverishly, as if the entire sum of her hatred for the Reapers was directed into her attempts to save the shell of the man who once brought her back from the dead. Her hands became coated with a stinking mixture of eezo and blood.

"Oh my god..."

Fighting the rising bile once more, she tugged at the shackles around his ankles and found little give.

"Can...you...help me..."

She looked at his unseeing face, tears streaming down her own face now. She pressed a hand to his burned and blackened cheek.

"Hold on – just...hold still, okay?"

Kneeling on the metal floor, she flicked her right hand, and in an instant, her omni-blade crackled to life. Pressing the man's ankle as far inside the shackle as possible, she inserted the blade of glowing energy between the metal and his skin and jerked her wrist forcefully. The metal broke apart instantly. She worked studiously on the other three in turn, and then she had his broken body in her arms. The remnants of the man who would have destroyed them all only weeks ago to have a chance at controlling the Reapers now leaned hopelessly on her, at his end.

Shepard lowered the Illusive Man to the floor gently, laying his destroyed head on her knees as she knelt with him on the filthy surface. There were fewer lines marring his burned face, now. He moved his mouth in what could have been a smile of gratitude.

"Tha...nk you, Shepard. I..."

His shattered body was wracked with coughs again, his ruined lungs sent black blood to his lips. Tears streaming down her face at the wretched display of crushed humanity before her, Shepard wiped the blood from his mouth.

"Try not to move..."

But the man squirmed at this statement, and a sudden pall of depression fell across his splintered face.

"I'm...I'm sorry, Shepard. I'm so...so sorry..."

His chin crumpled as he started to weep tearlessly, even as his blood continued to stain her armor. She saw his face become ashen.

"I have...seen their thoughts, Shepard!"

The Illusive Man's voice became stronger at the mention of the collective thoughts of the 'Old Machines.'

"They...only know this. Only this – this harvest! They are compelled...to...kill...I was wrong. So wrong...I only wanted...to...help...but you! You will be the problem they can't solve! I wouldn't...couldn't let them turn you!"

He began to shake violently as the blood loss began to set in. Shepard clutched his wasted hand in hers as she activated her omni-tool, readying an application of medi-gel. She sought his most terrible wound to apply it there, but his words burbled again through his blood-choked throat.

"No...no, Shepard. I'm done...don't waste your..."

But she continued frantically, watching the infusion of medi-gel enter his body, denial beginning to set in. She didn't register that half of the blood he was losing was laced with element zero.

"No, here, this'll help. If we can get this bleeding stopped...I can save you..."

The hand she held moved feebly, the broken man drew her closer to him.

"You already have, child..."

Tears burning in her eyes, Shepard clutched both his hands in hers. Regardless of this man's past deeds, she would have given anything to have saved his life, or to have ended his pain much earlier than this. She wept with him, becoming the one to apologize.

"I...I'm so sorry! You didn't deserve this!..."

The Illusive Man patted her gloved hand pathetically with the bones of his melted fingers.

"Just...promise me one...thin..."

Another blood-soaked cough erupted from his lungs. His face grew even more ashen than the Reaper technology that was fused to his flesh. Shepard leaned forward over the dying man's face.

"Anything...anything..."

His mouth had become a thin, set line – his grip became strangely strong on her hand.

"Destroy them."

She choked on her emotions as she wept for him, for his last wish. But her voice was steady, unwavering.

"I promise."

As she knelt hunched over the shattered body of the Illusive Man, his burned, blackened face lost all appearance of pain and anguish. A peace smoothed his remaining skin, and his head fell against her arm with a perpetual, lipless smile.

Shepard cradled his lifeless body, pressing a hand to his destroyed forehead. Another life, another victim, another torture. Through her tears and sorrow, from somewhere deep within her, an unexpected litany fell from her lips.

"Kalahira, mistress of inscrutable depths, I ask forgiveness.

Kalahira, whose waves wear down stone and sand--

Kalahira, wash the sins from this one,

and set him on the distant shore of the infinite spirit.

Kalahira, this one's heart is pure,

but beset by wickedness and contention.

Guide this one to where the traveler never tires,

the lover never leaves, the hungry never starve.

Guide this one, Kalahira,

and he will be a companion to you as he was to me."
Chapter Twelve

The cascade of radio chatter was overwhelming as she struggled back to them.

{This is Anderson – for god's sake, tell me somebody's alive up there! What just happened??}

{Where's Shepard?} {Well done, teams, Fifth Fleet is registering that the arms are open and comms are restored.} {Sword needs to get moving, admiral.} {>>Affirmative – additional mission objectives require completion.<<} {Citadel Tower is secure, for now, admiral.} {Coats – how are you holding up over there?} {Javik – do you have the memory shard?} {Where the hell is Shepard??} {Garrus give me a hand with Grunt – he's pretty weak...} {Can somebody tell me where the hell Shepard is?!} {She's not here?}

"I'm here."

Shepard stepped out from the corridor into the destroyed Presidium, lungs heaving as she breathed in the comparatively fresher air. Exhausted, safe and haggard, each of her team were freed from their nightmares. Their faces dark, Liara and Garrus had finished tending to Grunt just before she arrived. The massive warrior still bore a troubled expression, none present had ever seen a krogan shake from fear. Osiris remained perched atop the destroyed collection of boulders, surveying the Presidium with his bright optics. Regarding the geth with a suspicious gaze, Javik stood apart from the rest, lost in thought. Aria slid from one of the rocks she was languishing on and dusted her jacket with her hands.

"Nice of you to join us." She quipped, but despite her perpetually cool tones, a degree of relief flash across those frosty blue eyes. Shepard limped down the filth-encrusted steps towards the group, fires from the damaged Citadel bathing the entire area in an unsettling orange glow. The ward arms of the great station extended above them, opened to the heavens, still allowing the occasional beam of starlight to play across the razed cities and scorched skyscrapers. Debris – free from the effects of the malfunctioning station's gravity fields – glittered in the sunlight as it floated in the massive station's airspace. The blackness of the void beyond them was all-consuming.

Garrus was the first to approach her, his eyes scanning her quickly. He saw the deep gash in her leg that was causing her to limp, her reddened eyes and tear-streaked face, her split and swollen lip. Removing the visor from her sweat-soaked hair, his fingers traced the long, ugly talon scratch that ran from her eye to her chin.

"What the hell happened to you?"

Grasping his hand from the scratch it had inflicted, she glanced at her feet, unable to hold his gaze.

"A...pack of husks. They almost took me down. It's a...long story."

Gripping his shoulder firmly in an affirmation of her readiness to continue, Shepard led him back to the others. Not one of them apart from her recalled anything after they had unearthed the memory shard save their fevered nightmares.

Liara shook her head as Shepard related the past hour's events, her expression dark.

"I can't imagine the torture they inflicted on the Illusive Man...to, to basically turn him into an element zero processor with a mind...with a purpose..."

She shuddered as she contemplated the fate of the tortured Cerberus leader, but her thoughts were interrupted by Javik. The Prothean spat, his eyes narrowed with hatred.

"You talk of torture, Asari?? What of the havoc he and his forces wreaked on your war effort? On the humans he experimented on? I call it justice..."

Liara moved her mouth, but could summon no sound from it. She shrunk back from Javik as a low rumble came from Grunt.

"I don't give a damn what they did to 'im...after the headache he was, good riddance I say!"

Something broke inside Shepard. An image of the man's melted face and burned eyes, twisted with unspeakable agony, was seared on her conscience. Pent-up frustration mixed with exhaustion as she whirled on her wounded leg to look at each of them.

"Listen to yourselves! There's not one person alive who deserves what he got! If we relish in what happened to him – if we call it 'justice,' that makes us no different from them! Do you understand?"

Her voice echoed through the shattered storefronts of the Presidium, amidst the odd quiet that had settled over the area. The group fell silent and subdued after Shepard's outburst, and hearing the truth of what had happened down in the C-Sec hangar. Most had fallen to unnecessarily rechecking weapons or adjusting armor. Moving towards her, Garrus activated his omni-tool and readied an application of medi-gel to soothe the pain and close the gash on her leg that was rapidly becoming infected. She caught his arm and stopped him, shaking her head grimly.

"We're running low."

Making sure that the turian saw her look of gratitude nonetheless, she stood slowly from where she had been recuperating. After a few sips of the last of their water had cleansed the metallic taste of blood from her mouth, she made to speak, but suddenly their comms crackled into life.

"Shepard, Coats – this is Hackett. Can you hear me?"

She held herself steady on her good leg as she responded, her pulse quickening at the thought of the tasks remaining them.

"Affirmative, sir. We're back on track – is the tower team alright?"

Coats' voice came across next, tired but matter-of-fact.

"We're okay, Shepard. Everyone's feeling a hell of a lot better since you stopped that damn nonsense...but we'd sure love to see you soon. We're ready to go home."

His last statement was filled with the empty playfulness of someone who knew it was a futile hope. Shepard nodded nonetheless, motioning for the others of her team to ready themselves for their next task, their next journey – the journey to Citadel Tower with the virus. Hackett's voice came back to them, his aged, reassuring tone comforting them in the hell of the Presidium.

"Shepard I've given Sword the word to move. We're coming your way whether you're ready for us or not. We've gotta get this done, now. I think we have enough forces to defend the Crucible through to Citadel Tower, but I want you all to know – after that, all bets are off."

Securing her sniper rifle to her back once more, Shepard acknowledged Hackett's statement.

"Understood – that's why we're up here. Let's move out!"

But before they could take their first steps towards Citadel Tower and the docking point for the Crucible atop it, Anderson stopped them in their tracks with a blunt statement.

"My god Shepard – they're coming...again."

~

It was with a wave of blackness that the Reapers descended on Earth once more. Their strategy for controlling the galaxy's rebellion and easing their task lay in a pool of blood and eezo on The Citadel, but the harvest must continue. With force.

There was no more thought, no more design in their operations. Earth's smoking ruins awoke to a red dawn, washed in the blinding light of the Reapers' rays of destruction. Planetary defenses were overwhelmed instantaneously, and within minutes, the scorched soil of Earth once again felt the dread vibrations of Reapers. Their bloated, mechanical bodies blotted out the sun and sky as the genocide of all life recommenced with renewed vigor.

From space, Admiral Hackett saw with dismay his home world erupt in ugly seas of fire and death once more as Fifth Fleet led the Sword forces towards the Citadel. Clenching his fist until his nails dug into his palm, he stood with one hand on his communications console and the other pressed against the glass of the bridge's windows as he watched Earth burn once more.

The planet had been little more than a shell at the last report just before the Reapers had retreated, and now the surviving forces and people were staring at their certain deaths in the form of the giant beings that once again crawled across the landscape of every city. The masses of Reapers entering Earth's atmosphere glowed as they burned off the ozone around them, hurtling towards the surface of the planet unabated. He knew without asking that the same scene was taking place across worlds with advanced sapient life. Palaven, Sur'Kesh, Thessia, Tuchanka, Rannoch, the fate of a host of other life-giving worlds hung in the balance as the Crucible made its painfully slow journey towards the Citadel. The deciding moment of the last war of all life had arrived.

The admiral's thoughts were interrupted by a sudden fierce glow outside his bridge's windows. An Alliance dreadnought at the tip of their spear had encountered the first of the Reaper forces guarding the Citadel and had fallen to them. As the flames from its shattered hull flickered briefly and died in the void, Hackett motioned for his second-in-command to liaise with the other fleets that were escorting their invaluable cargo. Turian, quarian, salarian, human, asari, geth – the vessels of the allies clustered around Fifth Fleet and the giant Crucible as they prepared for the most important battle of their lives.

The clash was fierce, savage and unforgiving as the forces of Sword collided with the line of Reapers guarding the outer perimeter of the Citadel. Fighters, dreadnoughts, liveships – vessels of every kind gave everything they had to bring the Crucible home. In the distance, the massive station beckoned to them, its arms spread tantalizingly wide and open...waiting for the delivery of hope. Of defiance.

~

Coats laid his Widow rifle down on the cool tiled floor of Citadel Tower. Rubbing his recoil-bruised shoulders, he looked around at the grand building in which they held. Curiously insulated from the chaos of war, the silence was almost deafening. Despite the low light, he could still see the lines of decorative trees stretching out amidst the lower levels, their pink leaves undisturbed and vibrant. Their lush foliage clustered in pockets throughout the tower, forming miniature gardens and oases from the once-bustling seat of the galactic government. It wasn't any wonder that the Citadel Council had denied that the Reapers even existed, and subsequently ignored the coming war until it was literally on top of them. This place seemed detached, apart from the horrors that they knew existed outside.

Pursing his lips, he took a deep breath and forced his thoughts back to the present. Easing himself down onto one of the low, tiled parapets that created walkways throughout the tower, his pale blue eyes rested on Miranda. She had fallen to checking her pistol's scope as she sat across from him, a collection of spent thermal clips at her feet. Her long, black hair framed her pale face perfectly. Dried blood marred her eyebrow where she had taken a blow from the butt of a marauder's rifle during the battle to gain entry to the tower. Finalizing her work, she glanced up and found the quiet major watching her, seemingly lost in thought. With a lingering smile, Miranda held his gaze with an unmatched level of confidence.

Coats thought of all the sensible things he could be doing given the circumstances, and yet his eyes wouldn't obey his commands...they only demonstrated their tendency to linger on Miranda's pistol holster, loosely draped as it was around her slight hips. How can such beauty exist in such terrible times?

His intake of breath startled him with its audibility. What the hell am I doing?

"How impetuous of me would you regard it if I asked you...how someone like you ends up in a place like this?"

Setting her pistol down next to his rifle, Miranda laughed a small laugh at his proper English accent. Her crooked smile intoxicated him.

"Hah!...that is a long story, major."

To his joy – and trepidation – she rose and walked towards him. Her tight-fitting white body suit accentuated curves that should have been left to the imagination as she perched next to him on the tiled wall. He shrugged, attempting to appear nonchalant.

"I think we have some time..."

He smiled at her, gesturing at their readied weapons.

"I understand you go quite far back with the Comman...uh, Shepard?"

Miranda nodded as she settled back further, resting on her hands. Her blue eyes became unfocused, taking her back years.

"We do. As far back as anyone, I guess...except perhaps Anderson...and Garrus...and Tali. I was director over the Lazarus Project – the Illusive Man's operation to bring Commander Shepard back. Back from the dead, you could say..."

She shook her head, thinking back to the project's inception, and looked squarely at him.

"When he told me what he wanted to do, I thought he was mad. Billions of credits, some of the most technologically advanced medical techniques – all to bring this one woman back from as good as dead. I have to say, I was the wrong one. His judgment was flawless. Where would we be without her?"

Coats saw a wistful expression fill her eyes – as if she longed to change the past, to become something else. She sat close to him, a look on her face telling him that what they shared was for them alone. She had never let her guard down before, but discovered that in doing so, her heart felt lighter. He placed a reassuring hand on her shoulder.

"Shepard hasn't done this alone, Miranda. No matter what we've done in our pasts, we've all contributed to the greater goal. You know...greater than the sum of our parts and all that."

Gratitude flashed across her face as she felt his hand on her shoulder, it felt so strange to rely on another – but emotional support had been sorely lacking in her life for many years. She grinned suddenly.

"My father used to tell me I was a failure – even as he sought to replicate me. He had accounted for every physical attribute I was given...but I don't think he realized that I would still own my own mind. I enjoyed teaching him that..."

Coats listened to her, trying to piece together a mental image of her complicated past. Now that they were so close to the end of everything – and hopefully the perpetuation of life – coyness seemed to matter little. He gave in to his feelings.

"Anyone who tells you you're a failure hasn't got eyes, Miranda..."

He looked at her intensely as she smiled bashfully at that, lowering her head to allow her hair to veil her face with childish habit. Breathing quicker, his hand twitching with unsure motion, he reached over to tilt her chin towards him...

"Coats!"

Jack's harsh tone succinctly shattered the momentary world he had created for the two of them. They both started, hands reaching for weapons, biotics charging. As he sprinted down from the walkway near the control panel where they had been seated, Coats saw what was causing the disturbance. Tali had collapsed next to the tree she had been leaning against, her absence from their downtime only just dawning on him.

"Shit..."

He was at her side in a heartbeat, and saw how she was convulsing with shudders. Behind her mask, her breathing was ragged, broken. Her silvery eyes were shut tight with pain, her shoulders convulsing rapidly. Miranda scrabbled to the floor with haste, lifting her head, supported her small body in a seated position.

"Tali – talk to me!"

The quarian shook uncontrollably, she clutched her leg where the bullet wound had punctured her suit.

"I...I'm sorry. I tried to...to ignore it, but the...the infection is setting in..."

Despite being broken, her voice was tinged with frustration, tearful. Miranda bit her lip, clasping the quarian's hands in hers as if it would ease the systemic pain of the virulent reaction she was suffering. Coats looked around frantically.

"Medi-gel! Get me some medi-gel!"

But Samara only looked at him, her face dark and worried. Jack glanced from Miranda and Tali on the floor, to Samara and Coats.

"Well I don't have any!"

Miranda's omni-tool activated, but this only caused her shoulders to slump with distress.

"We used the last of it getting inside, Coats...I...I didn't realize."

Tali continued to writhe beneath her touch, her low moans pressing on their hearts. Whereas a human's body would have immediately rushed antibodies and white blood cells to the wound, Tali's people had evolved for hundreds of years with no immune system to speak of – a result of their entirely spacebound existence. The makeshift envirosuit repair she had fashioned after being shot had only served to cover the entry point – infection had been inevitable and almost immediate. The quarian had hidden her condition for as long as had been possible, but now it was manifesting itself into her worst fears. It was affecting the team. Shaking with an uncontrollable fever, she grasped Miranda, her muscles convulsing as pain and poison swept through her body's bloodstream.

Coats wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, helplessness flooding his mind. Cursing again, he stood.

"I can't believe this is happening – not one of us has any medi-gel left?"

His question was impotent and he knew it. The cavernous tower was silent but for the low rumbles of war in the void outside, and Tali's muffled gasps of agony.

~

Shepard and her team stopped briefly as the Presidium's walkway curved out of sight ahead of her. Looking forward, she scanned for enemies intently. The memory of their clash with the Reaper brutes was still fresh with every twinge of pain in her shoulder. But to their relief, none presented themselves and they pressed onwards. In the distance, Citadel Tower could be seen – its metallic spire glistening red in the muddied sun's rays. Above them, the arms remained open, debris circling the destroyed cities that stretched mile after mile. They were drawing close, their frantic footsteps spurred onwards by the overbearing thoughts of the Reaper's renewed onslaught on Earth.

A crackle of radio communication jolted her from her thoughts.

"Shepard – Shepard can you hear me?"

Miranda's voice was worried, and her tone wasn't lost on them as they hurriedly transported the memory shard to the tower.

"Go ahead Miranda." Shepard responded while helping Liara over a pile of smoldering debris in the walkway.

"Shepard – we've got a problem. It's Tali. She took a shot during the fight to get inside the tower, but it's far more serious than we knew. She's really ill..."

Her mouth parching instantly, Shepard stopped for a moment.

"Is she alright? Have you given her some medi-gel?"

Garrus listened to the communication with foreboding. He and the quarian were the only dextro-protein based team members, and Tali's lack of an immune system compounded his worry.

"We don't have any medi-gel, Shepard! I'm sorry...we...between the shuttle crash and the fight to get in here, we burned through the last of it before we even got the arms open."

Shepard cursed under her breath as she spurred them onwards at a sprint.

"Miranda – hold on. Look after her – we're on our way. We have some left..."

Hearing Miranda acknowledge her words, she motioned for the others to pick up the pace. As they broke their exhausted bodies into a run, she glanced at Garrus.

"I'm not losing her, Garrus. It's not an option. EDI – can you pick us up here?"

The synthetic's voice came back loud and clear, a welcome break from the hurried, panicked organics tones.

"I read you, Shepard."

As they vaulted off a broken section of walkway and down onto the Presidium's ground once more, Shepard stumbled slightly on her wounded leg.

"EDI – I need you to tell me immediately if there are any quicker paths to Citadel Tower. We're just rounding on the financial district, but Tali's badly wounded and needs medi-gel."

As they sprinted down streets of blood-streaked metal and broken offices, they could hear EDI punching up schematics instantly.

"Affirmative, Shepard – there's an alley that runs the length of the banking sector behind the building to your right. It should take you away from the main arteries and bring you out directly behind the tower."

Motioning to the others, Shepard continued their flight through a destroyed bank's storefront and across a burning corridor. Suddenly, the alleyway opened up to them.

"Found it – thank you, EDI."

With haste they sped down the alley that would lead them to Citadel Tower. It was hard for them to determine whether it was the endless sprinting, or the fact that their mission objective loomed so large now, that was causing their pulses to race. Shepard's vision blurred with images of the nondescript alleyway as they ran. Garrus readied his assault rifle at the sight of movement ahead of them. A keeper briefly glanced in their direction, but merely turned its attention back to the bizarre data terminal that its kind were frequently seen using. With time drawing thin, Shepard's team and the keeper mutually ignored each other as they sped past it and onwards. The foul creatures appeared to have been using the corridor as a transporting conduit. With all the willpower they could muster, they tried to ignore the fact that the walls and floor were coated with blood. A claustrophobic sensation swept over them as they continued, the sides of the alley seeming to press in on them the further they progressed. Grunt barely cleared both sides of the small passage, and his armor scraped the walls occasionally creating a loud, metallic grinding. Eventually, EDI's voice came back to them.

"Shepard – approximately one hundred meters ahead you should come out at the tower's plaza. I would suggest caution, and readiness."

Nodding her head, Shepard raised her gloved hand in signal to the others to stop.

"Hold up," she called breathlessly. Her chest burned and her eyes watered. None of them needed telling twice – even Garrus was winded and gratefully took a minute to lean back against the wall of the alley. Liara doubled-over, cramping from dehydration as Javik paced restlessly. Osiris kept his optics trained on the shadows behind them – the geth's infinite stamina currently the envy of every living being present. Trying to think as the blood pounded in her ears, Shepard extracted her rifle.

"There's going to be resistance at the tower – I think that's a given. Be ready."

The others nodded grimly and checked over their own weapons in the dim, metallic alleyway. Javik's particle beam rifle omitted a faint green glow and low hum. Liara's skin glistened with the electric blue of a biotic barrier – the look on the asari's face both tired and determined as she readied her own submachine gun. She quietly exchanged words with Javik in the dimly lit alleyway.

A little ways ahead, the alley opened out to what would be the plaza surrounding Citadel Tower. Shepard's gaze was held by the promise of their destination, and she fell to rubbing her injured shoulder. They were so close...

Garrus' tall form appeared next to her in the half-light as the others rested and prepared themselves for whatever was to come. His scarred face was solemn, his armor was covered in the filth of the Citadel. He searched her face with his tired blue eyes.

"You alright?"

Shepard turned to him. The tall turian stood close to her and she could see the concern in his face. And something else – that thing that was perpetually there. Will there ever be another chance?

"Garrus...I..."

Her voice broke, she pressed her lips together as the emotions caught in her throat. The words would not come, her voice was buried under the weight of her emotions and exhaustion. A moment later, Garrus had gathered her in his arms, separated as they were from the others in the murky, hellish alley.

"I know, Shepard..."

His own voice failed as he held her, and she could feel his hands tighten around her for a moment. All that was left was the feeling of the other breathing – no more words would come. Closing her eyes for a second, Shepard felt the weight of the galaxy pressing down on them. So much was at stake, yet she would forfeit so much of it for one turian.....

She pulled away from him far enough to look into his eyes.

"It's time to do this, Garrus. This has to end."

Nodding, composing himself, he clutched her hand in his for one last second.

"I know."

He reluctantly let her go and fell to priming his sniper rifle, more from habit than anything else. Clustered in the darkened alleyway, Shepard had received confirmation from each of them that they were ready to proceed to Citadel Tower. But as they began to tread silently towards the opening out into the tower's plaza, weapons drawn, a burst of frenetic radio communication came through their earpieces.

"Shepard – Shepard this is...E..DI. Do you read m..."

Stopping in her tracks, Shepard frowned as she tried to make out EDI's transmission.

"EDI you're breaking up badly – what's going on?"

There was a tremendous amount of static in the background as the synthetic's voice faded in and out.

"Shepa.......we're under attack.......eapers hit the FOB. We'll try to hold th......off as long as possi........but I detected someth......entering the Citad.......space."

An uneasy sensation washed over the group as they held in the alleyway, waiting. Somewhere in the distance, a low, powerful rumble could be heard. Shepard glanced from Garrus to Liara, Grunt and Javik.

"EDI – we made out most of your transmission, hold them off as long as you can to keep the comms open between us and Fifth Fleet! Repeat that last, please!"

She tried to keep the strain out of her voice but failed. Frustration was building amongst them as time ticked away. But EDI's channel faded and cut off. Shepard pounded her fist on the metal wall of the alley,

"Damn it! Hackett – Fifth Fleet, do you still read us??"

The radio static persisted for too long, a dread fear of being cut off from the rest of the allied forces began to seep into their bones. Osiris' optical circuits flared from the back of the group.

>>Attempting to boost short-range transmission power via infrastructure piggyback. Working...<<

As they stood with pent-up energy and anxiety, Admiral Hackett's voice came back to them...but it was tinged with abjection.

"Affirmative, Shepard – we read you. Sword is moving the Crucible forward. We're punching through the Reaper forces but sustaining our own losses. I think we'll make it..."

Shepard cut him off abruptly, wanting more information from EDI's last transmission.

"Sir – we couldn't make out the last communication from Earth. EDI talked about detecting something entering Citadel space."

The source of Hackett's tones of worry was revealed as he relayed the missing information to the group.

"Yeah, Shepard – EDI's scanners brought it to our attention, but we're almost close enough to confirm it visually as well. Something has entered the Citadel's airspace...it's big, Shepard. We think..."

Shepard looked at each of her team as they all absorbed the information Hackett was transmitting to them. A dread fear began to surface in some of their eyes – a fear or something unimaginable. The aging admiral finished his drawn-out sentence as if delaying its conclusion would make its impact less tough on the recipients.

"...it's a Reaper. And it's entering Citadel space faster than we can take it out...if we could take it out. It's heading for your exact location on the Presidium. I...we weren't able to stop it. I'm...sorry."

Shepard's eyes were sunken, her eyebrows dark hoods as she looked from Garrus to Liara to Javik and the others. Some of them knew, some of them guessed with their eyes. Licking her cracked lips with a parched tongue, her voice was fractured.

"It's Harbinger."

The words echoed in the alleyway as if they were trying to carry more effect. Hackett was silent. Another dull, long rumble pealed in the far distance. Liara looked at Shepard questioningly.

"How do you know?"

Filling her lungs with the fetid air of the burning Citadel, Shepard remained unmoving.

"I just know."

Several of the team cursed softly in the dim corridor, shifting weight from one foot to the other, uneasily digesting the information Hackett had relayed to them. Garrus' voice was gruff, "I don't get it – how do they know the arms opening wasn't just a malfunction? Why does Harbinger feel the need to come down here to investigate? Hackett said it was headed to this exact spot on the station - how do they know we're here?"

As the words left his mouth, however, his voice tailed off into a nothingness borne of its own answer. Slowly, they all turned in synchrony to look back down the alley from where they had come. The solitary keeper continued its perpetual data-entry.

"Shit!"

Garrus shot his sniper rifle from his hip instantly, the weapon recoiling into his armor as the shot set the alleyway alight. The huge slug tore through the keeper's head directly between its bulging eyes, and embedded itself in twelve inches of metal in the wall beyond.

As the creature's body slumped at its station, lifeless, the data terminal it had been working flickered and shut down. Their cardinal error hung over each of them like a premonition. Osiris could be heard processing this occurrence through his extensive data banks.

>>The Old Machines still retain a connection to the organic beings on the Citadel known as keepers.<<

As another rumble – this time slightly closer – pealed through the air, Shepard's haunted gaze grew distant. Her face gave way to a sick expression, her voice was locked in a stony monotone.

"This changes nothing. Our objective remains the same. Sword is on it's way with the Crucible, and we have a job to do."
Chapter Thirteen

Osiris was the last to flit from the dimly lit alleyway and out into the naked openness of the plaza surrounding Citadel Tower. They had made it. The tower stood tall and unmoving, but its grounds were destroyed, its grand lake sheened with an oily scum and waves that left red-tinged waterlines.

Earth's star had slid beyond the planet's horizon some time ago and plunged the great station into darkness. The dark orange glow of the hundreds of fires burning on the station's arms and the Presidium provided enough light to guide them, but whereas the sun's rays had penetrated the depths of this hell before, now it was dark.

It was with tentative steps that they moved quickly, hugging the corners of the lake's walls for cover. Protection was sparse, however. The Reaper forces that had battled with the arms team had scattered far and wide, taking up vantage points across the Presidium at various points, waiting for the enemy to emerge once more. Several knots of marauders held the large staircase that led to the tower's entryway, constantly scanning across the lake for more signs of activity. Occasional bursts of cool, whitish-blue electrical lighting strobed from the shattered storefronts across the Presidium's waterway, offering brief opportunities to ease the eyes before once again cutting out and leaving the team with the same uneasy, ruddy fireglow. In the shadow of the great tower, they were so close now...so painfully close.

Karen Shepard inched along the darkened side of the lake's retaining wall, motioning to Garrus and Grunt to follow with one hand while drawing her assault rifle with the other. Osiris had held back by the lake bridge with Liara and Javik a few yards behind them, providing cover from the rear for whatever was to transpire. Javik's alien form could be seen hunkered by Liara, his four yellow eyes narrowed to slits in the half-darkness. His hands occasionally wandered to his ancient armor from time to time as he assured himself of the security of the precious memory shard.

Shepard folded one of her legs underneath her and peered over the metallic wall. Directly opposite the large steps leading to the tower's entrance console, they were close enough now that she could hear the guttural, synthetic language of the nearest group of marauders as they paced back and forth with an impatient manner. A faint blue glow from Garrus' visor told her that he had risked a glance, too. He drew a sharp breath.

"I can take them! Shepard – let me take the shot! I'll take three of those bastards out from here..."

Shepard gestured at him to hold as she looked over at Grunt. The huge krogan nodded eagerly, his teeth framing his mouth. She could see he had drawn both his shotgun and a small cache of incendiary grenades. Wiping sweat from her eyes, she opened their comm channel.

"Liara – hold back with Javik and Osiris until it's clear that we're secure up at the tower."

The asari's voice confirmed their plans.

"Affirmative, Shepard, but we'll still be watching your six."

Nodding, Shepard's pulse quickened. Twisting around once more to check on their targets at the top of the steps, she tapped Garrus' shoulder.

"I'm gonna inch up a little to get a better angle on the ones closest to the door. Once I'm settled in, take the shot."

Even as she shuffled a few feet further in the filth, she could see the turian's mandibles twitch with a predatory anticipation as he slowly eased the barrel of his sniper rifle over the top of the wall. Lining up his targeting visor with the weapon's scope, his body became rigid and tense as he coiled for the shot.

Grunt shifted restlessly next to him, unhooking a grenade from his belt and placing a large finger through its pin. Liara, Javik and Osiris remained behind by the bridge crossing the Presidium's lake – the asari's protective biotic force field encompassing all three of them. All were ready. Casting once last, uneasy glance into the darkness of Citadel space above their heads, Shepard slowly and silently brought her assault rifle close to her chest...

With an ear-splitting explosion, the wall in front of them disintegrated before Garrus had even had a chance to pull the trigger. The blast sent each of them flying across the base of the steps in a shower of metal shards and flaming debris. Shellshocked and thrown to the ground, Shepard struggled to look around from her prone position. Grunt was lumbering to his feet in the smoke and dust, growling with relish while unloading densified ammunition from his shotgun towards a foe he couldn't see. Garrus was on his back fumbling for his close-range pistol while clutching his left arm in pain. His armor had been pierced by sheets of metal at the elbow, and blood was already seeping from the cut.

"Where the fuck did tha..." Shepard's question was cut short as a barrage of assault rifle slugs rained down on them from the marauders guarding the tower's entrance.

From their high ground atop the steps, their advantage was exploited to the fullest, and the Presidium rung with the brazen sound of munitions discharge. Shepard grasped her own rifle as she righted herself. She discharged two rounds into the armor of the nearest marauder, but the sickening sound of her shield capacitors discharging under heavy enemy fire told her that they were dramatically outnumbered. A slug made contact with her armor – she felt like she had been punched in the lungs. One more hit would penetrate her chestplate.

"Get back! Fall back to the bridge! Grunt – get over here!!"

Garrus picked off a marauder with a single deadly shot to its grotesque head as he, Shepard and Grunt fell back amidst the chaos. Stumbling over flaming debris, Grunt had the opportunity to lob a grenade into the nearest advancing group of enemies, and within seconds the flaming bodies of husks and marauders were sent flying through the air.

The smoke and sulphur from the grenade blast allowed the team precious seconds of escape time, and they vaulted into the cover of the lake bridge as Liara, Javik and Osiris caught up to them. Kneeling behind the bridge, a cacophony of rage bubbling through her veins, Shepard discharged the remaining rounds in her assault rifle behind her blindly in the direction of the tower steps. Liara arrived next to her and knelt to avoid the incoming fire that had recommenced.

"Are you alright Shepard?"

Throwing her smoking assault rifle to the ground and unharnessing her pistol, Shepard nodded with clenched teeth.

"I'm fine! Grunt – grenade!"

A round of enemy fire struck inches from her head as Grunt slung his second grenade belt in Shepard's direction. With her armor's shields regenerating, she pulled the pins of three in succession. Standing up briefly to get a visual, Shepard lobbed the entire belt into the throng of advancing marauders.

"Down!"

The soldier in her went into overdrive as Shepard pulled Liara's body down with her just before an earth-rending plasma detonation signaled the grenades had done their job. Javik and Osiris provided some suppressing fire from the bridge as Liara summoned another protective bubble of biotics around the beaten team. Garrus inched inside the bubble, struggling to reload his sniper rifle with his one good arm while glancing at the others.

"Where the hell did that blast come from??"

He shouted over the echoing fire as Javik's particle beam rifle filled their ears with odd tones. Shepard grimaced at the sight of his arm.

"I dunno but it sure ruined our element of surprise...I don't know how..."

Cutting herself off, she stood briefly and took aim with her pistol at a stray husk that was closing on the bridge. Its body crumpled to the ground lifeless, giving Shepard a brief opportunity to look around before the next salvo of incoming assault rifle fire.

The smoke and vapor of battle hung heavy in the air of the Presidium as the marauders regrouped after the grenade blast. Their numbers had been halved by their frantic, disorganized battle. Frowning, Shepard scanned the entire area rapidly to no avail. As the first incoming slug from the marauders glanced off her armor's shields, she crouched once more into cover.

"I don't see anything out there! We've got to..."

Her sentence trailed off as something caught her attention out of the corner of her eye. Beyond Liara's protective barrier, in the middle of the bridge, two thin, blue laser sights were searching through the smoke and dust. They moved in parallel, joined together...

"Ravager!!" Shepard yelled as she pointed to the sights that were rapidly approaching their location. Liara directed all of her barrier's strength to forming a shield between themselves and the end of the bridge while Shepard crouched by her side, peering out into the destroyed storefronts and tiered viewing platforms across the lake from them.

Osiris and Javik held the marauders at bay from the direction of the tower while Grunt discharged several rounds from his assault rifle out into the darkened Presidium. Shepard continued to scan the upper levels, her eyes searching feverishly for the source of the laser sights. Garrus worked continuously on his rifle, extracting a case of rounds from his pack.

"Can you see it?"

He asked her. Shepard stepped outside the protective biotic barrier, shedding its blue hue briefly.

"Can you see it, Shepard??"

Desperation tinged the turian's voice as he looked up at her. She had stopped just outside the barrier Liara was maintaining, her stance tense and low, waiting. Just once more...

The blue laser sights flickered across the opposite end of the bridge briefly before disappearing again, but it was all she needed. Scrabbling back to Garrus and Liara practically on her knees, she nodded, yelling above the constant firefight they were locked in with the marauders.

"Got it! It's four floors up, about two o'clock from the bridge!!"

She held an outstretched hand to Garrus, motioning for the injured turian's sniper rifle. With a click, he completed the loading of potent incendiary rounds into the weapon. He lifted it with his good arm, and looked at her earnestly, shaking his head.

"Trust me."

Quelling the protest she had prepared, Shepard watched as Garrus stood and passed through Liara's barrier. Standing tall and isolated on the bridge, he held his rifle in his right hand, its butt braced against his shoulder. Blue blood trickled down his left arm from the painful slice in his armor that the flying debris had inflicted. Liara watched him as he simply stood there, seemingly waiting. She glanced back at Shepard with a worried look on her face.

"What is he doing?"

Shepard crouched just behind Liara's barrier, looking at Garrus with a strange mixture of fear, love and resignation.

"He's baiting it."

The turian inched his tall frame forward slightly on the bridge, his eyes scanning the upper decks of the Presidium through his targeting visor's blue screen constantly. His mandibles flicked tensely, the fingers on his right hand slowly encircled the trigger of the rifle as it glowed with an incendiary round in its barrel. A lull in the marauder's fire as they re-loaded and took stock of their increasing casualties caused a bizarre hush to fall over the team.

Blanketed by the smoke of battle, Garrus continued to inch forward on the bridge, his armor's metallic footsteps resounding on the platform in the hush. He stood with his right arm and shoulder turned to face down the bridge, motionless, inviting. Shepard watched him silently, fists clenched, incapacitated as they all were by trepidation and uncertainty at what was transpiring.

Then – a flicker. A thin shaft of the elusive laser sights pierced the smoke and haze of the bridge. In a split second, it passed over Shepard's head, before drifting, settling and locking onto Garrus' exposed form. The sights flared brightly at the target lock. Her face contorted with anguish as Shepard watched helplessly.

A shot rang out. Just one shot in the silence. It wasn't the tank-busting miniature missile that was carried by a Widow rifle. It wasn't an ionized stream of pure energy that the geth would utilize. But it was clear, instant, and true.

Garrus' body was motionless as the one single thermal clip fell at his feet, tendrils of smoke curling from its metal casing. His right arm was outstretched, the sniper rifle it held deadly silent and still. Time seemed to have stopped, the turian's blue blood dripped from his injured arm onto his feet as he stood fixed and unyielding. A moment later, the ravager's lifeless, bloated body fell burning to the ground with a muffled thud.

~

Shepard glanced at Garrus as she unloaded another thermal clip from her assault rifle.

"That was a helluva risk you took there, Vakarian!"

Despite her best efforts, the corners of her mouth creased in a wry smile as she deftly inserted another clip into her weapon while the marauder's suppressing waves of fire continued. Garrus shrugged nonchalantly and topped the bridge's retaining wall with his sniper rifle.

"Yeah, but ask yourself this..."

Taking a moment to line up another headshot, he pulled the trigger and watched as another marauder fell to the ground lifeless.

"...would you really have me any other way?"

Shepard shook her head, smiling, as she unloaded a full round from her own weapon into the remaining enemies.

"No."

Through their combined efforts, the team had thinned the Reaper forces significantly from around the base of the tower. Those few that remained were being picked off efficiently now that the threat from the Ravager had ended. Liara sent a cascading ball of pure biotic energy into the last few marauders on the staircase and called out, "Shepard! There's our chance – we should go!"

Nodding in agreement, Shepard hoisted her weapon from the top of the bridge.

"Agreed – let's move out!"

With the punctuating concussion of another of Grunt's incendiary grenades, they broke from their cover and began advancing up the steps on Citadel Tower, stepping over the bodies of their fallen enemies in the process. Ghastly luminescent marauder blood coated the steps leading to the tower, forming an appalling trail for them to follow. Javik cleansed the entrance door from the last of the husks and marauders in a haze of green energy from the ancient Prothean particle beam. Shepard nodded her gratitude as they pressed onwards, "Nice work, Javik – come on! We need to..."

They had almost made it to the top of the steps when a hail of fire glanced off their shields and armor from an unexpected and alarming angle. A slug made contact with Liara's shoulder before she could raise another protective biotic barrier, and she stumbled and fell to the ground, gasping with sudden pain.

"Shit!" Shepard's harsh voice reached them all even amidst the fire as she found herself sprawling on the filthy ground of the Presidium again.

"Where the hell's that coming from?"

The clatter of projectiles off Grunt's armor made the krogan only more eager to find the source as he reloaded his assault rifle and returned fire into the upper viewing decks of the Presidium. Osiris was searching the higher reaches of the upper levels from where the Ravager had fallen while Aria covered her fellow asari with a shield of energy. She glanced up at the commander with a furious gaze.

"I haven't come this far to get mowed down by these bastards – get that damn door open!"

Another round of powerful shots rained down on them from the unseen source, glancing off geth armor and sparking off the floor around them. A moment later Osiris opened fire on one of the highest decks of the Presidium.

>>Target acquired.<<

Garrus followed the synthetic's line of fire and lifted his own weapon's scope to his eyes. Through the murk and smoke, a cluster of Reaper troops could be made out on the second highest tier of the Presidium, using their vantage point to pick off their targets ruthlessly.

"Got 'em....."

But no sooner had he lined up his first shot than the waves of weapons fire they had been subjected to ceased. Shepard helped Liara to her feet from her stricken location, desperately trying to forge a continual path upwards to the entryway.

"We've got to get to Tali! We've got to get inside – Javik, Garrus – come on!"

But the turian had stopped on the lower steps and was confused by what he saw in his scope. The marauders that had been targeting them had changed their focus to another area of the Presidium across the lake. He frowned.

"What are they doing?"

Following the discharge from their weapons with his rifle's scope, his entire body jolted suddenly.

"Spirits! Shepard – there's still civilians up here..."

Shepard looked over her shoulder hastily as she helped the injured Liara to her feet, not having fully heard what he had yelled.

"What?"

Garrus gestured frantically to the small, dark mass that was huddled by a destroyed storefront across the lake. The marauders on the upper tier of the Presidium had found a softer target.

"Over there! They're getting slaughtered!"

He pointed desperately while firing two shots from his rifle at the group of enemies. Despite the long distance between them, one of their number disappeared in a shower of blue blood. This drew their attention, however, and a few of the marauders refocused their fire on the tower's entrance. Aria screeched from the top of the steps as she deflected yet more rounds with a sudden lash of her biotics.

"Turian get your ass up here!"

The two asari were exposed targets on the steps leading to the tower, and without Liara's assistance Aria was struggling to deflect the mounting enemy fire with her biotics.

Shepard had backed down the steps and gave a guilt-ridden tug on the turian's shoulder.

"Garrus – we've got to go. We can't..."

But he did not listen, instead returning fire towards the enemies on the upper level.

"I am not going to ignore them - I am not going to turn my back and let them die!"

And with that, the former C-Sec officer took off towards the bridge across the lake at a sprint, leaving the rest of them staring dumbly in his tracks.

"Garrus! Garrus!"

Shepard knew even as she called after him that his mind was already made up – the turian's internal drive for collective justice was too strong.

"Damn it!"

Pointing a thumb at Osiris, she slung her assault rifle over her shoulder.

"Osiris – get us inside that place. Javik, Liara – look after that damn thing...we'll be back."

The Geth Prime acknowledged the commander's orders and immediately moved towards the top of the steps, seeking out the entrance panel that the arm team had repaired and subsequently sabotaged. Breaking into a sprint after reaching the bottom of the steps, Shepard flew across the bridge behind Garrus towards the small knot of civilians.

The turian tore across the bridge faster than any would have given his armor-clad form credit for. A few slugs from the persistent marauders on the upper viewing deck caught up with him but were largely deflected by his shields. He closed in on the huddled mass of individuals that had been trapped by the enemy fire before Shepard had even crossed the bridge.

"Here! Get in here!"

He grabbed a salarian by the arm and pulled him to safety inside the wrecked store just as another hail of vicious bullets flew into the group. Another salarian – a female – shrieked and collapsed to the ground, her pale clothing stained with green life blood. A moment later, she was dead.

Arriving at the scene, Shepard quickly unleashed several rounds from her own assault rifle in the general direction of the enemies before ushering a turian diplomat away from his fallen colleagues' bodies and into cover. In all, they were able to pull five to safety before the incessant rain of slugs ceased. Gulping air, his shoulders heaving, Garrus knelt next to the salarian he had rescued first.

"Are you injured?"

The pale-skinned amphibian salarian shook his head, his eyes straying to the body of the female that lay out in the exposed walkway.

"No...but, my sister..."

Burying his face in his hands, he wept brokenly amidst the shards of glass and debris. Shepard's eyes filled with sorrow as she dabbed blue blood from the turian diplomat's face with a torn piece of his clothing.

"I'm so sorry. But – what are you doing here? How did you survive this long?"

A pall of smoke wafted inside the store from a patch of burning oil on the lake. Coughing, eyes streaming from the acrid odor, one of the other salarians stood.

"We came to the Citadel at the behest of the Council – we were an envoy from Tuchanka. They wanted briefing on the situation since the Genophage was cured. We've been hiding on the Presidium in various locations since the Reapers hit...but when we saw the arms open and the station transform, we thought it might be safe to change our location...that maybe there might be a chance of getting off this hellhole."

Garrus glanced at Shepard, the same troubled thought going through both of their minds.

"There's no way you'll survive up here – this place is a killing ground! Besides..."

He looked again at Shepard, a spiritless tone edging his flanging voice.

"With Harbinger headed this way, and our mission...they can't come with us! It would be suicidal!"

Glancing at Garrus and to each of the salarians and turians in turn, Shepard forced her exhausted mind to work. Closing her eyes, she drew a slow breath. No option was a good option. There was so much at stake, so many lives facing this dead-end...but then, a hope. A desperate, selfless hope. She activated her omni-tool's communicator.

"This is Shepard - shuttle one pilot do you read me?"

As a distant peal of thunder-like sounds wracked the station, the static on the comms channel gave way to a faint voice...the voice of a fragile, feathery hope.

"Roger tha...I read you commander go ahead!"

Her body surging with renewed energy at her pilot's voice, Shepard helped one of the salarians to his feet without pause.

"It's damn good to hear your voice! I have five civilians with me needing evacuation from the station – is the shuttle intact?"

The look of inviolable respect in Garrus' eyes was lost on her as she concentrated on loading clips into her assault rifle before thrusting it into the arms of the turian diplomat she had been assisting. The shuttle pilot's voice faltered when he came back to them.

"Uhh...yes, ma'am, I'm ready to dust-off at your command. But..."

He was cut off, however, as their communications channel was joined by Miranda's voice.

"Shepard...Shepard are you there?"

As the small group of civilians slowly realized that they were being given the chance of escaping the sacked station, Shepard turned her attention to the arm team.

"Yeah Miranda I read you – go ahead."

Garrus was grateful to see the turian diplomat shoulder Shepard's assault rifle with a familiarity that told him he at least knew how to handle a weapon. But Miranda could be heard sighing brokenly in the background before she spoke again.

"Shepard...it's Tali. I think we're losing her. She's stopped responding. I...I can't..."

Hastily transferring a schematic of their route from the shuttle to the turian diplomat's omni-tool from her own, Shepard glanced at Garrus in a dark panic.

"Miranda – hold on to her. We're coming...we're coming with some medi-gel and we are not going to lose her."

The salarian that Garrus had first pulled to safety interjected his slim body to the exchange.

"One of your number is injured?"

Shepard nodded grimly, looking back towards Citadel Tower.

"Gravely. She's a quarian. She's been shot and...it caused a suit rupture resulting in infection. We...we have to go!"

He looked at her with a matter-of-fact expression.

"I'm coming with you."

Garrus started, looking back at him from his vantage point at the edge of the storefront.

"What?"

Another of the salarians turned to look at them.

"Mikka – you can't!"

Shepard and Garrus looked at the Salarian named Mikka as he rebutted the female's protests with a pleading look in his eyes.

"I'm sorry, Marala. Please don't ask me to choose. Don't ask me to choose between escaping this place and my oath as a doctor of our people...I won't do it. These people need me...need my skills. Maybe I can find my end having done something useful..."

The salarian doctor had already moved to stand next to Garrus, his arms folded in his clothing, his expression peaceful despite the dried green blood on his face. It was only now that Shepard noticed that he had at his belt an array of pouches and phials along with a hand pistol. He caught her looking at him briefly, and regarded her with a strange expression.

"You are Commander Shepard, aren't you? I..."

The sound of marauder fire hitting the walls of the tower across the lake jolted Shepard from the strangely fixated gaze of the salarian doctor. She extracted her pistol from her waist while motioning to the civilians who were poised to exit the destroyed building via a separate crater in the wall opposite them.

"Our time's running short – Tali needs us! We have go to go now. Are you coming with us, doctor?"

Mikka nodded quickly, and removed his own handgun from its holster. Moving over to the others of his envoy hastily, he embraced the salarian who had protested at his going with Shepard's team. Garrus could hear a small sob from them both as he left them and rejoined Shepard in preparation for their frantic sprint back to the tower.

Nodding at the civilian envoy in farewell, Shepard edged out into the Presidium once more and motioned for Garrus and Mikka to follow. Breaking from cover, sprinting as their taxed lungs labored and torn muscles struggled, they heard Liara's faint voice come across the comms channel.

"By the Goddess, Shepard...it's James."

~

The young soldier's stiffened fingers had closed around the trigger of his empty rifle with an intensity found only in death. A shotgun lay by his side, also empty of rounds. His blue-tinged, lifeless face had lost all of its former rage and vibrancy since he had given his life to seal his comrades in Citadel Tower.

Liara and Javik had removed his body from the entrance panel, laying him respectfully at the top of the steps leading to the tower.

The asari was just finishing a final prayer to her goddess over the human's shattered body as Shepard arrived back to them with Garrus and the salarian, Mikka. Stumbling in her sorrow, Karen Shepard fell to her knees beside the fallen soldier, her pistol dropping from her numb hands in an instant. As the bullets still flew on both sides of the Presidium, she laid a blackened, gloved hand on his chestplate.

Liara had graciously closed the man's eyes when they had laid him down, but his death-wounds were still tangible and awful. Shepard was looking directly at her greatest fear in this war – the loss of her team members. The chill of losing someone under her command – someone she had befriended amidst the chaos of war, someone she felt responsible for – began to wrap its freezing fingers around her heart.

Emotion and sorrow stung her as she grieved for her fallen ally. Dully, she registered Garrus and Grunt returning fire towards the marauders. Occasionally, the metallic ground around her resounded with a clang as a stray slug came close. Slowly, her fingers unhooked the dog tags from around James' neck – the metal was bashed and tarnished by flames and bullets and blood. She slid them gently into a compartment of her armor.

>>Shepard-Commander. Entry gained.<<

Osiris had finally succeeded in repairing the entrance console to the tower. As Shepard looked over her shoulder, she saw the geth prime moving away from the jammed-open doorway as Liara, Aria and Javik slid inside. Garrus laid a hand on her shoulder as he retreated.

"Come on, Shepard..."

The mission. Always the mission. Forcing, pressing, focusing – they were never free of it, not even in grief. Lingering for a second longer, her fingers laid a small, tarnished item on James' armor. Her beaten, old N7 plate adorned the soldier's chest...in the end. In the end, he had made it – more true and steadfast in his sacrifice than many soldiers who serve and live to see old age would ever be.

Tali...

The mere thought of the quarian brought Shepard to her feet with a swiftness she thought had long since abandoned her. Picking up her pistol, she was the second-to-last to enter Citadel Tower's dark, quiet confines. Ensuring all were through, Garrus fired a final salvo of slugs into the upper decks of the Presidium in a last, defiant statement to the marauders, and stepped through the door himself. Osiris moved with the deft motions of synthetics as he crouched by the inside door panel, working on the fried terminal to seal them inside.

"Shepard!"

Coats' voice came to them, but this time not across comms. For the first time in what seemed like millennia, the two teams' members laid weary eyes on each other. From the second level of the tower, up several flights of the polished, dark tiles, they could make out Coats as he signaled to them. Shepard broke into a breathless sprint once more, her armored footsteps making a resounding clatter on the marbled floor.

"Come on!"

She motioned for the others to follow her as she hurriedly ascended the stairway to the second level of Citadel Tower and the small, silent grove of decorative trees that Coats' team had hunkered down in. As Shepard approached Coats, she could see the pained expression on his face. His pale blue eyes were rimmed with red, and where there should have been a solid handshake there was only a blank, helpless gaze.

"Tali?"

The quarian's name had no sooner left her lips than Shepard saw a flash of white on the floor behind Coats. Miranda was kneeling, cradling Tali's head in her lap. Her hands uselessly stroked the quarian's mask, tears streaming down her face. Shepard clawed her way past Coats, panic and fear gnawing into her soul. Casting her targeting visor to the floor, she scrabbled to her knees once again.

"Tali...Tali!"

Taking the quarian's small hand in hers, she was horrified to find that it was rigid, ice cold. Her chest was barely moving, her breaths barely more than wheezes, constricted and shallow. Miranda wept next to her.

"She went into shock, Shepard...I'm sorry...I don't think she's..."

But a mumbling behind them made them look up. Behind Garrus, Grunt, Javik, Liara – beyond all who had clustered around the dying quarian, a small, lithe figure emerged. The salarian forced his way through the throng of blanched onlookers, inserting his body between Shepard and the almost-lifeless Tali.

"Excuseme."

Miranda stared dumbfounded at the strange salarian as he knelt by her side. Shepard reappeared on the other side of him, her omni-tool activated and readied with medi-gel. She fumbled with Tali's injured leg, looking for an application site. A moment later, her arm was swatted away in irritation by a hand with long, slender, alien fingers. Mikka glared at her.

"Leaveusbe and letmework!"

The urgency of the situation had caused the salarian to slip back into the rapid speech his people were renowned for using as he bent over Tali's small, still body. Shepard remained momentarily – seized by a desperate, inane drive to do something for the quarian, one of her oldest friends and allies in the fight against the Reapers.

"Well...here, don't you need thi...?"

Her question was cut short as Garrus lifted her gently by the arm away from the salarian. He shook his head quietly as she allowed him to restrain her, even as her muscles tensed and hands shook. She chiseled her teeth across one another, attempting to absorb the panic that she could barely contain at the thought of losing Tali. Most of the others also remained, looking on - only Coats had removed himself. The exhausted major was struggling to cope with the losses his team had sustained. He had fallen to pacing impotently on the periphery of the scene, running an occasional bruised hand through his matted hair.

Shepard watched as the salarian investigated Tali, his slender fingers dancing over her envirosuit with an almost graceful fashion. He murmured to himself – or perhaps to Tali – as he knelt over her.

"Nownownownownow young quarian......immunoresponseinvalid........whitebloodcountinadequate.... ........mammalianequivalent septicaemiaanaphylaxis........"

Something in his voice stirred a fresh, painful memory within her as Shepard listened to his melodic, rambling speech. The tone of his voice was brimming with a compassion for life that would have shamed some Alliance physicians. She saw the way he squinted at the quarian's injury, the odd way his asymmetrical scalp crest rested...shaking her head, she blinked furiously as the salarian still worked.

"Nononononono......your time is not yet up, young one..."

He rummaged amongst his belt, the various vials of liquids and tinctures chinking against each other. From another fold of his coat, he produced a syringe with a painful-looking triple-headed tip. With a steady hand that seemed accustomed to the work it was doing, the salarian doctor single-handedly primed the syringe with a purple-hued liquid while searching for a section seal in the quarian's protective suit. As he carefully worked the seal loose, he absent-mindedly began to hum a tune at a low, barely-audible tone. Shepard blinked again, thought about taking a step towards him before feeling Garrus' hand press slightly tighter on her arm.

"Hmhmhmhmmm.......macrophagebooster....... hmhmhmhmmm.......monocytestabilizerinfusion......."

As he held the syringe perfectly still, they watched as the purple liquid inside it was transported directly into Tali's bloodstream via the perfect, sterilized seal separation the salarian had executed on her envirosuit's right arm. A second later, and he removed it from her body and cast it aside.

The companions stood silently, unsure of what to do or say, as the doctor sealed pouches around his waist and disposed of the soiled syringe. He stopped for a moment, seemingly contemplating something. Glancing at his omni-tool's readout, his eyes narrowed briefly.

"Hmhmhmhmmm.......three......two......one."

With a sound as if she were sucking the air out of the entire tower, Tali'zorah vas Normandy convulsed as consciousness seeped back to her oxygen-starved body. Breaths rattling in her lungs, Miranda struggled to hold her down and prevent her from crawling to her feet. The quarian coughed repeatedly, the fluid draining from her lungs as her suit's CO2 scrubbers restarted. A sudden attack of vertigo led her to clutch on to Miranda's arms as her bloodstream reeled from the aftereffects of extreme acidosis.

The salarian doctor took a last reading from Tali with his glowing omni-tool and looked up at Shepard, his face creasing into what could be described as a smile. Seeing that smile, something once again stirred and breached Shepard's subconscious...something too familiar. Now that Tali's life no longer hung in the balance, Garrus released Shepard's arm as she slowly moved towards the doctor, her brow furrowed, eyes questioning.

"Who are you??"

The Salarian straightened, dusting his hands on his medical coat. Glancing back at his patient one last time, he stepped towards Shepard gracefully, and extended a three-fingered hand for her to shake.

"YesIbelieve we have time forintroductionsatlast. Commander Shepard – my name is Mikka Solus. I believe you had the privilege of working with my uncle before his death."
Chapter Fourteen***

The tree-lined interior of the tower was quiet, still. Outside there may be unending war, but for a few rare moments, the exhausted individuals of Shepard's combined team took brief respite. Ears ringing from gunfire, their bloodied and hurting bodies found solace in companionship, in the solidarity of their comrades.

Coats stood looking down on the darkened tower's central expanse, his numb mind trying and failing to process all that had happened up to this point. The Reapers' destruction of everything they held dear had provided a painful clarity for him – evidence of their own fragility, of his own insufficiency. He had once thought of nothing more than when his next Alliance salary check would arrive. Now, all that seemed as if in a past life. Lost in thought, he felt a presence next to him. Shepard placed a hand on his shoulder, grasping him firmly and wrenching him from his transfixed stare.

"How you holding up, major?"

Steeling his emotions externally, the young Alliance officer looked back out into the black nothingness of the tower's shadows.

"I'm holding, Shepard. We're all doing what we have to, right?"

His voice was hoarse from a mixture of battle and the acrid air of the place. His armor was charred in areas, splintered by bullets in others. Shepard stayed next to him for a moment, trying to provide some perspective.

"It must've been hell for you guys – arriving up here the way you did. No one could have looked after everybody any better."

Coats' chest heaved with a self-targeted, suppressed smirk.

"Not everybody."

Pursing her lips grimly, Shepard lingered a moment longer, clutching James' dog tags in her hand.

"He'll be remembered, Coats, I promise you. You couldn't have done any better with what we were dealt. James' death was a sacrifice so that we might have a chance at succeeding. And we will succeed – you have my word on that. We're here, aren't we?"

Her words soothed the major's tormented soul a fraction, and a flicker of gratitude flashed across his tired eyes. She patted his shoulder once more.

"Look – there's still no word from Hackett, but as soon as there is I'll let you know. Go get some rest, or...something."

Hesitating for a brief moment, he eventually nodded.

"Yeah...thanks, Shepard. We'll all be ready for the next step. Just say the word."

With that, Coats left her and wearily walked towards where Miranda was looking after Liara's bullet wound. They sat together by one of the larger trees, talking in quiet voices. Watching him leave, Shepard remained for a moment at the edge of the tower's second floor walkway, looking down on the grand, tree-lined atrium in the center of the building. The elegant fountain that stood in the center of the entrance hall and had once provided the calming trickle of water, but now it had ceased its gentle babbling. All that remained was a dried-up receptacle.

Much like the last stand of humanity – of life, she thought morbidly. Their great civilizations – having survived for millennia – were now being drained dry and cast down by the Reapers. It was difficult to comprehend that the next few hours would provide the conclusion of the galaxy's best hopes.....or worst fears.

She didn't have to look over to know that Garrus had arrived by her side - the creak of his armor, the blue wash of light from his visor were all she needed to acknowledge his presence. The tall turian leaned on the balcony next to her, following her gaze across the tops of the decorative trees.

"Well – all in all, Jack doesn't seem too upset that I'm still alive..."

A quiet laugh escaped Shepard as she contemplated the thought.

"I keep waiting for her to tell you to bite me again."

They were both laughing now – laughing at the absurdity of it, at their desperate attempts to inject a degree of normalcy into each other. No matter what turn their fates took, they always seemed to find a way to keep each other going. Even now, at the end of all ends.

"Any word from Fifth Fleet?" Garrus asked as he shifted closer to her side, resting a hand on her. She shook her head, and was about to reply to him when she stopped suddenly, motionless. Her eyes lingered on the ground floor of Citadel Tower, next to the dried-up fountain and ornamental trees. An old memory reignited somewhere inside her.

"My god, Garrus..."

He straightened, glancing quickly at her as his hand brushed the hilt of his pistol.

"What?"

Shepard eased his concern with a hand on his arm but remained looking down at the expansive atrium of the tower. Her eyes were clouded with memories, a wistful smile stained her parched lips.

"Down there. That very spot..."

The turian followed her line of sight, through the murky depths of the building to the floor below, but Shepard was the first to voice the swelling reminiscence.

"That was where we met – for the first time."

Memories from years ago came flooding back to both of them – of a time before the Reapers, of the beginning of their investigation into Saren, of Sovereign's arrival at the Citadel, of everything they had lost and fought for and gained to get to this point. Shepard looked at Garrus as he contemplated the thought, and she smiled.

"I had been sent up here to Citadel Tower on a tip from Harkin, of all people.....to go look for some 'damn hothead' called Garrus Vakarian..."

Garrus laughed a low, private laugh that was just for the two of them as he encircled her with his uninjured arm, drawing her close to him. She felt his rough lips brush her sweat-soaked, blood-stained hair lightly.

"I hope I lived up to your expectations."

With moist eyes and a full heart, Shepard felt the cool of the turian's beaten armor against her forehead as she leaned into him one last time.

"More than I could have ever asked for..."

~

Her mind's eye stared out across a void of timelessness, of pure energy. Darkened corners of her consciousness were systematically purged of all mystery, all doubt. Each battle, each fight, each life she took...they each were accounted for, recanted.

"Hey."

The light of energy bathed her soul in a cleansing aura – death was but a word. For a thousand years, her footsteps had been heard across the galaxy. Injustices had been stopped, criminals had been executed...

"I said 'hey'...ahh whatever..."

The vision of her Code dissolved before her eyes as Samara was brought from meditation by that crass voice. Feeling the cold of the tower's tiled floor beneath her legs, she looked up to see a tattooed form stalking away from her, a frustrated gait betraying the individual's true feelings.

"Jacqueline – I am here."

The figure stopped in its tracks, but didn't turn around, only placed its hands defiantly on its hips. The ancient Justicar smiled inwardly.

"Jack. Please. Sit."

Turning around at last, Jack returned slowly to Samara who sat cross-legged on the hard, cold floor.

"I'm sorry Jack – I was meditating. I didn't hear you approach."

The human biotic sat her ink-stained form next to the asari on the floor in an ungainly fashion, a grunt escaping from her at the same time.

"Yeah...shoulda figured I guess. I just..."

Shrugging, Jack looked over at the other members of the team. Garrus and Shepard, Coats and Miranda, Liara and Javik, even Grunt and Osiris were conversing – although god knows about what. She sighed from the bottom of her leather-clad storm boots.

"Everyone else seems to be happy enough...to 'have' someone. Uhh..."

Scratching her back next to a tattoo of a tally mark, Jack's tone turned gruffly defensive.

"You, uh...looked kinda lonely."

Samara's luminous blue eyes watched the human as she spoke, searched her soul without effort or impediment. She smiled a knowing smile at Jack.

"Your consideration is warmly appreciated, Jack. We have all been through much together, and I always enjoy finding time to talk with my comrades."

Relaxing slightly, Jack rested back on the floor, propping her body up with her arms. Her shotgun scraped the tiles by her side.

"Yeah...helluva ride, I guess. Just wish it was over...Shepard and her fucking quests."

The Justicar stirred slightly, watching the avenues of discussion as they were laid out before her. Her eyes glistened with a millennia of biotic power.

"I do not believe you fully mean that statement. All our fates have been woven together, Jack. Every single individual in this tower at this moment is here because the skeins of destiny have brought us here at the side of the commander."

Samara's expression grew distant, her eyes unfocused as she spoke in her calm monotone.

"When I look at the years Shepard has spent building this team, watching it break, and then reforming it – I do not see one person's desire to shape the galaxy. I see perception - I see prescience."

Falling silent, Jack listened to Samara's thousand-year-old voice, its wisdom making even her pause for thought. The human looked back at the others present as they checked weapons and tended wounds.

"Yeah...I guess so. I just can't help but wonder why the hell I'm here, though...just some crazy-ass kid that was brought up in a Cerberus test tube..."

Jack fell to kicking her feet together glumly on the dark, tiled floor they sat on. Somewhere in the background, she could hear Grunt's deep voice laughing as he reloaded his shotgun. With a start, she looked over and realized that Samara had shifted much closer to her. The asari's slim, red-armored body was almost touching hers as she suddenly grasped the human's arm, but it was her eyes that gave Jack the most pause. Those glistening blue eyes had blackened to midnight, all the mystery of the universe was laid bare in that timeless stare.

"Jack. Subject Zero. You belittle yourself while denying your accomplishments. You have survived when others did not. You have brought justice to the memory of your torture on Pragia, and you are here now because you were asked to be. You could have easily turned your back on your students, on Shepard's requests, and diminished. Instead, you stand up for what your heart and head tell you is right, and you fight."

Jack sat rigidly under the spell of those black eyes, hearing the truth come from Samara's mouth even as she wanted to get up and leave. The asari's powerful biotic trance lifted as she blinked briefly, her eyes returning to their familiar blue hue. Her gaze was earnest as she examined Jack's face in seemingly intricate detail.

"You are needed here, Jack – just as we all are."

With those final words, Samara stood, straightening her back. Leaving Jack's small form in contemplation on the floor of the tower, she slowly sidled off in the direction of the rest of the team.

~

'Your words are as empty as your future.

Reapers. The label given fifty thousand years ago by the Protheans to give voice to their own destruction. Our realm of existence transcends your understanding, defies your flimsy grasp on reality. Millions of years after your civilization has been eradicated and forgotten, we will endure. We have no beginning. We have no end. We simply are. The pattern has repeated itself more times than you can fathom. We will control. We will bring each people, nation and world to ascension. Only by joining our legions is it possible to comprehend our purpose. This is the gift we bestow upon you – to become us, to strengthen the harvest of the next cycle. We impose order on the chaos of organic life – of your life.

Rudimentary creatures of blood and flesh. You are incapable of understanding. Your life is nothing but an accident. The cycle cannot be broken. You exist because we allow it, and you will end because we demand it. I will come for you.'

A vision. Of destruction, of death, of a harvest. Buildings and worlds turn to dust as the indoctrinated turn on the doomed. Flesh fused, souls absorbed, obliterated by the bloated desires of these things that know only death and order. Living beings, clutching each other at the end of their world, the beginning of their 'ascendance'......

Her entire body convulsed as Shepard was jolted from the brief moment of unconsciousness by the activation of her omni-tool. Looking around quickly, she registered that all others present in the tower had cast their eyes at her at the sound of the communication channel buzzing to life.

"Shepard – this is Hackett. For god's sake come in."

Forcing herself to her feet via a crutch that just happened to be her rifle, she wiped her forehead with the back of her filthy glove. Garrus, Liara, Javik, even Aria, they had all clustered around her.

"Yeah, I read you admiral. We made it inside the tower – just regrouping and waiting for your word, sir."

Her exhausted tone betrayed the fatigue that had forced all of them to take the past few moments for themselves, instead of prepping weapons, checking armor...blinking away the ghosts of her half-dream, she heard Hackett's voice come back to them.

"Shepard I hope to hell you can hear me. We've now lost control over the Crucible – or maybe 'handed control over' might be a better way of putting it. It seems that's what was supposed to happen. As soon as we got it into the proximity of the ward arms, it shut us out of its interface and went into some kind of auto-rotation. As best we can tell, it's dead on and headed for Citadel Tower's top-level dock."

Her gaze drifted over her teammates. The air around them seemed to crackle with nerves and tension and hope. They were so close, so excruciatingly close...and a small tremor resounded under their feet.

"Get that virus to the Crucible, Shepard. This all lies at your collective feet now. Sword has done its part, but there's no way in hell we can stay in the vicinity. I've lost half my fleet to the Reapers that were protecting the Citadel – I owe it to the other half to try and save them. We're breaking off."

They needed no spurring from Shepard to know that their time had come – all present had begun readying weapons and shouldering troubles for whatever was to come at this last push to the top level of the tower. The Crucible and the virus were both unknown entities, but they carried the chance at allowing the civilizations of the galaxy to endure, to survive. That was enough for all of them.

As she inserted her last remaining clips into her shotgun and pistol, Shepard suddenly raised her voice into the communicator.

"Wait – Hackett! Have you heard anything from Earth? From the FOB? From...Anderson or, Joker or EDI?"

Garrus stopped momentarily, the same anxiety that was besetting Shepard chilling his bloodstream. The static through her omni-tool persisted for what seemed like hours.

"No, Shepard...I'm sorry. Our last communication with them was shortly after engaging the Reaper forces around the Citadel. It was garbled, but things were bad down there – real bad. We haven't been able to raise them since, but I don't need to speak to them to know what's happening down there. I can see the planet from here...just be thankful you can't. Hackett out...and godspeed, Shepard."

Closing her eyes briefly in resignation, Shepard nodded. A faint sound could be heard now – a bizarre, constant rushing coming from somewhere far above their heads – at the top of the tower, perhaps. She looked at the faces around her; Garrus, Liara, Tali, Grunt – so many who go so far back. But the time for sentimentality had passed.

"Come on – one more step. One last push."

Synthetic and organic – they all pressed onward. They all carried a small light with them, the hopes of the galaxy. The polished tile stairway of Citadel Tower beckoned to them as Coats glanced back.

"Where's my rifle?"

The last minute preparations had been lost amidst thoughts both personal and collective. It was hard to believe that, even here, preoccupation had a place.

"I think we left it up by the balcony when Tali collapsed. Hold on..."

Miranda broke from the team and made her way over to where she and Coats had shared quiet words beforehand. Shepard motioned for the others to begin climbing the steps towards the third floor – Javik and Liara had already made it halfway there. The tower was so quiet, even their footsteps seemed to violate the atmosphere.

Enormous metal archways spanned the upper reaches of the atrium that contained the council chambers, once softly lit by flowering gardens and simulated daylight, it was now a place full of darkened recesses and foreboding expanses.

As Shepard saw Miranda reappear with Coats' rifle, she turned quickly and leapt up several steps at once, largely ignoring the pain from the coagulated gash to her leg. It felt good to be using her body again – the twisting, agonizing thoughts and dreams that had begun to creep back on her while resting had served only to remind her why they could never go back...only forward...

"Shepard!"

Miranda's painful shriek shattered the stillness of the tower more powerfully than one of Grunt's inferno grenades. Coats whirled twice as fast as the rest, his frantic eyes rested on the woman he had almost kissed. Miranda had been forced to her knees, Coats' rifle having fallen from her grasp and clattered across the floor away from her. Her black hair was pulled taut behind her head by some unseen hand, and through the dull light, Shepard could make out a rivulet of blood as it trickled down her exposed throat. Something – someone – held her hostage...

"What the hell...Coats wait!"

She snapped a hand out, grabbing the major's arm before he had a chance to run forward. A moment later, they heard a chill, synthesized laugh coming from behind Miranda. Frowning, Coats peered intensely, frantic to uncover the assailant as his omni-blade began omitting a faint glow. As Miranda tried to limit her squirming, a long, thin blade appeared at her neck, its sharpened edge cutting into her flesh painfully.

A knowing suspicion slowly dawned on Shepard as she raised her handgun, looking down its sight at the air next to Miranda's head. Then, that terrible expectation was realized. The air behind the woman shivered briefly, and the Cerberus phantom shed its tactical cloak.

"Fucking bastards!" Coats swore. He watched in vain as one of the Illusive Man's genetically altered special operatives faded into vision, its gloved hand tugging Miranda's hair viciously from behind. They were fast, deadly and ruthless, and they had been watching the team since they arrived at the tower. Shepard took a step down, still fixing the masked, agile figure behind Miranda with her pistol's scope. Her lips curled in disgust.

"What do you want? Your leader's dead – killed by the Reapers. Why are you here?"

The black-clad female figure stood close behind Miranda, using her as protection. Her voice was so synthesized through her heavy mask that they could barely make out her words.

"Why do we need to 'want' something, commander? Do you yourself know what you 'want'? Or what you need...?"

She laughed again, playfully flicking the blade of her sword upon Miranda's bloodied neck. Her victim grimaced, a whimper of pain and fear escaping her lips even as she fought to keep her balance and not force the blade across her throat. Coats stood rooted to the spot, his fists clenched, his soot-covered face contorted in anguish and rage.

Time continued to slip by, and Shepard knew it. A sound like rolling thunder echoed above their heads and through the arched ceiling of the great tower. Garrus and Grunt moved to either side of her on the stairway, their weapons readied but stances unsure. Shepard locked her pistol on the phantom, her lips pressed together in grim resolve.

"I don't have time for this. Look – you want to die here? Fine. Because the longer this standoff continues, the more likely it is that we're all going to die here. It's your choice."

The phantom answered only with more laughter – an unreasonable being of genetically altered insanity. Miranda choked beneath the blade.

"Shepard – for god's sake leave! Get to the roof..."

A sharp jerk on her hair brought the blade biting even deeper into her flesh, silencing her. The slender woman that held her captive fixed Shepard with a gaze of silvery blue eyes behind its helmet.

"You think we are still but his thralls? His efforts only served to delay the inevitable."

With a sinking feeling in the pit of her stomach, Shepard's eyes slid down the body of the phantom. She saw the strange nodes of blue power cells, the abnormal collections of wires and tubes, the faint purple aura that pulsated around its body. She took a step back as the masked woman spoke again.

"The 'expiration' of the Illusive Man was felt by all of us – thanks to his...gifts. But you have done us a great service, 'Commander' Shepard. It is only through his 'release' that we have been able to renew ourselves...to become something more."

"You're indoctrinated!" Shepard spat. To her left she heard Grunt prime his shotgun in readiness, a low rumble emanating from his chest. Muscles in her arms tensed as the phantom let out a low, ridiculing laugh.

"How simple the words are that fall from your mouth, Shepard. Have you never heard the complex whispers of destiny that are offered to us if we only listen? Have you never been tempted by the promise of power?"

A crimson rage roiled inside Shepard's mind as she listened to the woman's insidious words.

"Suggestion and temptation are not precursors to submission!"

Planting her foot forcefully into the small of Miranda's back, the phantom forced the woman to flatten on the ground as she pointed an accusing finger at Shepard.

"You fool...who said anything about submission? We are here on the bidding of our Gods. They want you stopped. Stopped from executing the foul, misguided plans you have hatched..."

The tense scene was shattered in an instant with an array of powerful impacts to the building's exterior, causing all present to steady themselves for one brief second. It wasn't much, but it was all that Jack had been waiting for. Her small figure had been concealed in some of the darkest shadows of the tower's stairway since Miranda had called out. Seeing the phantom take a brief step to right herself after the concussions, the human biotic seized the opportunity that had been handed to her. Focusing all her mental might, Subject Zero mustered a pinpoint of her telekinetic powers on Coats' sniper rifle. With a flick of her wrist and flash of blue energy, Jack skewered the phantom with the barrel of Coats' weapon, burying it in her chest up to the scope. Transfixed by what had just happened, Shepard watched as the major broke from his frustrated limbo and rushed towards Miranda, but their victory was short-lived. Even as he was helping her to her feet, the sound of additional tactical cloaks shedding around them signaled that the phantom Jack had struck down was only one of many. The indoctrinated former Cerberus operatives were determined to spill blood at the bidding of the Reapers.

Chaos erupted around Shepard, savage combat encircling a ticking clock only they could hear. A red laser sight lancing through the air signaled the presence of a nemesis sniper somewhere in the shadows, and before anyone could react, its energized slug tore into Grunt's left shoulder and sent him sprawling on the ground. Despite his savage roar for combat, Shepard could see an alarming pool of red blood gather underneath him. Attempting to marshal her team members amidst the unfolding confusion, she called out to the others.

"Grunt! Garrus – cover him! Liara we need some barriers!"

Deep concussions came from the upper levels of the tower as figures darted from every shadow, bringing razor sharp blades down on their targets. Too late the team realized that they were outnumbered by the strategy of surprise. The reloading of shotguns and pistols soon gave way to the spark of omni-blades and the sound of physical contact. A phantom leapt from its cloaked guise onto Javik – another caught a blow from the hilt of Garrus' assault rifle as they wrestled in the half-darkness. Shattered metal showered sparks around them as the nemesis continued to pick well-timed shots from its hidden vantage point.

"We've got to find that sniper!" Shepard yelled, but no sooner had the words left her mouth than she was knocked to the floor by another of the vicious, sword-wielding attackers. Shepard grasped both of the phantom's wrists before it had a chance to plunge its sword into her chest, but not before a slash from another angle tore into her arm. Faltering as pain lanced through her body, she felt the mutated woman's legs straddle her torso, her blade glistening with red blood.....

The injured Grunt barreled headlong into the phantom that had set upon Shepard, knocking it from her even as a shot from the hidden nemesis narrowly missed his crest. Everything became a blur of motion and barbarous physical struggle. All around them, a brutal war-in-miniature unfolded.

Clutching his injured arm as it throbbed with the pain of his weapon's recoil, Garrus clenched his teeth as another of the agile foes rounded on him. It had spotted a soft target in him...a way to erode the team's numbers. Stepping back and fumbling with his good hand for his pistol, the turian hadn't even managed to extract it before there was a flash of red and black behind the phantom.

Shepard leapt from behind and threw the malevolent, mutated woman off balance – the savage sword sent flying across the floor away from them. The two struck the ground hard, locked in a frenzied grapple, too close for the helpless turian to pick off the enemy from the one he loved. Shepard's blood-crusted armor blended with the dark bodysuit of the phantom in the dim light of the tower, the orange flicker of her omni-tool struggling to activate amidst the flailing fight. Shepard pinned one arm of the slippery combatant to the cold floor, grappling for her pistol at her waist, but a nanosecond of concentration loss was all the phantasm beneath her needed. A hand of her lithe adversary twisted itself free, and before Shepard knew what was happening another slippery arm snaked around her neck, groping for a vein, a handhold...her world was going gray in a crescendo of starbursts even as a blaze of orange finally burst from her right arm.

"You make me sick!" Shepard rasped as she broke her enemy's jaw with an elbow and brought her omni-blade down into its chest.

~

Tali had been following Liara and Javik up the steps towards the third level of the tower when the phantoms had sprung from the shadows. Watching helplessly as an enemy sniper's shot took Grunt to the ground, the lead party rapidly discovered that they were being ambushed. Readying her shotgun, the quarian stepped lightly to one side to allow the advancing enemy to plunge her sword into thin air. Turning on her heel, Tali'Zorah brought the phantom down efficiently in a shower of dark crimson and a point-blank discharge of her weapon.

"Javik – look out!" She signaled to the Prothean behind her. Javik whirled instantly and unleashed a malevolent burst of his ancient biotic energies towards the phantom that had left him with a slash across his face. Plagued by a devastating biotic field, his foe writhed in agony as her molecules began to disintegrate.

Sticking close to Javik and the shard, Liara heard Shepard's yell for barriers but couldn't make it to where she was. Three phantoms closed in on her and Javik even as Tali felled another one with her shotgun and omni-tool combined.

The enemy seemed to be strangely drawn to her and the Prothean. The phantoms circled the three of them with swords drawn, waiting for a twitch, a misstep, anything that would provide an opportunity to attack. Liara's outstretched hands wove a protective barrier over herself, Javik and Tali – the glittering blue force field playing over their skin as a phantom lunged with inhuman speed. Javik raised his glowing hands a moment too late, seeing with resignation the sword that was being brought ringing through the air towards him...

With a swift blur of blue, Samara – her entire body awash with silver-blue biotic power – landed behind the phantom and instantly kicked the feet out from under it. She launched herself into the air again effortlessly – the ancient Justicar's awesome powers allowing her to levitate effortlessly above her stricken enemy before landing and pinning the squirming woman's body to the cold metal floor with her legs. The asari made a small motion, just one small twitch of her muscular, honed body, and there was an audible crack as the phantom's neck snapped. The Justicar gracefully left the body of her foe, and fell back to protect Javik, Liara and Tali from the remaining two phantoms that were advancing towards them.

Red strobed across the scene, and another crippling shot from the hidden nemesis rung out, missing Coats by millimeters. He looked around frantically while shielding the injured Miranda. Pinned down halfway up the steps where he had led her to safety, he swore unabated.

"Shit! Shepard – for christ's sake! ..."

He hadn't even finished crying out for assistance when the boot of his ruthless enemy arrived next to him, uncloaking along with the rest of its disgustingly seductive body. She stooped fast, grabbing Coats' pistol from his hands before he had a chance to release a shot.

"Give up!"

The woman tittered as she tossed his weapon out of reach and grasped the helpless major by his jaw, lifting him coolly off the ground with one arm. As Coats continued to struggle, she struck him violently across the face with the back of her fist, spraying blood on the ground before unsheathing her cruel sword for the final slash. The young soldier gritted his bloodstained teeth, waiting for the single, terrible blow that would signal his end. But suddenly, the hand holding him aloft went limp. There was a blinding flash of energy, and the next thing he knew, the phantom was sent flying into the opposite wall of the atrium with an immense biotic slam as he choked on the floor. Miranda offered her glistening, energized hand to him, helping him to his feet with a determined, blood-crusted smile.

Another shot from the unseen sniper narrowly missed Javik and Liara on the upper steps. Shepard shouted frantic commands above the constant weapons fire and slashing of blades, smashing a phantom away from her with a fist and sending it reeling into Garrus' rifle fire.

"Osiris get up those stairs and try to pick that thing off! We've got to get up to the roof!"

The prime complied with her request, its white optical circuits glowing as it ascended the stairway to the third floor. Its head jerked with the speed of a synthetic as it lit up the darkened recesses of Citadel Tower with its searchlight. Probing the shadows with infra-red, Osiris registered movement behind one of the large metal beams that supported the tower's antechambers.

>>Target lock.<<

The geth released a relentless stream of deadly-accurate assault rifle fire down on the helpless nemesis, exposing its location to all. The enemy sniper's body was shredded to pieces a moment later by the combined efforts of all who still possessed weapons with clips in them. Shadows danced as the air crackled with biotics and thermal clips. Blades glanced off armor, and the injured cried on both sides.

Rounds hit the metallic walls of the tower, causing sparks to fly and blood of all colors to mar the floor. Shepard's world became a blur of sparks, sweat and blood. She couldn't make out the face of anyone around her clearly...only knowing that injuries were being inflicted even as they took out one phantom after another. A motion to her side caused her to raise her omni-blade, deflecting a sword blade that would have otherwise decapitated her. The feminine figure hissed at her, coiling its arms for another swift blow before Garrus grasped her arms from behind and wrenched her to the ground. Blood still pouring from his shoulder wound, Grunt crushed her beneath his massive feet and acknowledged their teamwork with a grin soaked in blood.
Chapter Fifteen

Time...such a long time after it seemed to begin, Shepard realized that the frantic skirmish had quelled, permanently. The sound of lungs heaving could be heard from her team members as she wiped the blood and sweat away from her eyes. Not one of their number had escaped the attack without injury, and the ruthless blades of the phantoms inflicted painful wounds.

Garrus steadied himself on the steps, his blue blood oozing from a slash on his chestplate. He held his now-broken arm gingerly at his side. Javik's face was marred by a ghastly, deep gash that carried horrifically through one of his eyes, blood trickling down his neck in dark green rivulets. Liara's breaths were coming in little more than small gasps, her pale clothing stained purple from the blood of a hundred separate slashes, her right arm carrying a painful bullet wound. Grunt's huge teeth were clenched as he extracted a piece of a phantom's broken sword from his knee while Mikka worked to stanch the flow of deep red krogan blood from the terrible slug wound at his shoulder, the doctor's work was made that much harder by the fact that the massive krogan refused to stay stationary.

Shepard looked at them all with anguish and wretchedness contorting her soul. Even though their bodies were bloodied and bruised, each of their eyes defiantly asked to carry on, upwards. The sound of rushing air from above increased, the entire tower's structure seemed to heave a little under their feet again, followed by the tortuous sound of twisting metal. Garrus nodded gravely towards Shepard, telling her of his determinism, and their direction.

With wordless toil, each one of them turned their feet towards the steps and declared their undying desire to continue. Shepard caught up with the turian above her as they approached the third level. Glancing at his severed armor, her face clouded with darkness. She did not notice her own pain, the red blood that dripped down her own arm, the tear across her own forehead that oozed the crimson liquid into her eyes. There was only the Crucible, only the end of it all...

And then, a sepulchral sound echoed in the returned quiet of the tower's interior. A rending, breathless gasp that gouged at the soul and spoke a black, atrocious word into the ears of all present.

Her body turning slower than she asked of it, Shepard's eyes laid on Samara a few steps below. A cancer of disbelief and denial flooded her body.

The Justicar's head was bowed as she looked downwards at the silvery blade that protruded from her gut. The last phantom, missed by all, was uncloaking behind her as it carelessly wrenched the sword from her body. The old asari stumbled for a moment before falling to her knees with a quiet moan.

Shepard floundered for her weapon as a nauseating blanket of refusal settled over her mind. Cold sweat and nausea overpowering her, she released a round from her pistol's barrel with numb fingers, onto numb ears. The slug whistled into empty space even as Garrus surged forward. His face contorted in rage, he knocked the phantom on her back with a heavy blow from his clenched fists. Liara threw a bubble of stasis around the enemy immediately, giving the team valuable time to react.

Time...

Shepard watched with slumped shoulders as the Phantom was executed by Jack, or Miranda, or Garrus or Coats...she didn't know which of them dealt the final blow. It mattered not, she cared not. Her feet felt slovenly as she shuffled towards Samara, a pool of purple blood collecting around the asari's motionless body. Even as she knelt, turned the Justicar over and saw the terrible, single wound to her body, Shepard's hands shook, and her mind reeled with refusal. She looked over her shoulder dumbly as she cradled the asari's head.

"Mikka...hold on, Samara...we'll fix this..."

Her mouth worked, formed words, but a ringing in her ears prevented any reply from reaching her. She felt the body in her hands convulse with pain. Mikka came forward, but through symbolism alone. Wringing his hands and seeing the mortally wounded Samara, he stood by Shepard solemnly, his eyes mired in anguish for the woman he knew not.

The faces of all present mirrored his anguish and dumbfounded sorrow as they stood close by. Miranda's eyes welled with tears as Coats laid an arm across her slim shoulders. Grunt was silent, brooding – Tali wept silently. But for all their sorrow and solemnity, it was their commander who was refusing to submit to reality. Shepard cradled the gasping Samara as she convulsed, frantic words escaping mindlessly from her mouth as the lifeblood of her friend seeped away.

"It's alright Samara...we'll be able to...stop the bleeding with some medi-gel. Mikka! I think I have some...here..."

Before any could stop her, Shepard futilely dispensed her last first aid application into the asari's body from her omni-tool. Laying a palm on her pallid forehead, she began to try to unbuckle the punctured armor from Samara's torso. Her fingers slipped. The slick sensation of copious amounts of blood under her fingers from the deep gut wound stopped her movements. Eyes transfixed ahead of her into space, she contacted reality again as she lifted her hand, regarding her purple-soaked glove. She saw the wound, saw the way the Justicar's eyes were closed, saw that her medi-gel had only dulled the last sensation of pain the asari would ever feel. Her throat closed,

"Samara?"

Her lower lip creased, eyes blurred...Liara placed a gentle hand on her shoulder, her voice quivering.

"Shepard..."

Garrus was on her other side, he applied slight pressure to her shattered shoulder.

"She's gone, Shepard..."

She began to rise with his assistance, watching Samara's face grow smaller...but then her hands were shoving the others from her in a flailing, indignant rage.

"Let go of me!!..."

On her knees again, Karen Shepard wept unabated at the side of the vanquished asari, grasping her cold hands, her shoulders heaving with heavy sobs as another piece of her soul died. And the fingers twitched.

"Shepard."

A faint voice, a calm voice...Samara's body glowed with a faint blue aura.

"Do not grieve."

Those words only ensured that the tears came ever faster. The tired, battered N7 remained crumpled by her dying friend's side. The fingers moved slightly in her hands as Samara's black eyes opened, each word from her bloodied lips heavy with effort.

"Soon...I shall be one with the Goddess...in whose presence I shall know no shame."

With labored breaths, Garrus closed his eyes, lowered his head as the human and the asari clung to each other on the floor. Shepard choked on tears and sorrow and a haze of regret as she stroked Samara's forehead.

"Don't leave us...come with me!..."

Her face growing bluish-white, Samara managed to lift a hand to the weeping human's cheek. Even in death, her wisdom shone in the darkness, gracing all around her.

"I cannot follow you where you go, Shepard. Make my body the last one broken on this place..."

Through her tears, Shepard watched the black eyes shimmer with a faint blue glow. The sobs of all present befitted the passing of the thousand years of life Samara had carried with her. The floor under their feet lurched with an ugly motion, the rushing sound returned above their heads. Time stabbed the shadows of their sorrow. The asari managed to lift herself up ever so slightly. Looking into her human friend's eyes with her timeless gaze, she cupped Shepard's face in her blood-crusted hands.

"Go home, Shepard. Go..."

Samara's face contorted one last time, but the look of love for her friend and companions never left her. With one last, great sight, the ancient asari Justicar laid her head down, and died.

~

The access tunnel they climbed up was barely wide enough to allow them access. At the summit of the top maintenance floor of Citadel Tower, they had followed the sound of rushing air and chaos into this tiny tube of aluminum and darkness in the desperate hope that it would lead them to the roof. The moment they entered the crawlway, their communicators had cut out with static, giving them an even more definitive sense of being alone in this place.

Several times during their ascent, they had stopped silently and cast their eyes behind them, down the ladder. The myriad of sounds and creaks coming from the tower played tricks with their minds, made them pause to ensure nothing – and no one – was following up behind them.

The flashlights from Garrus' and Coats' weapons on the lower rungs cast wobbling, odd beams of light upwards into the circular passage to guide the others as they ascended in the order Shepard had dictated. At the head of their agonizingly slow moving chain, the inexhaustible Osiris pulled his large armored form over rung after rung on the tiny ladder. His powerful optical circuits illuminated the upper reaches of the tunnel. Shepard was then followed by Liara, Javik and the others. Grunt anchored their chain at the rear.

They clambered upwards, sweating in the darkness but also somewhat grateful for it. It hid their red-rimmed eyes and torn spirits from each other. It hid Shepard's sorrow-streaked face. It hid the bloodstained armor and broken bones.

As their hands hauled their numb bodies on their miserable journey up the ladder, minutes seemed like hours, and as Shepard inched higher behind Osiris, cold tendrils of doubt prised their way into her mind. They could end up trapped in this pointless place – their collective flesh turning to dust that would be expelled from the station at the beginning of the next cycle.

>>Shepard-Commander.<<

Osiris' voice shook Shepard from her dark preoccupation. She peered upwards.

"What?"

The prime's synthetic tones created a tinny echo in the confined shaft that reverberated endlessly.

>>I have arrived at the upper constrains of the passageway.<<

Several rungs below her, Shepard could hear the others stop immediately, lungs heaving furiously in the half darkness.

>>Access hatch is sealed. This presents a complication.<<

Through puffy eyes, his commander looked at the oddly-shaped opening ahead of them. Allowing herself a brief moment to simply hang on the rungs of the ladder and catch her breath in the claustrophobic place, her reply was monotone.

"Can you tear it open?"

The geth shifted his weight on the ladder and proceeded to hammer the hatch with swift blows from his fists. The noise of metal striking metal caused the others' ears to ring painfully, but this was forgotten as they felt the tower shudder around them once again.

>>Negative. Physical pressure insufficient. Unable to locate access panel or terminal.<<

Shepard's fists clenched around the rungs of the ladder in frustration. Another vision of a swirling nebula of post-harvest dust flashed across her conscience. Futile ideas coursed through her mind with abandon.

"Do you think an omni-blade would make a dent? What about biotics?"

She heard the exhausted Liara moan quietly behind her at the suggestion even as she knew the answers to her questions. Sighing deeply and coughing in the increasingly thin oxygen, Shepard called downwards to the others.

"Okay, ahh...has anybody got any ideas? A shot from the widow, or..."

A sudden electronic noise from below her made her stop as a red light flared in Tali's hands. The quarian had already begun clambering her way past the other team members to the head of the squad. A small hope flickered in the near-darkness as Shepard watched her approach from beneath, catching Aria's mutter of 'never gonna live this down' as Tali continued upwards, using the asari's shoulders as footholds.

"Talk to me, Tali."

Shepard breathed as the quarian arrived on her rung of the ladder. They were squashed together in ridiculous fashion in the tiny conduit, so much so that Shepard could even make out the faint, smoky outline of Tali's facial features. The silver eyes behind the mask were smiling once again, even in this hellhole. She brandished a small, octagonal device as it flashed its red light in their faces.

"Molecular-disruption mine. Prototype...mine, actually. It'll dissolve the hatch into a cloud of dust...probably."

Shepard's eyes widened, her expression incredulous as the sound of rushing air above them reached a painful pitch.

"Probably?!"

Mikka's fast muttering came from far below them.

"Omniblades useless, insufficientweaponmunitions. Onlyoption onlyoption."

Tali looked down at him, nodding, but she also hesitated before continuing upwards to the hatch.

"I can't guarantee the blast radius, Shepard. I've never even used this thing. To be safe, we would really need some kind of protection or...barrier..."

Shepard looked at Liara guiltily as the asari pressed her lips together, clasping the ladder with hands that shook from exhaustion.

"I...I can try, Shepard..."

But a dark shape wrenched her shoulder with a bony, blue hand.

"Oh shit you're so weak!"

With an irritated, impatient tone and expression, Aria hauled Liara back down the ladder and threw her at Garrus below. Having discarded her jacket at the bottom of the small, humid tunnel, the Omega dictator appeared wearing nothing but an impractical black leather bodysuit. She had escaped the battle with the Phantoms relatively unscathed, save for a bruise to her cheek.

"Just hurry the fuck up, quarian. I'm ready."

Tali continued her climb past Osiris, but Shepard's hands slipped on the ladder with a clammy, nervous sweat. She frowned deeply, all the while listening to the rushing wind around the tower that echoed in their tunnel. Reaching out, she shook Aria's by the shoulder harshly.

"This is serious, Aria. Can-you-do-this...?"

But her answer came only with a glance. As the thin asari turned her sightless gaze towards her, Shepard saw that the jagged tattoos that wreathed her face now framed intense black eyes that were already in the spiritual trance of the asari. Turning her gaze back towards her unseen target, Aria slowly raised her hands...and Shepard grasped the ladder tighter, looking upwards.

"Do it, Tali – then stick behind Osiris. He'll have to cover you."

>>Affirmative.<<

A faint noise of suction could be heard as the quarian attached the prototype mine to the solid metal hatch at the top of the access tunnel. The red light flashed briefly and began pulsing at regular intervals.

"That's it! Barrier!"

Tali immediately slid down behind the geth as Osiris turned his own back on the strange device. The massive prime stooped as best he could into a defensive hunch, enveloping and dwarfing the tiny quarian with his metallic body. A flash of biotics from Aria blinded Shepard momentarily as she pressed her body against the sides of the tunnel and braced herself. A nanosecond later the powerful barrier glistened above their heads, sealing off the end of the tiny tunnel in a curtain of blue energy. Aria remained motionless, maintaining it with a strong, black stare and outstretched hands. And the red light blinked out.

Amongst the reverberating shockwave and atomized cloud of metal left behind by the mine, Shepard heard a shriek from Tali. The corridor had been blown apart at its head as the hatch had vaporized, and the bizarre, swirling gale from the top of Citadel Tower had almost caught the quarian and wrenched her out of the tunnel head-first. Osiris had moved with the instantaneous reactions of the geth and snatched her by an elbow, holding her back until she was able to right herself and grab the torn ends of the access ladder again amidst the rushing wind and flying debris. Standing behind them on the ladder, Shepard could see nothing and only relied on her hearing and instinct. She gave none of them any chance – or choice.

"That's it! Osiris – get her out of there! Come on – go! GO!"

The geth ahead of her acknowledged her command with the habitual, hurried sound of data transfer, and with some effort hauled both himself and Tali out of the blown-open hatch. The torn guide railing ripped Shepard's palms open as she followed and crawled out into the bizarre, rushing wind and pelting debris. She could hear the others following her as she had ordered, but she was also cruelly aware that the time for ensuring all were present and correct had expired. Scrabbling to her feet, a piece of flying metal caught her a glancing blow to the jaw, biting deeply.

"Uhhng shit!"

Several curses and thuds told her that the others were faring no better as she edged forward on her knees. Her hair was being whipped into her eyes by the wind, her armor scraped the roof of Citadel Tower as Shepard looked around uselessly in the haze. The roaring above her head sounded like a waterfall, deafening them all as they groped forward in the confusion. And then – the cloud of vaporized metal began to clear...

A scene the likes of which none of them had ever imagined was displayed to them above the roof of Citadel Tower. Awestruck, disbelieving gasps escaped from all present as they cast their eyes to the heavens and the tattered, black void above them. Against all odds, the Crucible had arrived.
Chapter Sixteen

Towering over their heads and blotting out the blackness beyond, the city-sized device of all their hopes rested on its massive power linkage, which had coupled to a platform on the opposite side of the tower's roof. The enormous sphere's platinum carapace reflected and magnified every scrap of available light, turning the innards of the entire station into a place of refracted prisms that caught in the smoke and destruction of war. It dwarfed everything around it as its docking thrusters – which were creating the surreal gale and tearing the skin of the tower's roof apart – kept it steady.

Hundreds of meters above their heads, a sequence of immense plates and interconnected rods began to shift position. The team was rooted to the spot as they watched the huge, oddly elegant, fragile-looking instrument transform its upper-portions into a huge array of reflector plates held together by glowing tubes of element zero.

After Hackett's armada had lost the ability to control its movements, the intelligent device had extended bracing arms from the upper portions of its massive power plant. They had deployed out into the ward arms where they had torn and ripped their way through the entire structure of the great station until they found its outer skin and gained a foothold. Speared by these braces, each ward arm was held fast in the grip of the Crucible, forced into supporting the great weapon's massive structure. The source of the increasing tremors and concussions the team had been feeling since they arrived at Citadel Tower was now all too apparent.

And yet, the device was strangely devoid of potency. It held itself steady, as if waiting. Its power plant was quiescent, the eezo rods that held the array of diffraction plates were muted, faint.

"It's waiting for us..." Liara breathed as she crouched next to Shepard on the roof of the tower in the raging thrusters' wind. But the words had barely left her before something else stole all their attention away from the monstrous Crucible. An angry, red beam raked the nearest ward arm across the void, sending chunks of debris into the artificial gravity above the massive city. In the distance, a claxon sounded death as it was brought closer by mighty, black legs. With white, wide eyes, Shepard saw that which they had hoped against hope not to confront. The oldest of the Reapers – Harbinger – had come for them. The sight jolted Shepard from inaction, an ugly, anxious expression showed beneath her dirt-and-blood crusted face.

"Move!"

Amidst the tearing wind from the Crucible's thrusters and the flying metal from the crumbling tower's roof, each of them fought against their very instincts, breaking into a desperate, last-hope dash to reach some part of the Crucible that would show them what to do...how to end this nightmare. Shepard sprinted recklessly across the roof in the buffeting wind even as tearing metal glanced off her armor and bit into her skin. The half-blinded Javik followed close behind her, a smooth metallic device now clutched tightly in his right hand. Liara had caught up with him and summoned a weak barrier field as they ran wildly towards the Crucible's power plant together. Shepard saw the protective bubble glittering a million times over as it shielded them from the smaller pieces of flying debris...

...We stumble – but her barrier holds strong. A silver-blue bubble of life speaking to the swarms of our enemies in a silent language of defiance. Just...have to...get there...

Shepard was the first to reach what she identified through the pandemonium as an interface panel on the massive Crucible's power plant coupling. Her lungs burning, another wash of red over her shoulder signaled that Harbinger was beginning to destroy the Presidium on its unrelenting journey to the Crucible. A twinge anxiety knotted her stomach as she ran her hands frantically over the dead panel. Sweat clouded her vision as her hands with their torn gloves and bloodied palms searched over the bizarre shapes of glyphs and inactive displays. One by one, her companions arrived under the immense power plant of the Crucible alongside her. A dislodged sheet of torn metal shattered against the structure above their heads as their commander continued her delirious search for an interface, switch, something,

"Wha...I don't know what to do! I don't see..."

Javik had arrived at her side, the Prothean dripping green blood from a gash to his shoulder and choking on the debris-filled air. He glanced at the patterns and symbols with his remaining yellow eyes, finding them oddly reminiscent of his mother language. He pointed the hand that held the memory shard at them, yelling to Shepard above the swirling gale of metal.

"These are Pro..."

As his hand neared the lifeless display, a instant arc of green-and-blue energy shot from the panel and enveloped the hand carrying the memory shard. With a hoarse cry, the Prothean fell back from the device, a sickly smell of burned flesh accompanying him. Liara and Garrus caught him, staring with horror at his blackened, wizened hand. Only when Shepard had reached his side did she realize that he no longer clasped the shard.

"Are you alright?" she asked above the chaos as they tried to shield him from the pelting metal. But Javik's eyes weren't on her – neither were anyone else's. Turning slowly in the rushing wind, she was the last to cast her eyes on the memory shard as it was held weightlessly in the thrall of the energy beam coming from the Crucible's power plant. The arcing, crackling energy electrified the air around them, and their tongues tasted metal as the Prothean memory shard containing the virus began to omit a steady hue of green light. Shepard shielded her eyes from the otherworldly glow as her ears began to ring from the thunderous roar of the positioning thrusters above their heads. Dormant skeins of ancient information were becoming energized along its intricate surface, and the light became blinding...

There was a flash of white hot energy, and the shard vaporized in a cloud of atoms. Blinking, Shepard looked from Javik, to Liara, to Garrus...the claxon sounded again as its red wash impacted the base of the tower. Each one of them cowered by the Crucible's power plant as the structure beneath their feet took a mighty heave.

"Hello."

A ghostly hologram of a Prothean had appeared before them. Liara, Garrus, Javik – all took a step towards the entity, but Shepard's face had turned rigid, her eyes wide and staring as the glimmering light from the Prothean's image played on her nerves. She couldn't see anything else around her, only her mind's recollection of her attempted indoctrination. The child stands before me, his laughing eyes give me seconds to choose the fate of the galaxy...

Unholstering her last weapon, she fixed the holographic entity down the barrel of her gun with hands that shook and slipped with perspiration.

"Stay...away...from...me."

Her eyes were unfocused – her voice shook with a cancerous thread of insanity as something shut down inside of her. Garrus watched her in confusion as she began to step backwards into the flying debris and torn metal. He didn't know what to do, but he knew that their time was up. He turned to face the entity as Tali moved behind Shepard, preventing her from retreating any further.

"What are you?"

The image of the Prothean folded its arms into the sleeves of its robes and fixed him with its narrowed, glittering eyes. Slowly, it raised its gaze beyond him to the hulking form of the Reaper as it slammed into the roof of Citadel Tower, scoring the sides of the great building with its immense legs as it gained a foothold. The structure lurched alarmingly under the impact as great slabs and beams of the tower's roof were sent flying into the air. Harbinger's massive form straightened on black-plated legs. It deafened all as it spoke with a timeless, emotionless voice.

"SHEPARD."

Their chests reverberated with that one, terrible word. The team at the base of the Crucible hid their scorched eyes from the red glare, skin prickling with anticipation of the molten death that awaited them.

But the Prothean holograph spoke again, "Harbinger. This was foreseen."

A sudden, ferocious pulse of energy was released from one of the auxiliary power cells contained within the Crucible's power plant. Bewildered, they watched on as the searing beam of plasma impacted Harbinger's massive core of red energy directly. As surely as the monstrous machine of death had been readying another blast to quell their insurrection, it now ceased all motion. Its giant red eye sputtered and swirled with an odd green radiation, and the veins of blue Reaper energy within its joins flickered and dimmed. The companions could hear the sound of spooling down hydraulics – unbelievably, Harbinger was, for the moment, disabled.

With Garrus on one side of her and Tali on the other, Shepard surfaced from the fog of surreal, irrational fear. Stepping slowly towards the image of the Prothean, she drew a shuddering breath.

"Who are you? What are you?"

All eleven individuals present regarded the entity that had resulted from the dissemination of the memory shard with ambiguity. It stared back at them – its glittering, untouchable visage and perfectly folded scholar's robes preposterous under the circumstances. With a blink of its glimmering eyes, the image of the Prothean suddenly changed shape. It spoke rapidly, but clearly, as its image shifted a hundredfold.

"We are the Protheans. We are the Inosannon. We are the Ferjeran. We are the Hulon. We are the Sef and the Myrrta and the Ustuntul..."

Images of utterly alien species flashed before their eyes in the raging wind underneath the Crucible. Shepard's eyes ached as the rapid cycling continued. She found it impossible to absorb them all – each were unique, alien, unheard of. Small, large, bizarre, graceful, hulking, sophisticated and apeish. Finally, the image settled back once more on the form of the Prothean.

"Collectively, we are known as The Convocation."

Liara regarded the hologram with an incredulous air as she stepped closer.

"Those...people. Those races – they are..."

The entity stood motionless underneath the Crucible.

"We are The Convocation. We have been inserted into the datasets of the Ishnavaya virus as a memory – a record of our species by our people's last breaths of achievement. But we are more than that..."

The flickering image of the Prothean was broken off by Shepard. Her tone inflected impatience as she gestured at the static Harbinger.

"Can you do that...to all of them?"

The holograph looked at her directly as the surreal tempest around them began to abate.

"No. The contingency local electro-magnetic pulse was the last alteration to the designs for the Crucible by the Prothean lead researcher Ksad Ishan who also gave his physical semblance to this program. It is solely meant for local, short-term Reaper abatement to allow for initiation and dispersion of the Ishnavaya virus. It became clear to him that the likelihood of the Citadel being taken by Reaper forces during Crucible deployment was greater than previous cycles had estimated. We view his forethought...fortunate."

Somewhere next to Shepard, a grunt of satisfaction came from Javik even as he cradled his destroyed hand. The entity continued, an urgency tingeing its speech as Harbinger continued its slumber.

"We were inserted into the Ishnavaya program as a contingency."

Shepard eyed the green, glittering Prothean suspiciously as she realized that a quiet had descended on the roof of the scarred tower. She licked her cracked, bloodstained lips.

"A contingency to what? We're here to deploy the Ishnavaya virus. Period."

Garrus shifted his weight uncomfortably next to her, glancing over at Javik and Liara as they listened to the holograph speak, enthralled by its mysteries.

"We are here to remind you of what you are doing, commander, and to ensure you are aware of the choices you have."

Shepard looked around slowly at each of her team that stood with her at the feet of the Crucible. Osiris was listening tirelessly to the fundamental exchange of words; Jack stood near the back with her arms folded, a scowl marring her face. Garrus had fixed the glittering holograph with a suspicious stare, his mandibles twitching restlessly. Shepard turned back to the image that spoke for The Convocation, swallowing deliberately.

"And what 'choice' would that be?"

The image of the Prothean snapped its head up to look at the massive Harbinger.

"Alert. Contingency EMP efficacy is estimated to expire in fifty-five seconds..."

Shepard's pistol sailed through the holograph's head as she snapped with desperate rage.

"Goddamn you! What choice?!"

The image of the Prothean dissolved once again, replacing itself a hundredfold with the continuing, cycling images of species long-since extinguished by the Reapers.

"You are about to initiate the Ishnavaya virus. This will end the ritual of the cycles and harvests and preserve the current cycle for an unforeseeable length of time. This has never been accomplished in the history of the galaxy since the Reapers rose to control all life. While the Reapers will cease to be, the consequences of your actions millennias from now cannot be extrapolated. You still have to make the choice – a choice that will echo down the megaannum. By your actions, you will be committing the galaxy to the continuation of life in this cycle, and all the advancements, atrocities and senselessness it brings with it. While we agree that the genocide of the Reapers' harvests is an abomination, the fact remains that none of us would have risen to exist without it."

The silence was thick, cloying. Slowly, Shepard straightened her back, her mind absorbing the words of The Convocation. She looked around her to her shattered, exhausted teammates and noted the defiance in their eyes. Liara shook her head slightly, Aria was regarding the holograph with a thin-lipped sneer and Coats looked back at her nervously as he supported Miranda's exhausted body.

Almost involuntarily, Shepard cast her eyes upwards as the reflected light from Earth's distant surface dimmed suddenly. Beyond them, beyond the Crucible's vast array of plates at the tip of the Citadel's ward arms, the blackness of space had given birth to a legion of Reapers. They darkened the void from which they raced, massive arms grasping towards the center of the Citadel and the Crucible. Harbinger had yet to succeed in its mission, and they were not waiting for it.

Shepard's gaze rested with Garrus. The turian stood in his battle-weary, scorched armor, looking into her eyes with a steadfast, safe, intense silence. Not one waver. Not one question. As it should be. Shepard turned back with a fluid motion to face the entity of energy, her face at once both haggard and unfaltering.

"That's not a choice. We can't account for what hasn't happened yet. We are here to destroy the Reapers. Today."

The Convocation ceased its endless cycling of extinct life forms as a faint hum of energy could be heard coming from behind them. They didn't need to look back to see the glittering pinpoints of blue Reaper energy begin to pulse consciousness back into the veins of Harbinger. The searing heat of gathering red death warmed their backs. The Reaper shattered their minds with an incredulous question laced with obsidian ridicule.

"IS THAT THE WAY YOU WANT IT?"

Shepard stood at the front of her squad, the collective efforts of all present spurring her onwards. She fixed the returned image of the Prothean with an unyielding gaze, refusing to acknowledge the vanguard of the Reapers at her back even as it shook the tower with a step forward.

"That's the way it is."

The abruptness of her short reply hung with clarity in the oddly still air of the tortured station. The holographic entity heard her reality and understood it. Its purpose fulfilled, the glistening image of the Prothean closed its eyes, nodded in acknowledgement, and disappeared.

~

One second. One split second was all it took for the Crucible to synthesize the Ishnavaya virus data contained within the Prothean memory shard. But inside that one second and all the nanoseconds it contained, the fate of the Galaxy and outcome of the Reaper war were written.

From the tips of the Citadel's ward arms to where they connected to the Presidium, pathways of pure, blue-white energy surfaced. They burned through the city streets, razed every skyscraper to the ground, blew out the flames of war and vaporized the detritus of the Harvest on their journey to Citadel Tower. The Presidium glowed white-hot as it received the immense surge of power. It coursed channels through the burned-out cities of the wards – all leading to the tower. The designs of innumerable cycles all led and directed the power of the Citadel's core to the Crucible, to the one device that the Reapers had been unable to eradicate from history.

Within the nanoseconds preceding the Harbinger's pillar of crimson death, the central core of the Crucible's power plant coursed with the liquid plasma it had never before tasted. The towering structure commanded, filtered and orchestrated the energy, even as the intricate structure of eezo tubes, plates of platinum and nodes of dark matter above began to ring with a resonance never before heard.

Atop Citadel Tower, Shepard's last sentence still hung in the air. Too late the overbearing form of Harbinger realized that the device was not intended to be used in the manner it had assumed. There was no ammunition, no barrel, and no trigger to this 'weapon'. It did not need to target, and it did not need to be brought to bear in the primitive sense they knew. Too late did the approaching Reaper hordes arrive above the Presidium, and too late did they identify the strange sound of the data transfer as it seared into their conscience and saturated their cores. Diagnostics running at light-speed were still too slow and too late. The virus spread its silent, crystalline matrix amongst the Reapers, exploiting the galaxy-wide consciousness that the great machines had coveted for so long. The efforts and research of the immeasurable cycles of civilizations that had graced the galaxy before this moment all coalesced to this single point in time. The promise they had made to the unknown – the hopes they had gifted to species that didn't even exist yet in their time – all were fulfilled in one nanosecond of grand, perfect execution.

Shepard screwed her eyes shut as they all shrunk from Harbinger's searing ray of deadly energy. The building heat from the monstrous Reaper's energizing weapon had been the last thing she felt as Garrus dragged her to the ground by the base of the Crucible and its blinding torrent of blue-white energy. Something inside of her recoiled as it remembered that sensation, the sensation of increasing, unearthly heat followed by erupting earth, liquefied rock and seared skin. Clutching the turian's arm with white knuckles, she waited...waited for the pain, waited for the smell of vaporized skin and the sting of burned lung. But they never came. She could still feel her tightened muscles, her cold armor, the hair plastered to her forehead. The heat was gone. The noise was gone. The claxon was gone. Hope could find no place in her as Shepard's eyes opened to slits and the ringing in her ears subsided. Each one of them fought with the same terror-laced curiosity as one by one they broke from their stricken positions and risked opening their eyes...

"By the Goddess!," Liara gasped with a small breath. On his knees, Garrus allowed an awestruck moan to escape him. Miranda gasped and Coats bellowed as a reverent murmur of quarian language came from Tali. Shepard vaguely registered a defiant roar from Grunt...or perhaps it was Javik. It mattered not, for the image they were presented with was enough to cause her to stumble to one knee, her mouth agape, her mind not wanting to admit to her heart what she was seeing.

Harbinger's ugly, red eye-core towered above them, swirling with polluted, foreign colors. Green, blue, white, red, yellow, purple, until the dizzying array of swirling incandescence ceased and went black. Every inch of the terrible, synthetic machine went dark. Nodes blackened and veins of Reaper energy were eclipsed, until there was not one point of light or life visible.

Those who had managed to rise to their feet quickly sunk to their knees again as Harbinger's massive form ceased its forward, shockwave-inducing stride and began to lean to the left with a distinct lack of coordination. As Shepard looked on in stunned silence, arcing tendrils of dark energy collected and discharged from behind where the Reaper's angry red eye had once been.

The mass effect core of the Old Machine was tearing itself apart, as instructed to by the Ishnavaya virus program. Barely discernible, crackling bolts of black lightning forced their unstoppable way out of the machine's great carapace at all angles, tearing legs, cracking metal and smashing crest. The Reaper began to shatter and dissolve as a subversive, invisible shockwave flexed its way from mass effect core to outside world.

"Get down!" Garrus screamed as a nucleus of white, unspeakable energy expanded outwards from Harbinger's stricken form and cracked carapace.

In a sudden, earth-shattering space-time rupture, the massive Reaper's warped mass effect core became exposed as it destroyed itself – and its host – instantaneously. The resulting sonic waves of energy and deafening blast sent all present sprawling across the shattered roof of Citadel Tower.

Coats sheltered Miranda as best he could against the metal of the Crucible's power plant as Jack, Javik and Liara huddled together. Aria and Mikka sheltered by Osiris as the geth crouched in a ball on the metal floor. Grunt attempted to cover Shepard, Garrus and Tali simultaneously with his massive form. The blinding flash of the core discharge raced across them and out over the Presidium, and a strange, hot wind sprung up around them in the aftermath of the soul-rending explosion.

Shepard was the first to venture outside of Grunt's large, protective embrace. Her shuffling footfalls could be heard as she looked up, her desiccated lips cracked and bleeding with an exhausted, disbelieving smile.

Harbinger – the oldest of the Reapers – was no more. The skeletal frame of its great legs still clung to the edge of the roof of Citadel Tower, and its shattered, blackened carapace hung precariously off the side of the building, sheared hydraulics and frayed cables being all that held it from tumbling to the Presidium below. The war had been won.

A haze of unwanted exhaustion overcame Shepard as a crescendo of thoughts raced through her mind. She vaguely registered the yelling and whooping of her comrades. Grunt's voice deafened her ears as he roared an incantation to Calross – the mother of the thresher maws. Javik cried with hoarse vengeance as he peered down the side of the tower after Harbinger's corpse, while Liara embraced Tali tearfully.

Over the numbness that was sweeping her skin, Shepard felt Garrus' arms encircle her slumped shoulders. She leaned into the hard metal of his armor, smelling blood and smoke and steel. Lungs filled with what felt like the first breath she had taken in hours, she looked at the turian's scarred, bruised face.

"Helluva day's work..."

She had hoped for a reply, some small shred of the turian's legendary attitude that would give her a moment of escape, of hope. But Garrus' response was cut off by a sudden, heavy metallic impact to the dilapidated tower.

"What the fuck?!"

Aria's harsh language jarred them into action once more. As Shepard limped towards the edge of the tower's roof, she saw a flash of black sail under her viewpoint and onwards to the opposite ward arm. Looking out across the Presidium and beyond to the immense arms of the station, her spirits sunk.

On the blackened, spent Citadel, the only light source by which they could see was the cold, harsh reflected sunlight from Earth's atmosphere below them. Through the smoke of extinguished fires and the debris-filled void, the horde of Reapers that had been following Harbinger to the Citadel had become a spiraling field of gargantuan wreckage. With each black mass of wrecked legs and torn metallic body came pealing thunder as they entered the fractured gravity bubbles that still surrounded the ward arms and Presidium.

The impacts of the mighty wreckage all along the station's surface created billowing plumes of rubble as dead cities were pulverized by dead Reapers. A mostly intact carcass of one of the immense machines entered the atmosphere of the Presidium and slammed into its crumbling viewing galleries above the lake. Another collection of constricted black legs that had been severed from a mighty body flew through the central ring of the station before hitting one of the support arms of the Crucible, sending plate metal and support struts accelerating out into the void. All around them, debris from dead Reapers rained down upon the broken Citadel station and Crucible.

Shepard flinched as a flaming collection of black metal cartwheeled upon impact at the ground level of the Presidium, gouging great tracts into the station before colliding with the base of Citadel Tower in an explosion of showering debris. The noise was earth-shattering, and she felt the platform under her feet give a great sigh, and lurch dangerously downwards before stopping with a jolt. The noise of twisting, shearing metal assailed her ears as their world became a writhing sphere of debris and destruction brought about by the war they had finally won.
Chapter Sixteen

Breathing quickly, heavily, Shepard looked around. Her lungs couldn't find enough oxygen. Her mouth moved but no sound would come from it. Inevitability was smothering her thoughts, the sound of destruction near and far on a massive scale was clouding her judgment. She saw Liara lower herself to the metallic roof's surface, folding her legs underneath her calmly. Mikka was on his knees beside Tali, his doctor's coat bloodied and blackened, rubbing her shoulder with a soothing hand.

Out of the void, a Sovereign-sized Reaper accelerated chaotically and slammed into the primary support arm that linked Bachjret ward to the Presidium. It tore through hundreds of meters of metal, and Shepard watched dumbly, disbelievingly as the dead Reaper severed almost all the anchoring linkage that kept the great ward in place. Slowly, an ever-increasing vibration moved through their bodies from the tower beneath their feet as the terrible blow to the structural integrity of the station began to make itself felt. As Shepard looked on, beads of cold sweat studding her forehead, Bachjret ward began to drift in the void towards its neighbor...

"We've gotta get out of here..."

Shepard's words were nothing more than a mutter, borne from a mind numbed by exhaustion and hopelessness. When no reply to action came, Shepard glanced around her to the rest of her team. They did not return her gaze. Coats was seated close to the edge of the roof by Miranda, smoothing her matted black hair with a burned hand. Their faces were placid, alleviated. Osiris stood motionless close to one of the immense black legs of Harbinger; Javik was running his hands over his ancient particle rifle, his eyes distant. Shepard gasped for air as the damaged support arm of the Crucible finally crumpled and collapsed from the ward it had been tethered to.

"We've got to get out of here!"

This was a scream. It came from her ragged throat like a banshee's wail. She shook Garrus from his thoughts as he looked out over the decaying station wordlessly.

"Come on! This place is falling apar..."

"Shepard – we're FUCKED!"

Jack threw the words at her commander from where she sat in an untidy heap on the metallic roof. With a resounding clash, the tower pitched violently under their feet once more as the human biotic stared at her.

"Maybe you can just give it a rest for a second, huh?"

Liara, Garrus and the others watched uncomfortably as Jack threw her hands up, gesturing at their impending ruin as it screamed through the void at them on dead black legs.

"We all knew it was going to end this way! It's not like we came up here for a blind date or somethin'! This thing's over – we did it...you can at least let us die in peace, for god's sake!"

Jack's words carried further and louder than even she had intended. They hung in the air like a premonition, a flourish from an inkwell that was running thin. 'Die...' That single syllable sunk with lead boots to the pit of Shepard's stomach. Now – here, at the last – she was faced with something that was uncontrollable, some dormant thing that Jack had given voice to that she couldn't cope with...

No.

A black rage drenched her vision as she strode towards Subject Zero, grasping hold of her leather jacket and hauling her to her feet. Jack's eyes widened at the look of pure apoplexy in those blue pupils.

"Do you have nothing else to live for?!"

Jack laughed at the question, ignoring the fact that Tali, Mikka and some of the others had risen to their feet during their charged exchange.

"That's not the fucking point and you know..."

"ANSWER ME! ANY OF YOU!"

Shepard twisted the scruff of Jack's torn jacket as she shrieked the demand through clenched teeth. The lithe, tattooed body writhed under Shepard's unrelenting grasp.

"Shepard..."

Liara's quiet voice succeeded in making the hand that shook with rage loosen its grip on Jack. Breathing heavily, Shepard relinquished control of the biotic's body as another shockwave resounded through their feet. Another flex in the stricken tower's backbone finally caused the remains of the massive Harbinger to succumb to gravity. The entire, decimated shell of the Reaper fell – scraping and tearing its way down the sides of Citadel Tower. Shepard looked around at all present with an unmoving, flinty stare.

"We're getting out of here. Now."

One by one, they picked their exhausted forms up from the cold, metallic surface in answer to her statement. Garrus nodded, Coats and Miranda left their remaining weapons lying where they had sat as they rose. Running a hand through her caked hair, Shepard gestured to the access hatch they had clambered up through.

"Come on – we've got to get off this damn thing before it collapses."

Relief flooded her veins as she saw more than a few nods of weary agreement from the others. Casting his rifle to the wind, Garrus was by her side as they broke into a painful sprint towards the access tunnel that would lead them back down through the tower's interior. They didn't stop to glance back at the sound of splintering and cracking coming from one of the Crucible's other bracing arms, or for the shattering sound of another piece of dead Reaper as it collided with the side of the tower, causing them all to lose their balance momentarily. Whatever happened now was out of their hands.

Shepard had almost set a foot inside of their escape route when, "Shepard!"

From behind them, Tali's voice was horror-filled, tearful. Bracing herself for what new terror awaited them, she saw only the quarian standing by the geth, desperately tugging on one of his hands. Osiris was motionless but for the slight rocking caused by Tali. The image of her tiny body tugging on the hulking prime would have been comical, but as Shepard slowly retraced her steps, the scene became clear. An appalling, agonizing admission breached within her.

"Osiris?"

The one word was quavering with guilt as she arrived by Tali's side. The quarian was muttering frantically in her mother language as she persisted in trying to budge the geth from its spot. The prime remained static, his optical circuits fixed straight ahead and unmoving. Garrus and Liara now joined them while the others were holding and waiting at the access hatch.

"Osiris!"

Shepard urgently shook the geth's heavy arm that still emblazoned with her blood stains, the contagious fear in Tali's voice now infecting her own.

"Prime! Can you hear me?"

The faint noise of processing was heard from the geth as it turned its head towards the source of the buffeting it was experiencing.

>>Cannot establish consensus........no data available. Please return this unit to within Collective proximity for reconfiguration.<<

Shepard's face contorted as she bowed her head under the weight of the genocide she had just committed. An image of Legion – silhouetted by the setting sun of Rannoch – laying down his life to give his people true individualism flashed through her mind's eye. Shepard's voice was muffled as she felt the geth's cool metal on her forehead,

"It's my fault. It's all my fault! I gave them lives to lose..."

Tali's hands clutched the geth's metallic torso as the quarian wept for the synthetic race her people had created, but Shepard continued,

"I'm so sorry, Tali...I...I had no idea. The Reaper code..."

Looking up at the prime through tear-blurred vision, Shepard saw the synthetic return its head back to the meaningless space beyond them as a flash of black metal collided into the upper reaches of the spent Crucible.

"Why didn't he tell us?? He...he must've known!" And faintly, as their commander sobbed into the unforgiving metal armor of the geth, she could still hear Legion's last words to them on the surface of Rannoch. 'I know, Tali.'

Gasping through her tears, Tali clutched onto the geth's arm as if she would maintain a connection between the two.

"He knew, Shepard...I'm sure of it. Legion knew...but he did the right thing. They all knew..."

An instantaneous, earsplitting impact to the edge of the tower's roof knocked them to their knees as black metal and debris lofted over their heads at a deadly speed. Garrus shook both the women dolefully but firmly.

"Shepard, Tali...if we don't go now..."

Nodding, Shepard stepped back from the vessel of Osiris, sobs constricting her breathing even as she pulled Tali with her and forced her to break into a caustic sprint in the direction of the escape hatch. As metal rained down on the roof of Citadel Tower, the tall, unmoving form of the geth prime remained standing amongst the destruction, watching them leave without feeling or perception. Shepard was the last to swing her weary body onto the precarious, torn ladder leading down towards the innards of the tower. Casting one last glance back at the form of the synthetic across the rooftop, she lowered her sorrowful gaze and slid down behind Tali.
Chapter Seventeen

One last flight. Amidst the destruction and chaos and carnage, they scrambled – feet tripping over one another, sliding down broken ladders, dodging falling pieces of the structure they fought to escape.

Shepard vaulted across a twisted mass of metal with abandon as the tower's exterior creaked and groaned in pain. She offered her hand to Liara and Aria, helping them clear the debris that blocked the stairwells and the corridors they hurtled through.

Javik made his way the best he could in front of them, struggling through the partial blindness inflicted upon him by the phantom's sword. The galaxy's last Prothean knew not why he ran, but he did know that the woman they all followed had something driving her, some strange fate that she chased...something that denied them inaction. Over his shoulder, there was a flare of powerful biotic incandescence as Jack deflected a falling slab of metal that would have crushed Mikka. She didn't stop, kept running, but the salarian still offered up his thanks as he followed closely in her tracks.

The once-great building that had sat at the heart of galactic government was now nothing more than a tormented spire of shredded metal that encased the walkways and steps they sprinted across. As if chasing a dream, Shepard fought to catch the faintest of hopes for all that had followed her up here....

"Watch it!"

Garrus grabbed her arm, stopping her in her tracks as a wall of the second floor stairwell caved in under the impact of a severed Reaper leg. Throwing their arms up to shield themselves from the wreckage, another great concussion came from the upper levels. Torn metal glanced off armor and sliced through skin as they forced their way together through the turmoil. As they reached the second floor, Shepard glanced behind her.

"Grunt – come on!"

The massive krogan in his dented, blackened battle armor lumbered behind them all, his great form lacking the quick pace that the others possessed. He charged down the steps towards Shepard as she waited briefly to ensure he kept up with them before continuing downwards. Lungs searing with the pain of breathlessness, they flew towards the ground level with as much haste as they could muster from their shattered bodies.

The destroyed tower was dark. The only source of light came from the upper reaches as silvery earthlight seeped in through the grand, glass atrium above the council chambers, and the lower they delved, the less able they were to see in the murky air. Giant metallic beams laid across walkways, sheets of metal and glass that had rained down during one of the many impacts to the tower lay strewn on the ground level as they approached it. Liara called hoarsely back at Shepard as she, Javik and Aria reached the bottom level.

"Almost there!"

They struggled to keep their footing in the loose debris and broken glass strewn on the destroyed tower's tiled floor. As Mikka, Tali and Jack scrabbled off the last flight of steps onto the ground floor, a groaning, grinding vibration enveloped the entire structure. Shepard peered through the dim air that was thick with suspended cinders and strangling dust. Her breath came in rasps...she could see the faint outline of the entrance door across the central chamber...

Then, with the low, sickening sound of grinding metal and rending beams, the distant, shattered atrium roof of Citadel Tower came crashing towards them under the weight of the Crucible's dislodged power plant. Hopeless, nightmarish fear chilled Shepard's body as she opened her mouth to yell something, but her voice was cut short. In a deafening tempest of contorted metal and bars, each one of them was sent reeling to the ground under a vast field of wreckage.

Again. Deep, cold...alone. Belief is gone...breath is gone...blood is gone. Deaf and numb and hurting....hurting, my love. You defined me. We were bound together. We fought a war, won a war, but I still lost...everything...

Coughing, fighting for breath, Shepard surfaced from the brief grayout with a painful surge of blood in her temples. Her rasping voice was stripped by metal and fire and smoke.

"Garrus!? Liara? GRUNT! Somebody...sound off!"

In the distant, blackened atmosphere, she heard a woman's voice cry in pain. The silence of their metallic tomb was punctuated by continuing tremors and shockwaves as the tower seemed to lament its mortal injuries. Twisting onto her stomach in the debris and destruction, Shepard succeeded in getting to her knees and inching forward in the suffocating, ruinous air. Glass shards tore her palms, a pain seared through her right arm, but desperation demanded she ignore it. Spitting blood and dust from her parched mouth and crawling onwards, she found a familiar, three-fingered hand next to her as a shaft of cold light fell across them.

"Garrus! You okay?"

The pain-soaked gasp that came in reply chilled her blood more succinctly than the voice of Harbinger ever had. She found the turian only a few feet from where she had fallen, pinned beneath a fractured array of rods that had once been part of the Crucible.

"Oh god..." Shepard stammered as she groped in the half-darkness, feeling for a handhold on the sheared mass of beams and metal that trapped him. A glint of metal caught her eye, and she glanced up to see Grunt limping falteringly from the tower, supporting both Coats and Miranda's bloodied bodies with his own.

Fight.

Gritting her teeth against her own pain, pushing with all her exhausted might, Shepard managed to force the shattered scaffolding from Garrus, allowing him to inch out from under the wreckage with a monumental effort. Gasping in agony and shock, he remained at her feet. As another wheeling ray of outside light fell on him, she saw with horror the broken metal rod that had pierced through his armor and embedded itself just above his hip. Shuddering as he tried – and failed – to move, the turian clawed for her hand. His pain-soaked breaths were weak.

"...Shepard...go!..."

That flanging voice was weakened with pain and exhaustion, and Shepard saw his deep blue blood as it trickled from the puncture to his armor. She looked up at him with a bitter smile and regretful shake of her head.

"You know me better than that..."

Gingerly, Shepard touched the rod of metal that protruded from his body. It was slick with blood. Placing a hand on his pale, scarred face, she lent warmth to his pallid metallic complexion.

"No...stay with me, Garrus...I need you. This is gonna hurt like hell..."

The frame of the destroyed Crucible around them shifted suddenly, creaking and wailing its intent to bring the entire building down around their ears. With a last, rueful look into the turian's eyes, Shepard grasped both hands around the jagged metal that impaled him and wrenched it from his body in one swift motion. The ragged cry of pain that came from him burned her heart and tortured her soul, but he was freed. Sobbing with uncontained sympathy, Shepard cast the rod aside and took hold of Garrus' arm.

"Can you stand?"

With Shepard's aid, he struggled to his feet shakily amidst the destruction, clutching his wound as the human he loved supported his tall frame.

"Yeah...ahh I...I think so. C'mon...I think the others have made it out..."

As if in addendum to his statement, Shepard heard Liara's nervous voice call out,

"Shepard? Shepard! Can you hear me!?"

Laboring under the turian's weight, Shepard called breathlessly as she helped him over the last contorted blockade of debris.

"Liara, here!"

Together, one supporting the other, the pair struggled and worked their way from the wreckage of Citadel Tower towards the wash of ice cold light. Coughing, blind and wounded, they fell from the place into the harsh natural light that bathed the Presidium. Shepard squinted, her eyes struggling to adjust to the brightness now that they had exited the nightmarish building. Somewhere nearby, she heard the impact of another dead Reaper as it smashed into another part of the crumbling Citadel.

Liara, Javik, Coats and the rest of the team waited just a few short yards away. Aria was on her knees, cursing, trying to stem the flow of blood from a ghastly slash to her leg. Tali had collapsed beside Mikka, exhaustion and dehydration compounding inside her small body. Shepard stopped a moment to breathe...just a moment to allow her bloodstream some oxygen, but even before she was able to let Garrus down to rest upon the metallic floor, a dread noise pealed through the decaying air of the Citadel. Citadel Tower was collapsing. With an earsplitting announcement of rending foundation and contorting metal, the mighty central building of the Citadel buckled under the weight of the Crucible's remnants. The base of the mighty building sagged, and its burnished metallic walls instantaneously answered with cracks splintering and reaching to its roof.

"Run!"

Shepard grasped Garrus' arms to help him up as the others – with their own terrible, unspoken wounds – needed no encouragement to clear the area. She was the last to move, her knees buckling from the strain of supporting the turian. Crying in anguish, her torn right arm was on the verge of losing its tenuous grasp on Garrus' waist. She was stumbling, seeing starbursts...but then his weight was suddenly removed from her. Grunt, bleeding profusely from a terrible blow to his head and the deep sniper wound to his shoulder – had strength enough for one, last, indefatigable dash. Teeth gritted against the awful pain and face contorted into a grisly snarl, the big krogan slung Garrus over his shoulder and barreled headlong down the steps that led from the tower's plaza.

Shepard was the last to make it down, oxygen deprived starbursts filling her vision as she raced death itself in the form of the falling tower. Her dull, parched eyes were barely able to make out her scrambling squad ahead of her as they sprinted until they thought their hearts would burst. She tripped more than once on her shaking legs, sprawling and scrambling onwards to reach some sense of safety. A immense, torn section of wall plunged to the ground directly in front of her, forcing her to throw her body onto the littered surface and roll out of the way. She could breathe no longer, but her body refused to stop – her feet took her flying and stumbling clear of the destruction that threatened to envelop them all. Finally, the once-gleaming Citadel Tower laid its ragged, ugly form to rest in a crescendo of metal and dust against the torn viewing platforms on the far side of the Presidium.

~

She was spent. There was nothing left to give. Face pressed to the cold, unforgiving metal, Shepard closed her eyes. All she could hear was the starving breaths of everyone she had led to this point in time. The deformed carapace of another massive Reaper plowed into the dried up waterway that sat in the destroyed Presidium. It scraped the superfluous surface to its metallic slab as its great body came to rest somewhere out of sight.

She kept her eyes closed still. Her lungs were still working – still trying to maintain life inside her shattered body. How many lives had she lived? How many lives had she sacrificed? A burst of memories flashed through her mind – memories of Garrus and Anderson and Liara. Of friendships and the pain of dying. Of her comrades, her allies and the war. They had won through it all. They had come further than any previous people, and collectively, the races of this time had stopped the never-ending cycles of genocide that the Reapers had maintained since time immemorial. She was looking forward to sleeping at long last.....

Something flashed before her closed eyes. The cold, harsh light reflected from Earth wavered against her eyelids, creating shadows and patterns through the thin, burned skin. Instinctively, her eyes reacted to the outside stimulus – it sent them flickering behind their covers, wanting to look, to see. Then, a noise. A strange noise the likes of which she had never heard before drifted to her. A waterfall. Was she dreaming? Have I finally died?

The distant noise of thunderous water could be heard over the incessant collisions impacting around them. There was a choking sound. Someone near her was gagging, but it sounded as if from emotion more than physical affliction. She wanted to help them...wanted to soothe whoever was left. She heard a woman's voice exclaim in awestruck terror.

With the effort of a thousand gods, Shepard pushed her aching body on to its side and slowly opened her eyes in the cold, biting light. It took her pupils too long to focus, but she could already tell that several of those around her had also risen to look out towards the distant, black void. They all faced the direction that the odd sound of rushing water came from. Blinking languidly, she forced her pupils to function one last time...

What those dulled blue eyes saw should not have been possible. Should not have been happening. Her stomach lurched as she saw the unbelievable, the implausible. A mile from them and across the scraped metallic slab they laid upon, Zakera Ward was propelling itself through the Presidium, cutting it cleanly in half. The massive arm of the Citadel – unchained from its moorings by countless Reaper impacts and the collapse of the Crucible – was now a deadly, drifting, broken city.

Shepard struggled to keep her eyes focused, but no sound would come from her worn throat in the face of such incalculable decimation. With the blunt stare of someone who only accepts what they are seeing because it will be soon be followed by their end, she watched as the forty-kilometer long city plunge horizontally through the wrecked Presidium. The source of the strange, rushing waterfall noise had been the skyscrapers and business towers of Zakera Ward as they crumbled two thousand meters in front of their faces. The dying, dismembered and powerless Citadel was destroying itself. Immense releases of latent electrical energy arched across the ward city's surface, creating veins of brief, flashing power as it continued to slice through the central ring of the decaying station.

Shepard's silent mouth remained open, her sore eyes watching without feeling. The scene was too vast, too all-encompassing to behold – inside her, a strange river of emotions bubbled...of accomplishment, of repaid debts, of the selfless assurance that life would continue. A peace permeating her every sinew and thought, Shepard raised her eyes and followed the crisp, cold light that played on all their frayed bodies.

Above their heads, above the destruction and clouds of metallic remains, the pure, graceful pattern of water vapor in Earth's atmosphere could be seen. Gleaming white clouds, creating whorls and eddies above blue ocean and green land stretching as far as the eye could see. Across the termination zone, not one flare of Reaper destruction could be seen on the dark side of the planet. Overwhelmed by emotion and straining to see through welling tears, Shepard gasped as she picked out a tiny cluster of lights in the darkness. Life. The essence of what they had fought for and would die for this day.

Another resounding, metallic collision over their shoulders signaled that one more Reaper had found its rest nearby. She flinched visibly as pieces of black metal lofted out of the thin skin of gravity that remained the piece of Presidium to which they clung. Lowering her gaze slowly, Shepard's eyes settled on Liara sitting a few meters from her. Despite the blood that had collected in one of her eyes, despite the torn flesh of her leg, the young asari smiled back at her. Mirroring Shepard's own tearful, joyful, spent expression, she jabbed two upward-flicked thumbs at her. The two women broke down with uncontainable, weeping smiles – exhaustion and victory coursing through their veins and numbing their pain and injuries. Another flash of static discharge seared their eyes as Zakera Ward finally cleared through the massacred ring of the Presidium and continued on its unending flight into the limitless void beyond.

Through eyes that stung with tears, Shepard looked beyond Liara to the others. It was ended. The toil and war and struggle that they had all been scarred by was finally over, and with its curtain-call came sublime serenity. They rested with a composed and confident peace, slumped in small, bloodstained knots, assured of and awaiting their deaths. Tali'Zorah – the indomitable quarian – had settled beside Coats and Miranda, their collective forms bathed in the silvery-blue light from Earth. Grunt laid next to them – his great muscles exhausted and armor creaking as he wheezed breaths of the cold, thin atmosphere.

A small distance away, Jack, Aria and Mikka huddled together talking in hushed tones – as unlikely a group as she had ever seen. The human biotic seemed to be poking fun at the gangly salarian. Mikka's smile at being the butt of another joke brought intense, painful flashes of his uncle back to Shepard at this, the most appropriate of times. Mordin. If salarians had a heaven, he was watching them now...waiting for them...probably bored. Maybe run tests on the seashells...

Javik had arrived silently by Liara as the spiraling shadow of another monstrous, dead Reaper flew overheard, blotting out the sunlight from them briefly before colliding into the far away reaches of what used to be the Presidium. He sat close to her in the beautiful, reflected silver curtain of light and took her delicate hand in his. The asari who had devoted her entire life to studying the extinction of the Protheans was now going to her death with one. A flicker of emotion passed across those pale asari eyes...

Bowing her head in respect, Shepard acknowledged to herself where she belonged at this one moment. Garrus' stricken form laid alone, the furthest from her as he struggled to watch the unfolding spectacle of their demise. Blue bloodstains stained the metallic slab on which he rested. Everything she had ever lived and fought for tore at her soul...and she was moving – crawling towards him. It wasn't until she attempted to lift herself up with her hands, tried to haul her drained body up to begin the arduous voyage towards him, that she realized her right arm would not respond. Glancing down, it was with detached fascination that she saw the terrible wound, the torn muscle, the white bone...

Ignoring the pain and the heaving in her dry stomach, Karen Shepard crawled onwards. Her toil seemed to span miles, years. Another great, dark shadow passed above her head as a collection of black legs wheeled out into the vacuum......and yet still she traveled. Her left arm ached with the grappling, the pulling. Once or twice she managed to stumble a few meters on her numb feet before tripping from weakness and falling to her knees once more. Her head reeled. Convulsing with exhaustion, blood trickled from one of her nostrils as the exertion almost finished her. Her only functioning hand rubbed dirt and blood from her eyes as she continued onwards, squeezing the air for oxygen with broken lungs. He was close, now...and with relief she saw movement, his shoulders rising as he breathed laboriously. Beneath them, a change in gravity and orientation sent their section of the Presidium lurching, tilting crazily.

With a finite clatter, Karen Shepard finally collapsed by Garrus' side, every sinew burning, every muscle twisted into a spasm of hot pain. She had barely stopped moving when he extended an arm, drawing her broken form to his instinctively. She heard him sob into her crusted hair, smelled the familiar leather-and-steel of the turian she loved mixed with the tinny, cloying scent of warm lifeblood. His hands shook as they clutched her to him in the dappled silver light of Earth.

"Your world is beautiful," he whispered, his soft voice shivering with emotion and agony. Breaking down, Shepard wept from a hundredfold emotions. Sorrow, relief, frustration, joy, love...every tear held a different meaning as it slid unchecked down her blackened, split cheeks. She smoothed his scarred, blackened crest and looked into the eyes of the man with whom she had wanted to spend the rest of her life. She had succeeded. Straining with pain and effort, she reached his face with her lips and placed a kiss stained with her blood on his rough skin. The intense grip of his arms around her tightened still.

"Oh Garrus!..."

Choking on her sobs, Shepard watched with numb eyes as the flickering shadows of more black debris rained down on their section of the Presidium, blotting Earth's light intermittently and sending dancing shadows across the wreckage to which they clung. Garrus' voice was low, soaked with love.

"I know, Shepard...I've always known."

But it was futile – even recanting everything they had been through, everything they had done together, everything they felt for each other still only fanned the flames of bitter resentment for the life they had never known and couldn't have. She gritted her teeth against the stream of her tears, and buried her face in the turian's neck.

"I don't want to leave you! There's so much we never did...so much I never said."

Another bloated shadow floated across them, a blackened, tortured Reaper carapace...careening out of the void and smashing into their fragment of the Presidium. Flying debris rained down on them in the strange, cold silence as they clung together in the wasted sliver of atmosphere. Each impact brought the remnants of the once-great station closer to annihilation in the dark, dead space. Garrus stroked her forehead gently.

"I know...I know, Shepard. But what we have accomplished today will ensure that billions more like us will have a chance at those things."

His calm voice spoke the words of truth, and they soothed her spirit. Soothed the tears, the pain, the sacrifice they had all made. Looking upwards, Shepard saw an impenetrable field of dead Reapers – legs, cores, shells – colliding with each other and streaking like grotesque comets towards them. Gasping with sudden finality, knowing her words were numbered, she looked back at Garrus with a desperate urgency,

"I love you, Garrus Vakarian."

His chest heaved with renewed sobs as he drew her to him once more.

"Right back at ya, Karen Shepard."

An ink like, smothering shadow surged towards them, blotting out their faces from one another. Their death had been born, and it bore down on them with numbing, terrible speed. Garrus brought her down on his chest, covering her head with his hands.

"Close your eyes, my love..."

As if he would mold their bodies into one, he held her to him as the shadow on black wings grew deeper, blacker, infinitely closer, and every muscle, every functioning sinew left in her body tensed, waiting for the end.

~

They stopped moving. Stopped thinking. As one, the human and turian sunk into their own world as they waited for their deaths. Shepard felt the jagged metal of Garrus' torn armor scrape against her face, heard his labored breathing, felt his long, muscular arms wrap her in an embrace of steel and safety.

She was still feeling. She was still hearing. She waited...waited for their deaths, for the searing pain as life finally vacated her body. With her eyes screwed shut against the inevitability, Shepard took a breath...and another breath. The shadow grew closer, almost touching them...

A noise. Garrus still held her in that deathgrip. But that continuous noise. Why wouldn't she die? A distant crash of debris sounded, but it was removed from them, apart form them. The muscles of her eyes grew tired of keeping their lids closed...and the noise persisted. It touched something deep inside of her...some whispered answer. Something old, fundamental. It scoured her mind, sparked something...a noise from all their pasts...

With a breathless gulp of the thinning air, Shepard risked opening her eyes amidst the carnage and destruction. Just one last look, just one last sight...and she choked back a surge of awe and disbelief. The shadow that blotted out Earth's light was an angel, on wings of antiproton thrusters.

The Normandy SR-2 hovered stationary overhead as Shepard looked up, disbelieving, breathless, casting its shadow over their torn, broken bodies. The fearless ship's kinetic barriers were shrugging off countless pieces of debris and destroyed Reaper bodies that had been bound for them as it held in the void above the wasted Presidium – blue shimmers playing across her hull with every impact. A decimated assembly of Reaper tech collided with its starboard side, but her reinforced silaris armor ensured that it was merely ejected away into the nothingness it had come from. She was sheltering them from the wreckage for one, last chance.

A frayed gasp escaped her body as Shepard writhed in Garrus' embrace. The turian still remained with his eyes shut tightly, waiting for his death.

"Garrus...the Normandy!"

She could barely stammer the words as she shook him back into consciousness. As he slowly opened his eyes, Shepard found a surge of adrenaline and hope that put Osiris' injection of pure epinephrine to shame. She clambered to her feet in the vicious engine wash under the blue glow from the Normandy's port thrusters, her hair whipping into her eyes uncontrollably. The gleaming ship lowered slightly, the whine becoming so high pitched that it made her head spin. Frantically, through a haze of the last panic of her life, Shepard looked around. So many lives...

"Garrus! COATS!!"

She knew not what to shout. How do you reach people who are waiting for their deaths? Nobody moved. The Normandy hovered still, her engines holding steady in the clatter of the debris field. She was drawing closer to them with intricate, steady inches. Only one person could be at her helm. Shepard tried again on hoarse lungs.

"MAJOR! Move!"

Shrieking Coats' rank designation knocked him from his resigned stupor – the bewildered major looked over at her with his bloodshot eyes and then cast his eyes to the heavens and to the Normandy. The same awestruck shock coursed through his body. Shepard saw that he was largely uninjured...and a desperate, frantic process coursed through her veins.

"Get them on their feet – help me!"

By now, Garrus had heard the familiar whine of the engines and had seen the wash of blue energy from the spooling thrusters. He was trying to rise to his feet despite the terrible pain from the puncture wound to his side. Shepard took hold of him and righted his stance as he began to stumble. Another deadly shadow of flying wreckage amidst the decoupling station was deflected by the Normandy's armored hull as a fissure of light became visible on her underbelly. A frenetic, anarchic struggle broke out amidst Shepard's crippled team upon the metallic shard of life they stood. A massive Sovereign-class Reaper body hurtled towards them under the flickering Earthlight, but a searing blast from the Normandy's Thanix cannon dispersed it into harmless liquefied fragments.

With a grimace of pain on her blood-crusted face, Shepard hoisted Garrus' injured body under her own. Stumbling with effort, her eyes growing blurred, Shepard scrabbled forward towards the ship she could not believe was there. One chance, one goal, one shot at having a tomorrow. They had been offered a chance at escaping the nightmare that they had assumed would claim their lives, and she was not going to squander it.

She could see the access ramp of the Normandy's cargo bay as it extended fully. It was almost as if the ship was calling to them...reaching out to them. The whine of her powerful drive core became even louder as mirages of fusion heat wafted around them from the fierce engines. Coats arrived by her side, the tall soldier holding Miranda up with one arm and Tali with the other. A frenzied energy seemed to reanimate the quarian's body at the sight and sound of those powerful engines. As the steady whine continued unabated, she vaulted her light form onto the access ramp with a grace that should have been impossible. The first of their number had made it home. She snapped a slim hand outwards, aiding Miranda onboard as Shepard yelled a hoarse cry.

"Grunt, Mikka! Everyone get on board!"

Without drawing a single, searing breath she aided Garrus towards the ramp. He grasped the side of the ship's extended ramp with one hand, but faltered and looked back at her. Shepard nodded, clutching his shoulder resolutely, and reassured him with a promise she had no idea whether or not she could keep.

"I'm not going anywhere..."

With the help of Tali and Miranda, the turian hoisted himself aboard the Normandy with a distressed gait. He grimaced as he knelt by the very edge of the ramp, his teeth clenched in apprehension as he watched Shepard remain on the destroyed section of the Presidium.

Hot winds from the Normandy's engines lashed her hair as she whirled with desperate purpose to see Liara and Javik rushing and dodging the flying debris on their frantic way to the ship. The asari was limping badly, the half-blinded Prothean struggling to guide them both onwards. A sheet of metal debris whistled only inches above their heads...and suddenly Shepard was at their side, wrapping her uninjured arm around Liara's waist.

"Come on!"

She propelled them faster and more urgently...back to the hovering ramp amidst the deafening whine. A bizarrely austere look on her face, Aria had circumvented them with her long strides, the Omega ruler seeing a last window open to her former life. As Shepard watched incredulously, she noticed that the ruthless asari also dragged an exhausted Mikka Solus behind her. The two arrived at the Normandy amidst the howling gale of her thrusters, the warm glow from the beckoning cargo hold inspiring seized muscles to work and faltering hearts to beat. Behind them, the surface of the broken Presidium was shredded and torn by the crashing of a great, black leg. The platform under their feet oscillated alarmingly as Shepard looked back with a pale face at Grunt's struggling, exhausted form... This whole thing is tearing apart!

A tremendous crack formed down the center of their fragment of the dead station with a horrific splintering sound that threatened hopelessness once more...

Guiding Liara with desperate urgency, Shepard grabbed the solid cargo ramp with sweat-dampened, tattered hands, guiltily ignoring Garrus' grasp as he pleaded with her to get onboard. Shepard's haste caused her to let go of Liara's arm just a moment too soon as she turned to assist the next of her team. The asari's grip on the cargo ramp slipped, she was falling...but a moment later, a pair of silvery hands caught hers. As Javik clambered onboard with the help of Garrus, Shepard smiled as she laid eyes on a familiar, glowing visor and artificial eyes. EDI's sleek metallic head nodded resolutely in the commander's direction as she hoisted Liara and then Mikka effortlessly onboard. They joined the growing cluster of individuals all clinging to the edges of the cargo ramp to form a living, breathing chain – a link to a life they all thought they had lost.

With a soul-rending, thunderous smash, the impact of an immense cluster of dead Reaper legs to the Normandy's furthest wing caused the ship to yaw away from them just as Coats was about to lift himself up onto the ramp.

"Shit!"

Shepard threw her hand up in front of her face, hauling Coats down to the metallic ground with her as a searing blast from the off-balance antiproton thrusters washed over them, burning armor and blackening clothing. She cried in pain as the heat briefly penetrated through to her skin, a curse of similar agony rising from the major next to her.

"Shepard!"

Garrus' ragged, desperate cry carried to them as the ship's whine changed pitch and it struggled to right itself in the tempest of tattered sky. Looking up, Shepard saw Jack next to her – her tattooed face white and eyes wide with dread. Seeing that look, that mortal fear displayed on the woman's fear-smattered face caused a surge of remorse to blister to the surface of Shepard's subconscious. She grasped the small woman's shoulder with a firm hand.

"We're gonna make it, Jack."

Jack pursed her lips in silent, thin gratitude as the reassuring radiance from the Normandy's cargo hold returned, repositioned and steadied by an expert pair of unseen hands. The yawning crack widened...

"Go!"

Shepard thumped Subject Zero on the back, watching her body get lifted by EDI and Garrus into the ship's safe interior. Still Shepard remained on the fractured piece of the former Presidium. There was one more...one more life to save...one more piece of her past to preserve.

"Grunt! Coats – come on! We can do this!!"

Amidst the deafening whine of the powerful ship's engines, the major dutifully scrambled after Shepard towards the weak, stricken krogan. Grunt's massive body was crawling on hands and knees as he desperately, hopelessly tried to make it to the cargo ramp. The section of the Presidium behind him cracked suddenly, swinging downwards only seconds after his dragging feet had moved from the spot. A moment later, he felt his arms get hoisted up by the commander and major as the two humans refused to leave anyone behind. Their knees close to collapsing under Grunt's hulking weight, Shepard and Coats stumbled back to the Normandy with him as the relentless pelting of debris showered around them. You humans...you want to save everybody.

Outstretched hands reached urgently for them. Shepard's eyes grew unfocused as she saw Grunt's near-comatose body get lifted to safety above her. A cacophony of yells and desperate cries accompanied an atrocious splintering noise beneath her feet – someone caught Coats' arm and dragged him upwards. A shockwave flexed the opposite end of the destroyed platform Shepard fought to escape as gravity and air were breached by the freezing void. The encroaching sensation of déjà vu immobilized her with abject fear and hopelessness. The ground fell away from her. Her fingers grew numb. Ice...it was so cold...so dark...so dead. Weightlessness. Falling...can't breathe.

A shower of blue, glowing particulates enveloped her, warmed her, and a three-fingered hand caught her.

"Gotcha!"

"That's all of them, Joker – go!"

~

Her face was pressed into the metallic grating. As the momentum dampeners engaged and sudden vertigo overtook her, she would have retched...if there had been anything left inside of her. In the distance, the sound of familiar, powerful antiproton thrusters spooled up effortlessly. Someone nearby spat blood, an asari's voice cursed in agony, the smell of scorched armor and burnt skin pushed her even closer to passing out altogether.

With a cringe, Shepard heard a powerful collision outside, on the hull of the ship – and then their bodies were thrown into vertigo as the vessel corkscrewed, banked, barrel-rolled its way out from a world of death and destruction as the fragmented remnants of the Citadel finally lost all cohesion and drifted apart. Somewhere in the distance, in her minds' vivid eye, she could see a pair of hands working furiously at a holographic interface as the chaotic, wreckage-filled vacuum threatened to consume them all.

A synthetic, melodic voice came to her from a pain-distorted distance.

"Joker suggests you 'hold on to your lunch'."

Shepard heard the activation of an omni-tool, and a thawing warmth seeped into her body. No sooner had she opened her eyes slightly, than they were all pinned to the bottom of the cargo deck by an all-encompassing surge of element zero energy as the Normandy ignited her volatile Tantalus drive core and achieved FTL speeds. The docking bay creaked eerily, banks of stowed rifles rattled and the securing arm of the Kodiak shuttle clanked as they streaked through the void on a crest of mass effect.

Silence descended outside the ship as Shepard let her body breathe on the floor of the cargo bay. Great gasps of excruciating pain and joy escaped her comrades around her as she heard EDI working frantically to dispense medi-gel to the most grievous wounds. She tried to coerce her eyes into working.......but her mind and body wanted to transport her into a delicious unconsciousness. A moan by her left shoulder assured her that Garrus was there, and she willed her lids to open. The blurry, circling image of the Normandy's cargo hold made her reel with a giddy stupor. Vaguely, she registered EDI's glowing visor beside her, the synthetic's omni-tool streaming medical advice faster than any organic could keep up with. Seizing the opportunity to grasp a firmer connection to reality, Shepard pulled EDI's arm, bringing her omni-tool closer so as to speak into it.

"Joker...what the...hell are you doing here?"

Her voice was indistinct, her swollen lips and parched mouth lending nothing to her ability to speak. But the communication had reached its intended target. The warm, reassuring sound of the Normandy's bridge controls reached her as their pilot's familiar, satirical voice spoke to her through the omni-tool.

"Yeah yeah, quit your preachin'...just look for me on the cover of the next issue of 'Mutiny Monthly', alright?"

A laugh...her torn body even managed a laugh as she allowed worry and fear and pain to vacate her. Laying back down voluntarily, the prickling sensation of the anesthetic EDI had infused within all of their bloodstreams began to envelop her with a familiar, woozy embrace. As the Normandy bore their broken bodies homeward, it was time to rest.
Epilogue I

Requiem

With a dull stare, Liara T'Soni watched the planet's surface rise up to meet their shuttlecraft. The small window through which she peered afforded her only a partial view of Chasca's atmosphere but revealed towering clouds and a misty, blanketed surface far below them. Occasionally through the mist, small flashes of green vegetation could be seen, as if whispering the promise of a safe landing. Tidally-locked, Chasca's sun-facing side was a permanent, scorched wasteland while its dark side was a frozen, desolate rock. Explorers and prospectors had long ago discovered the world and found that its terminator was temperate, lush and habitable. Human colonization had, however, been sporadic at best...and seeing the comparatively narrow band of perma-dusk into which they descended, she could see why.

The asari turned away from the window as the view was obscured once again by cloud vapor.

"Thank you for coming today, Shepard. You have no idea what this means to me...and to him."

Shepard was stirred from deep thought by the statement, her mind in far-off places. She rose from her jump seat to approach her old friend.

"Liara – we all want to be here today. Not only for Javik, but for you, too."

As Shepard drew closer to the asari, she saw the slightest hint of redness rimming her eyes. A year and a half had passed since the Reaper war had ended – and not one more sign of aging had marred that pale blue skin. The long-lived race of biotics considered themselves blessed – and cursed – by their thousand-year life spans.

"And doctor – you also deserve our thanks."

Liara's voice wavered slightly as she cast her gaze across the crowded shuttle's hold. Dr. Michel sat strapped into her seat next to Miranda and Coats, her medical suit as crisp as the day they had first met her at her clinic down in the Citadel's wards. Her French accent was beginning to fade from her time spent amongst the stars, but it still brought pangs of humanity to the astute woman.

"Liara – please. It is my duty to be 'ere and I am honored you chose me. I know Dr. Chakwas has...strong feelings on matters such as 'dis and I understand why she declined to come. It is 'se least I can do."

Dr. Michel steadied the medical briefcase that sat by her legs as the shuttle entered a sector of turbulence as they drew ever closer to Chasca's surface. The small shuttle craft was packed full for this solemn journey. Garrus had arrived with Shepard the previous night, while the asari and salarian councilors – along with Joker, EDI and Tali had met them aboard the Normandy in the early hours of the morning. Many from all walks of life had been brought together once more by the significance of today's undertaking.

Cortez called out from the cockpit as the sporadic turbulence abated.

"Looks like five minutes to our landing area, commander. The second shuttle has already landed."

Shepard was about to throw an only semi-comical quip back at Cortez about him still referring to her as 'commander' when she heard a choked sound come from Liara. The asari had turned to look out the window of the shuttle once more, her voice quiet and broken.

"You need to know, Shepard – before you see him again. We tried everything, researched endlessly for an answer to his accelerated aging. The...the immense period he spent in stasis sleep had unforeseen consequences. I...I never would have believed the swiftness of the process..."

Despite her best attempts at shielding them from her, Shepard saw the tears that rolled down Liara's cheeks as the planet's surface came into view. Her clinical language was not able to mask her emotions. Shepard looked at her sorrowfully, a pit of remorse flooding her stomach.

"He's fifty-thousand years old, Liara. I'm just glad you had some peacetime with him before...he..."

As they felt solid ground gently embrace their craft, all present began unbuckling their safety belts and stretching cramped legs. Matriarch Aethyta could be heard cursing in the background as she attempted to extricate herself from her seat. Ordinarily, Liara's father's colorful language would have brought a smile to Shepard's face, but not today. Not just now. She looked at Liara as the shuttle's engine's began spooling down. They could see their counterpart shuttle about twenty meters from them.

"Is he...prepared? Is he okay?"

The asari nodded as she visibly steeled herself, confronted with the imminence of what was about to occur.

"Javik is remarkably composed, Shepard. He wanted to travel to the surface alone – to spend the journey in meditation."

A rush of moist air assailed their nostrils as Cortez activated the exit and the shuttle's double-doors slid open. Named for the Inca goddess of dawn and twilight, Chasca's terminator atmosphere was wet, and carried scents of vegetation and pollen easily. The planet had fostered plenty life in the narrow band of habitable land sandwiched between sun-blasted face and frozen dark side. As the others filed out slowly, Garrus stooped in the cramped compartment as he edged towards Shepard and Liara.

"Ready?"

His voice was quiet, almost reverent. The entire galaxy could have been waiting with held breath this day. Slowly, with Shepard's reassuring hand resting on her shoulder – Liara nodded and allowed herself to be led outside.

~

In the constant semi-dusk of the planet's habitable zone closest to the dark side, the air was cool enough to prickle the skin with goosebumps. The overgrown Prothean ruins that surrounded them brought back strong memories of the ancient world of Ilos to many present. In her capacity as Shadow Broker, it had taken Liara half of a quiet afternoon to pinpoint the likely location of Javik's team members' resting place. Using information from the Prothean himself along with the archival records she had collected on the Prothean empire's war against the Reapers, they had found the fifty-thousand year old site with little effort. Two months ago, she had escorted the rapidly-aging Javik to Chasca's surface to allow him to verify her suspicions. This was the place that his indoctrinated comrades had died at his hands. This was the place he would die.

Shepard had been about to follow Garrus and the others towards the relatively intact Prothean ruins building when an old voice called to her.

"Commander. I see you have accompanied them on this mission as well."

She turned to greet Javik as he exited his shuttle, and with all her might fought to suppress her shock as he shuffled towards her. The ancient Prothean had undergone a hyper-aging process that had left him a shell of his former self. His bluish-green skin was now completely gray – not one pigment of color remained him. His remaining yellow eyes had faded to a pale beige, and his resplendent red armor now encased a body that was frail and thin.

"Javik. Yes – I came. It was the least I could do. We all owe you more than we can ever repay."

The last remaining Prothean hobbled onwards with her, casting a ridiculing hand in her direction.

"Bah! You owe me nothing, human!"

Foregoing a melancholy smile, Shepard noted that Javik's derisive attitude still dwelled inside his wasted body. Liara and Garrus joined them, and the asari reached to help the enfeebled Prothean over a knot of tree roots just outside the entrance to the ruins. He swatted her hand away feebly, but ended up leaning on Garrus regardless as he continued.

"Now – whether you owe a great debt to the Prothean empire or not...time will be the judge of that."

Inside the ruined, ivy-swathed temple, the others had gathered. Ancient friezes adorned the walls, speaking of a time when the Protheans had commanded entire star systems and maintained a presence in every corner of the galaxy. From that mighty empire, one single survivor had endured to see the extinction of the Reapers.

No-one spoke as Javik entered the darkened room, his right-hand still a wasted claw from that fateful day on the Citadel. His wheezing breaths rattled in his lungs, and the silence of the temple seemed to magnify the sound. The salarian councilor stood close to her asari counterpart, her arms folded in the sleeves of her long robes, her hooded head bowed. Tali, Joker and EDI had assembled close by them also – the quarian's silvery eyes one of the only points of light around them. Even Matriarch Aethyta was silent as she kept in the company of Miranda and Coats, the retired major's arm never leaving his wife's shoulders.

Having entered along with Javik, Shepard and Garrus retired to the edge of the solemn cluster of individuals as Liara led the last Prothean towards the back of the small room. Ancient leaf mulch and soil littered the floor, but it had been cleared from the large, immovable stone plinth that Dr. Michel waited beside. Her hands were clasped in a calm stance, her expression intensely solemn. Her small briefcase had been opened and laid on the edge of the cold stone platform – it was an almost-coarse reminder of just why they were here. A primed syringe of clear liquid sat in its holster on top, appearing bizarrely clinical amidst the musty air and decaying vegetation of the fifty-thousand year old temple. The distant drip of rainwater echoed quietly in the chamber as Javik arrived at Dr. Michel's side, his chest heaving with the exertion of the short walk from the shuttle. As he began to raise his frail body atop the ceremonial plinth, he cast the doctor a fiery glance from his fading eyes.

"Just make sure you know what you're doing, doctor. I do not want to wake this time..."

Dr. Michel nodded soothingly at the old Prothean as Garrus left Shepard and arrived by his side, aiding him in his struggle to sit on the ancient stone table. His armor scraped on the rock as he righted himself, and looked out upon all of them. A pang of sorrow bubbled to the surface of her consciousness as Shepard saw just how small he now appeared – a shadow of his former self. This being who had been instrumental in the defeat of the Reapers – once indomitable, formidable...now sat before them to end his life. And he began to speak.

Javik's cracked voice brought to the temple chamber – and to their ears – the last utterance of a Prothean voice that any would ever hear. The strange and complex words fell around all who had gathered, but only two present understood them. Shepard and Liara – forever linked to each other and the Prothean by their experience with the Cipher – heard his last incantation as if he were speaking plainly in their own language. Tears slid unchecked down both of their cheeks as they listened to the aged warrior speak his last words. The others present simply listened to the cadence with which he talked, thinking back to an imagined time fifty thousand years ago when this Prothean first drew breath. With a hollow echo, Javik's speech ended – but Shepard gradually recognized that another voice had replaced his.

Her voice quivering, Liara reiterated Javik's final words for all present.

"I am the last Prothean. I am vengeance. My people were the last extinguished by the Reapers. Once – like you before me – we controlled the galaxy. But it took the contribution of other species, subsequent peoples, to fully realize my people's efforts. We protected the Crucible's plans with our last cities and gave our last warriors' lives to the machines in order to stop them from discovering our plans in the hope that – one day – some great civilization would succeed where we failed. Now I know that we did not fail. Now I know that our actions will forever serve as a reminder of our great empire to those that will come after us. Our Fathers have watched over my footfalls since I was reawakened – guiding me to guide you. You have given me the victory I wanted to rejoice in. May the actions of the last Prothean give you an...an eternity to embrace."

Shepard swallowed through her own tears as she looked into Javik's eyes, and nodded sincerely.

"They did. And we thank you."

Liara's faltering words tailed off into unsuppressed weeping, and suddenly, her father was by her side holding her child's body to hers as if she would protect her daughter from her own sorrow. But it was time. Dr. Michel had stepped towards Javik as he laid his head upon the cold stone, his hands folded lovingly over his rifle's muzzle. The room fell silent as a steady rain began outside, cleansing the air and washing dirt from the ruins. The poignancy of the moment was not lost on any who had gathered to say this last goodbye. Shepard felt her hand become enveloped by Garrus' larger one, Miranda looked on through watery blue eyes as Coats pressed his lips to her hair, Joker had even removed his heirloom SR-2 ball cap and instead sat with EDI, both of them unusually serious and silent.

Dr. Michel's hands lifted the syringe in the half-darkness of the chamber, what little light that was available glinted vividly on its glass chamber and pointed needle. She moved to Javik's side, her slender, deft fingers resting briefly on his shoulder plate. The Prothean's breath still rattled wretchedly in his chest, and as he saw the human woman look over him along with the syringe she carried, a calm smile stretched his thin lips. Looking into the doctor's eyes, he nodded, took as deep a breath as he could muster and rested his spent body on the cool, unforgiving stone.

All senses had heightened. They heard the doctor's hands running sternly over Javik's neck, saw the needle that searched for the Prothean's jugular, and heard the piercing of his leathery skin as the doctor brought the solution swiftly into his bloodstream. Shepard cast her eyes at the ground, something inside of her speaking of how atrocious it would be to watch any further. She did not see Liara break from her father's embrace, but she heard her sobs clearly. The pureblood asari reached Javik's side as the last of the eternal sleeping poison entered his body, and she flung her arms on his torso as the doctor removed the syringe. Her biotics enveloped them both in a warm, blue glow as Dr. Michel stepped respectfully away from the scene and into the shadows beyond. Within a few seconds, the Prothean's breathing became measured, slower, and his eyes closed...

Following the councilors' lead, Garrus led Shepard from the chamber silently as – one by one – they all afforded Liara the dignity she deserved as she stayed to the end with the galaxy's last Prothean. Outside, the steady patter of rain mercifully muffled the sobs of one who was watching the passing of something she had dedicated her life to understanding...

~

The shuttle was warm and dry, in stark contrast to the mist and rain of the temperate zone they prepared to leave. Shepard swung into her seat next to Garrus and heard Cortez begin to respool the mass effect engines in response to the returning group. The second shuttle that had brought Javik had already been given leave to return to the Normandy and rose effortlessly through the dusk and rain clouds back towards the beckoning ship, leaving the remaining craft behind. The morning on Chasca had developed into a perpetual, steady rain, and low, ragged clouds hugged the distant mountains above their landing site.

Last to arrive, Matriarch Aethyta and Liara climbed aboard the shuttle soaked and exhausted. With a degree of gratitude, Liara allowed Coats to assist her to her seat. She was chilled and shivering, and Miranda wrapped her own jacket across the asari's slim shoulders. With a smooth glide, the shuttle doors closed on Shepard's confirmation that all were aboard, and a familiar weightlessness could be felt as they lifted off from the ground. As they ascended, all were silent, processing their own thoughts and emotions after their ambivalent voyage. But Shepard felt compelled to do something – say something.

"You okay?" Ignoring takeoff protocol, she rose and went to Liara. Her voice seemed too loud for the small space, but Liara clasped Shepard's hand firmly, and nodded in gratitude. Her eyes were raw and red, but there was also a peace amongst those blue pupils. A part of the asari had been left on the world they sped away from, but it seemed as if she had also gained something of herself back. This day had provided the end for what had been the longest chapter so far in the woman's history.

As the turbulence of the cloud deck subsided, Liara also rose and moved towards the window once again. The jagged spires and vine-covered structures of the Prothean ruins they had left Javik's body amongst bade them farewell – as if a fitting end had been achieved. Shepard joined Liara by the viewing window, a calmness settling on all of them as they left Chasca behind. She thought back to the day they had discovered Javik's cryogenic stasis pod, the day they had awakened him – and the stunning information he had been able to provide them with in the war against the Reapers. Now, that war was over. And the last Prothean was gone forever.

"And so ends a people."

Shepard's voice was gentle as she rubbed Liara's shoulder soothingly. Garrus nodded solemnly. Most were quiet, still – offering only thoughts and thankfulness for the Prothean civilization.

"Not quite."

Liara's voice was suddenly clear, stronger. She still remained gazing out of the window, even though there was nothing to see in the darkening void above them. Her shoulders had squared, her arms were folded across her chest as she turned to face them all. Shepard's questioning gaze went from Liara to Garrus, the councilors and the others. Miranda's brow was deeply furrowed. Joker shot EDI a confused look, and the councilors sat forward in their seats. Silence persisted for longer than it should have. Matriarch Aethyta shifted incredulously in her seat, the asari's gravely tone always sounding ridiculous.

"Damn girl – you mean there's more of these creepy bastards running around?"

All eyes were now on Liara – the doctor and Prothean expert who had just watched the last Prothean die. She met their stare with a confidence that would have been alien to her only a few short years ago, and a faint smile stained her lips.

"Our children will be born in the spring."
Epilogue II

The Cradle

Stars wheel above me, planets below me. I can see my world – so close, so untouchable from this perch of metal. My knees drag me forward...scraping, clutching, crawling. The vulture of space beckons to me with black eyes. It is waiting for me. It has always waited for me. My hands stencil blue blood on the metal. He is dead. They are all dead. All except me...and mine is coming.

Another steel city slides past my eyes. Darkened. Dead. Something inside me laughs – laughs at the hollow victory my selfish mind hates. Knees give way, ice prickles my back as my face feels cold metal. The artificial land beneath my body heaves, buckles, cracks. I am alone. Nobody is there, nothing is here. Only the endless void. Endless with the promise of death. I can hear my breath leaving my body in this shattered metal realm. My hands claw at my chest. My lungs stay emptied. My knees, my face feel nothing beneath them – it has come. I am falling...

Karen Shepard woke with a start to feel her hands tearing at the sheet as if her life depended on it. In the darkened cabin, a gasp brought oxygen back to her body. Her lungs were still there. The bed beneath her was still there. Sitting up to allow the disquiet of the dream to pass, she felt a body stir next to hers. Garrus was still there. Her breathing eased as she felt his hand twitch on the small of her back, a deep, contented breath escaping him. The turian slumbered still, as hard to wake as ever. Tonight of all nights, that was a blessing.

Her feet felt the cool metal of their cabin as Shepard slid from the covers and padded softly towards the washroom. Bending down towards a glimmer of blue, she plucked Garrus' beloved targeting visor from the floor where she had hastily discarded it the previous night and laid it atop his clothes. The effect on both of them of being back in her former cabin had been...powerful.

The reassuring hum of the Normandy's drive core permeated every part of the ship. Damn she had missed that sound. It felt good to be back onboard – even if it was only briefly. Over three years had passed since the last time she had set foot on this vessel, and still the ship found its ways to tempt her back into active duty...

The holographic clock read 4:00AM as Shepard felt the warm water from the sink faucet gently pull her into the world of the awake. The crystal clear, refurbished mirror didn't fool her – it shot back three-and-a-half year old memories. Of standing on this very spot doing this very thing; of the hopelessness she had felt during the war; of pain and nausea and indoctrination. Every fiber of her being gave thanks for where she found herself now, banishing the memories to just that – memories. They all had them, they all dreamt of them. But that's all they were, now – just dreams.

"Hey."

Garrus' voice was still thick with sleep as she reached for the shower controls. She grimaced at herself.

"Damn it, I'm sorry. I was trying not to wake you...."

He embraced her briefly, his rough metallic skin finding its own ways to tempt her,

"No, it's alright. You okay?"

Sighing, Shepard looked back to the mirror, leaning on the edges of the sink. She saw herself standing next to the tall turian as he placed a hand on her pale shoulder.

"Yeah, I'm alright. Dreams woke me, that's all. Guess I should've figured, today of all days..."

Garrus nodded calmly as his hand smoothed her dark brown hair.

"Understandable."

She thought for a moment as the shower created moist clouds of steam in the void-cooled air around them.

"I still don't understand why they want me there."

Her voice betrayed her lack of conviction in those words. Garrus flicked his mandibles into a grin as he playfully nudged her.

"Oh come on, now – it's not just you. There's a certain turian that's always by your side that they're also rather keen to see. Not to mention the...others..."

His voice tapered off as he watched the human discard her last garment onto the bathroom floor. Her immodesty was intoxicating. He felt her soft, warm skin brush against him once more, her arms encircle his neck to amplify the kiss she drew him into.

"That may be, Vakarian. But I'm warning you – if it turns into some kind of hero worship ceremony, I'm leaving."

Closing his eyes, Garrus felt her warmth spread to him as he leaned his forehead next to hers.

"Somewhere else you'd rather be? A month ago we were lost to the world, hiking the Denori Spires on Palaven..."

Shepard laughed a soft, private laugh for only the two of them as she caressed the scales on the back of his neck. His embrace stiffened around her.

"No. The one I want is right here. That's all that matters..."

The turian still grasped for her as she parted from him and sidled towards the shower door with apologetic purpose. Folding his arms, he leaned against the bathroom door, an earnest expression on his face as he addressed her concerns.

"You know it won't turn into that, Shepard – you have Hackett's word. But they want you there. Even now, they want you there in peacetime just as they needed you there in wartime."

Pausing briefly before entering the hot water, she nodded in resigned agreement at his words. Not even their stubborn reclusiveness on Palaven had hid them from the many tentacles of a retired Steven Hackett.

~

Shepard grabbed the loose safety belt around her waist tightly as the shuttle was suddenly buffeted by hard turbulence. She glared with alarm towards their pilot in the cockpit,

"What the...!?"

The aging Alliance shuttle pilot looked back at them, a remorseful expression on his face.

"Oh...yeah. Sorry 'bout that. Forgot to mention to you – the Cradle hasn't taken delivery of the balance of its eezo pods to generate the mass effect fields. So...it'll be a bit choppy for a while."

She heard Garrus laugh incredulously as the craft lurched violently beneath their seats, followed by colorful language from the helm. Their pilot's thick west country accent made the scene all the more comical. He punched in to the communications hub of the massive replacement space station.

"Uhh Alliance control this is shuttle 4516 from Normandy lookin' for a dock near the Central Mall. One that doesn't involve much more field chop would be appreciated...don't believe Shepard cares for it much."

Shepard shook her head in a defeated manner as she heard their pilot's shameless namedropping. The static on his omni-tool gave way to a female controller's voice, and they began exchanging a complicated series of directions, coordinates and docking bay instructions. It sounded as if they were redesigning the Crucible.

"Now I understand why they requested one of their own pilots take us in!" Garrus quipped. Shepard's eyes widened at the thought of trying to dock at the immense station without a pilot who was familiar with the locality. It would have been nearly impossible – especially this day.

Over the next few minutes they passed through several smaller pockets of mass effect field distortion, causing the shuttle to sway in all manner of directions – but, eventually, the rough subsided. A familiar bubble of quiet set upon their small craft, telling Shepard that they had finally entered the local zone of the Cradle. Pausing for a moment to ensure there were no further surprises, she motioned to Garrus and unbuckled her safety belt. Standing up, her hands kept a firm grasp of the overhead handrail as she made her way to the starboard window.

"Oh my god, Garrus..."

Pressing her hands against the freezing glass and peering out into the black void, Shepard laid eyes upon the Cradle for the first time. Massive in scope, the planning and design of the replacement space hub had begun almost immediately after the war had ended. For each and every species involved in its construction, it had become a labor of tribute and love, as well as necessity. The peoples of the galaxy needed somewhere to call their own, something to work towards, something to be shaped in peacetime. The Citadel was being rebuilt.

Garrus arrived by Shepard's side at the small window, the view causing him to inhale sharply.

"Spirits! Look at that thing!!"

After almost four years, 'the Cradle' was in the final phases of construction, and the distinct outline of the station brought a myriad of memories and emotions back to them. The complex, ring-like Central Mall anchored five massive arms, four of which had been completed, it appeared. The fifth was still a fifty-kilometer long framework and was being anchored in place by three massive, repurposed turian dreadnoughts. Around the periphery of the unfinished ward arm, a swarm of quarian and geth salvage frigates worked furiously – welding, constructing, securing. As far as their eyes could see, the space around the Cradle was filled with vessels of every shape, size and race. True intergalactic collaboration. Garrus turned his wide-eyed stare upwards, pressing his face against the glass as the tip of the nearest ward arm slid above them in the silent, orchestrated chaos.

"Not long now and we'll be docked. Wow – the wards are almost identical! I wonder if they have a security force yet..."

In his wonderment, the turian barely heard Shepard's dry-mouthed reply, "Yeah...yeah, it sure is something."

She had left the window quietly, and returned to her seat as their shuttle penetrated deeper into the open-armed station. Alone for the moment, Shepard felt the hull of the small craft press in on her. Her ringing ears didn't hear the flurry of communication from the cockpit as their pilot took them into the nearest Central Mall docking bay. The outline of the new, great station had seared itself into her eyes, bringing with it a burst of unwanted thoughts. Working her fingers under the collar of her retired soldier's uniform, Shepard felt at once hot and cold. Her lungs seemed sluggish; her eyes blurred; her hearing muffled. She registered that Garrus had taken his seat next to her for landing, but he was still fixated with childlike abandon on the view outside the shuttle's window. Gleaming docking arms with familiar-looking gravity clamps rushed past their craft as they passed through the Stage-1 decontamination beam. It washed their world with blue for a split second before their craft found its unassuming dock under the shadow of the second level of the Central Mall.

With a hissing sound reminiscent of the last time they had docked at the still in-tact Citadel, their shuttle was captured by a handful of the station's tethering clamps and brought to a standstill. A few seconds later, the pilot twirled in his chair to face them with a wide grin on his face.

"Welcome home!"

With a smooth slide, their shuttle's access hatch unlocked and slid open to the Cradle's primary docking bay. The sterile air of the infant station rushed to greet them. Somewhere in the distance, a voice could be heard on a loudspeaker issuing directions for newcomers while the constant sound of welding droned from a level below them. Echoes of civilian voices traveled into their small vessel, coloring their consciences with languages and laughter.

Casting off his safety belt rapidly, Garrus rose and shook the hand of their pilot. He stooped to avoid the low access hatch on the small Kodiak shuttle and stepped out into the docking bay. Stretching his tall body, he looked around with wonder and amazement. It was only now that he saw that Shepard had not accompanied him.

"Shepard..." He cast a concerned glance back at her, realizing that in his fixation with their arrival to the Cradle, he had neglected to recognize the fear that had settled over her. She sat with her hands clasped, her eyes fixated on an unseen space beyond them. She looked at Garrus without registering as he slowly reentered the shuttle towards her.

"Are you...okay?"

The sound of quarantine scanners and processing desks found its way to her. In her mind, she could hear Bailey's northern drawl at the front of C-Sec's security checkpoint......the constant drone of a nearby keeper inputting its mysterious data...

"I can't do it."

A bead of sweat trickled down her neck as Shepard bit into her lips viciously. Flashback after flashback ravaged her mind as she relived the dreams that had plagued so many of their nights since the end of the war.

"I can't do it, Garrus. They're all going to be waiting for me. They're all going to be watching for me, and I can't even set a foot on this damned thing without..."

The turian saw her color-drained face as he stood in the shuttle's entry hatch, a sorrowful and compassionate expression on his face. He didn't know what to say, didn't know what to do to ease the chronic, continuing terror that plagued her. Even back on Palaven, he had spent many nights holding her to him in the darkness, trying to dispel the flashbacks that haunted her. He was about to step forward, to return to the seat next to her, when he saw her eyes lower and became focused on something at his feet. A second later, he felt a solid lump collide with his leg spur.

~

Shepard saw the brief blur of movement beneath Garrus, and her heightened senses demanded her eyes focus on it. As her fitful mind began to work again, her brow furrowed as she saw a small form collide clumsily with the turian's leg. It was swaddled in a gaudy cloth cowl with pink-and-lilac patterning, and stood about two feet tall. A guttural grunt escaped from it as it backed up briefly to see what it had run into. Reaching out a chubby, scaled hand, it squeezed Garrus' shin spine in confusion before deciding that it was of no further interest. Shocked, the tall turian grasped the side of the shuttle door while raising his leg to fend off the sudden appearance of the ungainly creature.

"What the hell is that?"

His flanging voice sounded strange to the small thing and in an instant, it raised its head and looked up at him with its red eyes and slit-pupils. Shepard saw the scaled skin, the undeveloped head crest, the stub of a tail that protruded from its back...and its piercing eyes fixed on hers. She saw Mordin. She saw Wrex, Eve, Grunt, and Tuchanka. Her mouth parted in disbelief while the gaze of the first krogan child she had ever laid eyes upon melted her fear and banished her panic. It flashed her the toothy grin of one that had not yet discovered evil in the world and raised its fat fingers in a playful wave directed only at her. It seemed fixated – wanting to clamber inside the small shuttle craft to investigate this new, smooth-skinned person...

A moment later, Shepard heard a deep bellow from off to the side of their docking bay. The tiny krogan was caught up in its fathers arms, effectively ending its parent-free excursion for the day. Its father looked apologetically at Garrus and Shepard and stalked off with his child under one arm as it gleefully waved them goodbye.

Awestruck by the poignancy of the encounter, Garrus noted that a body had appeared next to him outside the shuttle. Shepard flashed him a wistful smile that told him that all was now well.

"I'm ready. Let's do this."

Allowing Garrus to lead her by the hand to the makeshift check-in desk at the docking bay security area, Shepard began to absorb her surroundings on the Cradle. Whereas the Citadel had been pristine, clinical, sterilized – the Cradle was real, imperfect, and comforting. A large section of scaffolding dwarfed the bay opposite their shuttle, and from it, she could hear human and krogan workers shouting at each other, whistling for attention, and bellowing orders. The clank of unsecured metal rang out as another shipment of salarian alloys arrived to their depot. A quarian male crouched in a darkened corner of the check-in area, his omni-tool activated with sparks issuing frequently from the computer terminal he worked to connect. The geth unit that stood over him kept watch on his work, occasionally providing additional tools and hardware with a soft murmur of compliance. In a twist of unusual gratitude, the quarian seemed to make a particular point of thanking the geth for its assistance. Nearby, a pair of asari children threw tiny biotic spheres between each other as their mother kept a close eye on them.

Nearby, Shepard heard the voice of a salarian raise above the clamor.

"Idon'tcare if you are backed up – the meeting is at three and Iamgoingtobe late!"

A small smile played on the face of the human security official behind the desk at which they waited their turn.

"I understand madam Dalatrass, but you must be patient. Our systems are currently running very behind. One moment...there. You have been processed. Welcome to the Cradle!"

The willowy, robed amphibian nodded in belated gratitude as she ushered herself through the security scanners with a hurried pace. It was their turn now, and Shepard was eternally relieved to discover that it was without fanfare that the human security worker processed their admittance papers.

"Alright. Vakarian, G...She...pard. Uhh...ahem. Shepard, K...you're processed! Go on through!"

The warm smile and wink of recognition that the woman flashed them was the only irregularity visible as the turian and human proceeded past the busy check-in desk.

A pair of piercing, frosty blue human eyes watched them as they made their way through the security checkpoint. The taste of mint from the piece of chewing gum that he had cleft to the roof of his mouth had waned some time ago. His arms were folded in contemplation over his crisp navy uniform, and the only outward sign of aging was the additional gray that had worked its way into his beard. With the solemn grasp of someone who knew he could never express the gratitude he felt at the sight of his friends, retired Admiral Steven Hackett shook Shepard's hand warmly and firmly.

"Shepard! Welcome to the Cradle - I'm glad you made it. Today's gonna be a special marker for galactic history. The Remembrance Ceremony is slated for two-thirty, and every single race's council members will be there."

Smiling, Shepard and Garrus walked with Hackett as he led them towards one of the main elevators near the Central Mall. The enclosed confines of the security area and docking bays had opened out into a sunbathed world of glass and steel. Below them, asari gardeners worked to beautify the grounds of the lowest level of the Cradle's Central Mall.

"Vakarian – did you get my message? The schematics?"

Garrus nodded back at Hackett as he glanced over a screen of glowing data on his omni-tool.

"Sure did, sir. And I appreciate it. Thank you."

Shepard suspected that Hackett was referring to the preliminary map of the major decks of the Central Mall that he had sent to both of them a few weeks ago. She hadn't even had the nerve to open them. A firm pat on the back from Hackett jolted her from thoughts.

"Shepard – it's wonderful seeing you again. We've got a few hours before the ceremony. I'd suggest you make the most of them."

Nodding slowly, she watched as the aging admiral stalked away from them with the purpose of someone who didn't quite realize he was no longer on active duty. Shepard flicked her gaze to Garrus just as he was deactivating a map on his omni-tool and snaked an arm around his.

"Sooo – what do we do with our free time, Mr. Vakarian?"

Her tone was playful, but Garrus fixed her with an oddly serious stare, clearing his throat ambiguously.

"I'm going to meet with a turian delegation from Palaven. They've.....asked for my input on a few, uh...security issues here on the station."

Taking her hand in one of his, he summoned the elevator they stood next to with the other. Shepard frowned in confusion.

"Aaand...me?"

She was slowly beginning to realize that Garrus had been making plans for this day for a long while and smiled crookedly at his clandestine strategy. But once again, she was met with a overly-serious expression as the elevator door chimed and opened.

"You are going to Level 7. Someone's waiting for you that wants to see you as much as I do. I can't keep you all to myself, Shepard. Not today."

Feeling herself being sucked into the day of political appointments and appearance that she had tried for almost four years to avoid, she protested as Garrus nudged her inside the elevator.

"Level 7, Shepard."

Brushing a minute kiss on her forehead, the turian's hand hit the 'UP' panel before she could react, and the doors began to close.

"Wait – Garrus!"

But it was too late – the elevator's door had slid shut and sealed. The claustrophobic metallic compartment was ascending before she had even finished calling his name. Sighing, her shoulders slumped, Karen Shepard waited and wondered about Level 7...

~

The disorienting momentum ceased as the elevator arrived at the predesignated level with its unwilling occupant. A prerecorded asari's voice announced their location,

"Level Seven – Justicar Gardens."

Stepping from the platform, Shepard looked around, not knowing where to go but walking regardless. A pair of asari priestesses ushered past her and into the empty elevator silently, each carrying wooden prayer beads and musty-looking books. As the elevator that brought her here left just as quickly, she continued along the curved corridor towards a source of warm, bright light at the end of it. Before reaching her unknown destination, Shepard's omni-tool activated and announced that a message was waiting for her. It was short, from Garrus.

'I'm sorry, but you're as stubborn as I am. There was only one way to get you in that elevator. I'll be waiting for you.'

Her feet hadn't stopped walking even as she read his message, and as she looked up her eyes could scarcely believe what they saw. She had arrived at a large, open viewing platform which overlooked one of the most spectacular sights she had ever witnessed. A massive atrium soared over her head, arches creating a web of glistening metal far above. The simulated sunlight that poured in through the glass ceiling cast not only light on the grand space but warmth as well. It sent dappled patterns scattering amidst the lush planted foliage below where tall trees reached their greenery towards the heavens. Beneath them, a carpet of ferns and exotic flowers stretched as far as the eye could see.

Her eyes adjusting to the bright light, Shepard saw a silhouetted form ahead of her looking out over the spectacle. As she approached, she realized that even from behind she recognized the wheelchair-bound David Anderson. Her lips parting in an awestruck stare, she leaned against the glass handrail and took her place next to the retired admiral. He grunted a small noise of approval.

"Helluva thing, Shepard."

A sorrowful smile played on the old soldier's face as his misty eyes searched the magnificent view. They hadn't seen each other for two years – Shepard's reclusive time on Palaven combined with Anderson's time spent in Alliance rehab had kept them apart. She accepted his hand gently in a small greeting and was relieved to find that it was healthily warm.

"What is this place?" She asked, her voice full of wonder and questions as she looked around the vast enclosure. Anderson looked at her, a knowing expression on his face.

"Justicar Gardens. This is a place for remembrance, Shepard. The wounds of the war are still fresh for so many of us – and countless are the ranks who gave everything for the cause. Some of them.....there were no bodies to bury, no ashes to scatter. Samara..."

Not only did he see Shepard's eyes well with tears at the mention of the Justicar's name, but also the fresh emotional wounds she carried still. Garrus had been right. They had never closed.

"She will never have a grave, Shepard. She was lost to the void as so many were. But, for the ones that did come home...this is where they were laid. If their families wanted it."

Placing a healing hand on Shepard's back, Anderson motioned for her to follow him as he wheeled himself towards a ramp that provided access to the lush garden below. They entered a land of sparkling light and carpets of green moss that created a soft walkway amidst the ferns and colorful flowers. As they slowly made their way through the garden, Shepard realized that they were passing what looked like tombstones that had been recessed into shaded nooks and secluded grottos. Indeed, once or twice she caught a glimpse of a photograph laying atop a stone plinth or the sparkle of metallic dogtags in the sunlight.

She stopped suddenly as Anderson halted their progress in the center of the massive park. He looked at her intently, a calm peace descending on them. In the distance, the foreign call of bird rang out amidst the silence. An artificial breeze ruffled the leaves above their heads, and Shepard watched as it created fragments of golden light across the carpet of vegetation...brown eyes.

The sight struck her like a physical blow as she saw that gaze again. Her feet led her involuntarily towards the moss covered tombstone that had been hewn from London's ruins, and her knees felt damp grass beneath them as she was brought down on the carpet of green by her own emotions. Shepard ran a hand that shook with sorrow over the rough edges of the funereal marker.

"Kaidan..."

The eternal gaze of the dead major watched her from the datapad that sat atop his tomb, his sacrifice forcing her to recall every ounce of sorrow and mourning she had hidden deep within her since the end of the war. He was smiling in the picture, having just accepted his Spectre appointment by the council. His handsome features contained a warmth about them despite the soldier's troubled life. Anderson backed away quietly as he watched Shepard become consumed by a torrent of anguish and pent-up grief. Her tears were not for the grave she knelt by alone; they carried the galaxy of the lost in their glistening drops. She could still feel Kaidan's dogtags bite into her flesh, the cold grip of James' dead hands, the lifeblood of a Justicar seep through her fingers. But even through her sorrow-stained eyes, Shepard's unbridled grieving expunged each and every guilty thought, horrific nightmare and flashback she had ever suffered. Her body convulsed with a gamut of belated bereavement.

As Anderson looked on, tears rolling over his own scarred cheeks, he saw the rebirth of a woman who had lived too long in denial of what she had been through. One who did not understand why she had lived when so many had died. Even the birdsong had abated – the only sound besides the rustling breeze in the trees being Shepard's weeping. The old, retired admiral saw her shoulders release eventually from the grip of sorrow and stirred in his wheelchair. Clearing his throat softly, he placed a gentle hand on her back as she remained knelt at the graveside.

"Take your time, Shepard. You need to. There are plenty more to visit with. I think Thane is somewhere nearby..."

Anderson glanced over his shoulder at her as he quietly propelled himself away.

"When you're done – we'll go find Garrus and the others."

~

'Meet me at the bar.'

After telling his omni-tool to send the message to Shepard, Garrus reclined in his chair that looked out over the Central Mall of the Cradle, drink in hand. The heat from the turian brandy lingered in his chest pleasantly. His face was thoughtful, a stark contrast to the bustling crowd of thousands that had gathered for the Remembrance Ceremony. Below him, he could make out the large, gleaming platform of marble that had been laid on the lowest level of the Mall. Encircled by blossoming cherry trees, the Council's new meeting place was open and airy – whereas on the Citadel it has been cloistered and private. He could still remember the day of her Spectre inauguration...

"So she's really here?"

Jack's gritty voice snapped the turian from his contemplation. She stood with her hands on her hips, appearing awkward in the unassuming zip-up jacket she had been instructed to wear by her superiors.

"Well – not currently..." Garrus replied, continuing his habit of wearing down the human biotic with frustratingly obvious statements. Jack rolled her eyes and flopped into the chair across the table from him as a large squad of krogan soldiers filtered by.

"Yeah, but you're here, so that means that she's not far behind."

She had barely taken the weight off her feet when a flamboyant-looking blue drink appeared directly in front of her. The tall, stately turian waiter nodded at her after placing the liquor on the table and turned to Garrus before leaving.

"Vakarian, sir."

With a stiff salute, the turian waiter withdrew and went about his other duties, tending to the bar's growing crowd of patrons. Twitching his mandibles in frustration, Garrus shook his head and leaned across the table towards Jack. His voice was hushed but exasperated.

"They've been doing that since I got here! It's getting a little...embarrassing."

Jack regarded Garrus for a moment with a strange expression, never having seen the rigid turian show much in the way of any emotion. Looking around briefly, she saw more than one of the bar's customers pointing towards their table and talking quietly into each other's ears. A human mother and father – holding the hands of their young child – regarded the biotic and turian with excited stares as the kid pulled uselessly towards them. The attention they were garnering was of a gentle kind – a quiet, reverent sort of recognition that could never be held with contempt.

Jack allowed her habitually stoic expression to fall away, and smiling broadly she lifted her drink in Garrus' direction.

"Shit Garrus – I think we've earned it. Cheers."

Sighing, the turian nodded in concession and joined her in sipping from his own glass, the two of them lost in a quiet moment of acknowledgement. Whatever their differences, whatever their backgrounds – it mattered not, now. Falling silent and finally comfortable in each other's presence, they both watched from the third-floor bar as the masses of citizens began to assemble for the ceremony. The artificial late-afternoon sky above them was the deepest of blues and criss-crossed with fluffy white clouds. Simulated sunlight cast a warm glow over the scene as soldiers, citizens and dignitaries from every imaginable race gathered below them.

Clearing her throat purposefully, Shepard appeared behind Garrus and laid a hand on his shoulder. Jolting and placing his drink back on the table with a hand that almost shook, the turian rose and embraced her immediately.

"I'm sorry," he whispered into her ear, his guilt at bundling her into the elevator as plain on his face as his scars. Shepard took his hand in hers, grasping his fingers firmly. A peace shone from her clear eyes.

"Don't be."

Her composed smile soothed the turian's worry as he offered her a chair next to him.

"Jack."

Shepard acknowledged the human biotic with a nod, and then her eyes fell to the table full of glasses holding every color of drink imaginable. From the auburn hue of serrice ice brandy on-the-rocks, to the shockingly purple asari 'Eternity' cocktail, there was barely an inch of available space left on the table. Her eyes widened in wonder.

"What's all this?"

Clearing his throat, Garrus began rummaging amongst the shot glasses and tall drinks, a slightly confused expression furrowing his brow plate. Muttering to himself, he slid one glass after another in Shepard's direction.

"Well, uh...right. Okay. That's from Wrex. I told him you didn't drink beer, but..."

A formidable line of beverages began to manifest itself in front of her as Shepard watched in mock horror. Garrus continued,

"And...this is from Liara. It's...pink. She seemed quite proud of that. The orange juice came from Mikka Solus, believe it or not – with a note attached that just said 'alcoholinadvisable'. Aaaand...oh, yeah. Some vorcha came by a few minutes ago and slammed this down. It's...uh, gray. I wouldn't recommend drinking it..."

He looked up briefly and saw Shepard's incredulous expression as her eyes glazed over. The sight of all the good-faith gestures before her was overwhelming. Grinning, he continued nudging drinks towards her.

"I think I'm too recognizable, Shepard. Sorry."

As she watched him sort through the dizzying selection of drinks before them, Shepard's eyes settled on a small, unassuming white mug amidst the gaudy glassware. Steam rose in tendrils from the amber liquid it contained.

"What's this one?"

Lifting it to her lips, she smelled the familiar tannins and caffeine of her favorite tea. She regarded Garrus with a knowing smile through the steam as he settled back in his chair nonchalantly.

"That was placed there by a particularly dashing turian. Called himself 'Archangel.' He, uh...didn't hang around long, though."

Shepard sipped from the hot beverage appreciatively, feeling its warmth and flavor invigorate her senses. Capturing the turian's gaze across the mug, she saw the reassuring smile in his blue eyes, felt their affinity for one another keenly as he took her hand in his. Drawing a deep, contented breath, she joined the others in looking out over the Central Mall. It was almost time for the ceremony....

~

The turian felt Shepard's arm link through his as they walked the lower level of the Central Mall. Following the announcement that the asari and salarian councilors had been delayed on approach to the crowded station, Garrus had recommended to her that they pay a visit to one of the many wonders the Cradle already contained. The post-war era that they now lived in had been a central theme in the construction of many areas of the replacement station. From Justicar Gardens to the Avenue of Tribute where they now found themselves, it was becoming clear that the collective species' fundamental outlooks had changed. No longer did each race consider its society insular or superior. Now, the contributions of each people – young and old, many and few – were displayed for all to see.

Shepard felt her breath stole from her as she looked down the tree-lined avenue that led away from the Council's platform. Massive megaflora hardwoods had been transplanted from the salarian homeworld of Sur'Kesh, their mature branches arching over the wide walkway beneath them in elegant fashion. Between their great trunks stood a different tribute that had been secured in place by the strength of krogan workers. Rock – hewn from the mountains of Palaven and Earth – had been carved by the most talented quarian and asari artisans into a representation of each and every race in existence that had contributed to the Reaper war. The place had a contemplative, introspective air about it.

Garrus led Shepard underneath the whispering boughs of the trees, his sinewy arm encircling her shoulders.

"They're not all completed yet, but this is going to be a remarkable place once it's finished."

Shepard looked around her in wonder as they passed the countless massive, gnarled trunks, their pace slow and meandering.

"It already is. I keep thinking of the lone krogan statue that stood on the Presidium. Now, we have many more to give thanks to...I'm glad that we realize that."

The debris of construction still littered the Avenue of Tribute as they walked. A group of human workers hastily swept rock dust from the pathway, casting lingering glances in Shepard's direction as she and the turian approached. A pair of quarian and asari sculptresses stood together at the base of an unfinished statue, looking intensely at their work, discussing their next chisel strike. As Shepard eyed them on their way by, it became clear that the statue was taking the shape of a hanar – the only visible portion being a gangly array of legs that was emerging from the stone. The incomplete nature of the work had not – however – prevented a small group of the jellyfish-like hanar from gathering around the tribute to their species. As they passed by, Shepard smiled at the manner in which they were heckling the sculptors.

'This One suggests that the asari artist focus on That One's fourth leg, as it possesses an unseemly angle,' 'Do the asari and quarian have a timeframe by which the statue of That One will be completed? There are many of This One's brethren that wish to view it.'

Garrus cackled under his breath at the hanar's strange speech habits as they continued their walk. Beyond the tree-lined avenue, a massive crowd had taken its place at the foot of the Council's platform, awaiting the delayed arrival of the final members of the Cradle's governing body. Shepard could hear their chattering voices and the occasional exclamation from the throng. The voices were happy, excited, and filled with anticipation.

"Thought you might like to stop here for a moment."

Garrus had brought them to a standstill at the heart of the Avenue of Tribute, where the trees were largest and branches thickest. Here, the simulated sunlight of the Central Mall penetrated to the walkway as shafts of searing gold, turning their world to a kaleidoscope of light and shade. At the exact mid-point of the tree-lined avenue stood a few of the statues that had been completed. Expertly hewn from the granite, a human soldier stared at them from her pedestal, her sightless stone eyes seeming to absorb everything around them. The simple statement 'never give up' had been scrolled in the stone base of the tribute. Shepard felt a pang of bashfulness upon seeing the statue's angular armor, the hint of a stripe down her right arm that had been carved in relief, the familiarly austere expression that would perpetually grace her face.

"I can't believe they used a female..." Shepard murmured, moving closer to Garrus as they stood in the shadow of the tribute to humanity. The turian's eyes slid down her body with a distinct lack of bashfulness as he pressed his hands to her back, drawing her into him amongst the shaded groves of trees.

"I can."

The once-clumsy kiss they shared underneath the limbs of the great trees had long since been perfected. Garrus felt her warmth transfer to his body once more as he relaxed his embrace, falling to caressing her cheek as they stood amidst the dappled shade. Shepard smiled a private, crooked smile for him.

"And you flatter me too much. Come on..."

She led the turian onwards and away from the timeless vigil of the human statue, feeling somewhat relieved to be out from under its stare. Others had arrived to the walkway now, some from the distant crowd apparently growing restless during the wait for the ceremony to begin. Most of the small groups who strolled down the avenue had children, their playful voices carrying amongst the trees like water. Shepard was brought from contemplation by Garrus as he cleared his throat with particular inference. Looking up, she saw they had arrived at the next completed statue on the long avenue. One section over from the human tribute, the tall stone turian stood on his pedestal, demanding the attention of all who passed by. His stance was wide, and the intricate work of the stonesmiths had rendered his resplendent crest in admirable detail. The turian for 'never forget' had been carved at the base underneath his feet. Shepard's eyes took in the magnificent statue, her lips parted in awe.

"He's magnificent."

They stood momentarily, absorbing the silent statue's imposing presence. Garrus nodded in agreement.

"Yeah, they certainly did a heck of a job on him. But..."

Glancing over his shoulder at the turian statue as they left it behind, he flashed Shepard a mischievous grin.

"...I have bigger mandibles."

The sound of Shepard's laughter joined that of the children who had found their way to the avenue's walkway as they continued their slow stroll. The influx of people to the walkway had caused the workers and stonemasons to retire from their duties and give over the entire area for the day to the citizenry who had gathered for the ceremony. Overhead, the sound of a departing shuttle could be heard.

"Look, Garrus!"

Shepard's exclamation came as they laid eyes on the newly-finished statue that paid tribute to the quarians. The turian followed her rapid footsteps towards the gleaming statue, watching with happiness the way in which she flitted from tribute to tribute.

A woman had already stopped for reflection by the statue of the female quarian, and Shepard was forced to tone down her enthusiasm upon realizing that they were not alone in the shadow of this next tribute.

"Afternoon."

Shepard acknowledged the woman next to her, but her eyes were fixated on the skilled depiction of the quarian female in front of them. Her hooded head was draped with a stone cowl whose lines flowed so perfectly they could have been made from silk. Delicate scrollwork echoed of patterns in the fabric of her clothing, and the fact that the statue was entirely made of stone seemed preposterous given such fluid workmanship.

"Wow," Garrus exclaimed quietly alongside Shepard as they admired the gleaming avatar of the quarians. Somewhere in the distance, a krogan could be heard roaring at his children to leave the stonemason's tools where they lay. The distant crowd had grown hushed, and Shepard realized with a start that the departing shuttle they had heard had likely been that of the remaining Councilors. But then – a woman's voice came to them. A strangely familiar voice.

"You know, Shepard – quarian law provides harsh penalties for captains of ships that neglect to acknowledge a member of their crew."

That thickly accented voice struck a place within Shepard that had long sat dormant. Simultaneously, she and Garrus turned their heads to look at the woman they had overlooked standing next to them at the statue. Tali'Zorah vas Rannoch stared back at them, her arms folded across her chest in her habitual pouty manner, a broad smile playing on her face that they now could see plainly. For the quarian that stood before them – their age old friend and ally – wore no mask. No envirosuit. Her slanted, silvery eyes pierced Shepard's with a strong, confident stare. Her shock of unruly, dark hair complimented her petite form well, and her golden-hued skin radiated a health that only a few short years ago would have been thought impossible. Shepard and Garrus were wordless, having for the first time in their lives laid eyes upon their friend's face.

"Tali?! ..." Shepard stammered as the quarian embraced her shocked former commander. Garrus shook his head with amazement behind them as the two women clung to each other in fervent disbelief. "The one and only!" Tali giggled with barely-contained excitement. There was laughter in her other-worldly eyes, and her voice trembled as she in-turn hugged Garrus.

"I can scarcely believe it myself! Yet here I am...suitless! Even after the loss of the Reaper code, the geth continued with our program of simulating suit infections in order to redevelop our immune systems."

Shepard listened to Tali's unsynthesized voice as she spoke. It was melodic, feminine – a stark contrast to the way it had sounded when it had been sent via electrical impulses through her mask.

"The geth truly see their relationship with us on Rannoch as symbiotic...beneficial. After three years of living on our homeworld, some of us have finally developed enough to be able to shed our envirosuits."

The three companions rested on the cool stone of the base of the quarian tribute, letting the quiet of the late afternoon settle around them. Tali ran a self-conscious hand through her hair.

"I'm not...perfect. Yet. By your standards, Shepard, I have the immune system of a three year old. But – viruses and infections are now dealt with by my own body, not medications, and they don't mean a death sentence. With every illness I experience, I get stronger."

Tali talked to them for some time underneath the shade trees of the Avenue of Tribute, but Shepard's mind wandered despite the company. If ever there was an example of the reason the galaxy's current cycle of evolution had the right to persist, she was sitting with it now. The quarians – seemingly relegated to forever wandering the stars in their Migrant Fleet – now had their homeworld back. A homeworld that had accepted them because of renewed peace and understanding. Their people and the geth that they had created had warred for centuries – now, they were neighbors. There truly were no limits to the possibilities of life when given a chance...

~

"Please, be seated."

The announcement carried across the Central Mall from the Council's platform and stirred Shepard, Tali and Garrus from their reunion and contemplation. The twelve-member Council body stood looking out over the crowd of thousands – each species that had contributed to building the Cradle was now represented by a seat in the new government. Shepard cast her eyes over each of them as she joined Garrus and Tali at the edge of the tree-lined avenue. From salarian and turian, to krogan and human, quarian, and even the hanar and batarians all held positions on the new Council of the Cradle. It was a thing of wonder to see the representatives of each and every race together in peace-time. The salarian Councilor spoke again, her voice augmented by her omni-tool.

"Please, take your seats my friends. Now that we are all gathered, the Remembrance Ceremony can begin. Thank you for your patience."

As the vast, gathered crowd of soldiers and citizens fell subdued and took their seats, a pious hush descended on the Central Mall. The station's created sunlight had sunk towards the furthest end of the great ring of the station, turning the sky a wash of oranges and purples and the clouds into slivers of molten amber. The only sound for some time was the call of birds from the depths of the largest trees along the avenue. Above the Mall, on the second floor viewing deck, Shepard could barely make out a cluster of familiar faces. Jack had stayed at the bar and had been joined by Wrex, Mikka, Joker and EDI.

The asari Councilor stepped forward in the silence.

"After much contemplation, we feel that this ceremony should be opened by much older words than any we can fabricate. To this end, we have searched through the archived Prothean historical data and have woven their words into song. Please remain silent while our Priestess opens the ceremony with the sonnet."

As the asari woman's voice raised in a melancholy yet peaceful song, Shepard felt Garrus place his arm around her shoulders once more. The words were foreign to most present, but she understood them. They spoke of loss and victory, of war and retribution, of pride and humility. Garrus saw Shepard's emotions move her to tears during the canticle, and stroked her hair soothingly as he held her in the dusky light. Many had emerged from the avenue's tree-shrouded walkway now, and joined them in resting against the great trunks while listening to history and remembrance unfold. Hanar, krogan, humans, asari, drell – the crowd from the avenue which Shepard, Garrus and Tali were a part of had no regiment as it gathered around the bases of the salarian's trees. Many had been brought to tears by the song of the ancient asari Priestess – none could think of a more befitting way to begin the healing and remembrance after the war that was still so fresh in all of their minds.

After the song, the salarian, human and turian Councilors each took a turn in speaking their opening statements of gratitude and thankfulness. It was the first Council assembly many present, including Shepard, had ever witnessed that contained no heated exchange, no ulterior motives and no bad blood. None of these things had a place here – not now.

After the turian Councilor's lengthy speech, he bowed deeply to the crowd and his fellow council members. Motioning that he was completed to the batarian dignitary, he then retired to his own seat on the platform. In what was now the second hour of the ceremony, the batarian Councilor came forward with a faltering step, all too aware of the fact that this was the first time any of his kind had spoken at such an event. Clutching a crumpled piece of paper in his palms, he looked out upon the crowd of thousands, and promptly stuffed the paper back into his pocket. He cleared his throat gruffly.

"Admiral Hackett, sir, the stage is yours."

Nodding towards the first row of seated officials before the platform, it was not without relief that the batarian retired to his own seat.

At the mention of Hackett's name, Shepard stirred. Glancing at Garrus, she craned her neck to look out over the crowd from beneath the trees. After a moment's pause, one lone figure stood amongst the seated thousands. Steven Hackett straightened his back, pulled the creases from his navy-blue and gold retired admiral's jacket, and walked solemnly on to the Council's platform. Before he spoke, the turian Councilor – himself a retired general – rose and grasped his arm in a moment of silent acknowledgement between the two warriors.

Hackett took a breath, turned and looked out upon those who had gathered for the ceremony with his icy blue eyes. Shepard, Garrus and Tali had taken a step forward, eagerly awaiting the words from one they knew so well and respected so implicitly. His aging voice resounded with gravelly reassurance.

"I...thank you, Councilors. It is a great honor to be asked here and to have the opportu...."

"Where's Shepard?!"

In a blatant breach of protocol, a faceless member of the crowd raised their voice with the demanded question. An echoing, uneasy silence swept across the crowd as Hackett remained on the platform. He resumed his old stress habit of massaging a piece of gum between his back teeth, his face shrouded in thought. Another voice – this time an asari's.

"We want Shepard to speak!"

A ripple of murmurs and grunts of agreement escaped the congregation of species present. Somewhere above the ground level a familiar krogan voice laughed, and the burbling voice of a hanar was heard next.

"This One would greatly like to hear the Suggested One address the crowd."

Hackett sensed the momentum of his speech falling away from him – but it mattered not. Smiling slightly, he held up his hand, asking those present to fall quiet once again.

"Shepard – I know you're here." The aging admiral stated, his quick eyes searched the crowd.

Garrus' blood boiled, his mandibles twitching nervously as the voracious faces of all present now turned to him. He looked quickly to his side, but saw that Shepard was no longer next to him. Glancing around in the orange glow of the simulated sunset, he saw elcor and hanar and humans and quarians – but not the woman that everyone present now sought. Tali frowned.

"Where did she go?"

Garrus swore under his breath, wishing the Normandy could again airlift them from the tense situation.

"Spirits – if I had to guess, the docking bay!"

A disgruntled 'bah' came from someone nearby, one or two among the crowd got up to leave.

"She's heeere!" a familiar voice bellowed from the walkway amidst the giant trees. Grunt flashed his trademark grin as he relished becoming the center of attention for the entire Central Mall. Shepard stood next to him by the massive statue of a krogan, her shoulders slumped, her dark brown hair framing a pale face. Garrus felt another pang of guilt prick his conscience. I brought her here! And now...

With a steady, meticulous pace, Steven Hackett stepped from the Council's platform and walked calmly along the seat-free walkway amidst the gathered masses. His footsteps resounded amongst the hushed individuals, and the members of the Council looked on in nervous anticipation.

The old admiral reached the line of imposing trees along the avenue, his steely gaze piercing their midst, a slight smile playing on his thin lips. Catching a glimpse of a tall turian with a blue visor, he forged towards where Shepard had been flanked by Garrus, Tali and Grunt. Someone far behind them whooped their approval, and closer to them, whispered phrases of expectation could be heard. Biting down one last time on his piece of gum, Hackett arrived in front of Shepard. Her white face wore such a mask of horror he thought she may have been asked to confront the Reapers all over again.

Breathing fast, Shepard opened her mouth but no sound came from it. Her officer's uniform began to cling to her body under waves of cold sweat. She looked at Garrus frantically, but could tell from his shocked expression that this turn of events was as much a surprise to him as it was to her. Looking back at Hackett, she saw the admiral extend a hand to her, beckoning her to go with him. Shrinking from him and the crowd of thousands behind him that had called for her by name, it was with no words that Shepard shook her head insistently. Pursing his lips in a stubborn smile, Hackett met her refusal with an obstinate nod. Once again, he motioned to her with his hand. Shepard could see the warmth of the old soldier's feelings for her seeping to the surface despite his perpetually unswayable gaze.

"No...Hackett, you promised! No," Garrus laid a hand on her shoulder, making to pull her away from Hackett...

But then...her feet were following the admiral. With a surge of resolve, Shepard left the nondescript crowd in which she had sheltered, left the side of the turian she loved, and emerged from the avenue's trees. The assembled mass of people erupted with spontaneous applause at the sight of the woman who now trailed behind Hackett as he returned towards the Council's platform. Each of the Councilors had risen now, joining the crowd in acknowledgement as Karen Shepard approached the base of their marble podium. As if some great dam had broken, a tidal wave of cheers and joyous shouts assailed her ears as she placed a foot on the steps leading to the Council.

Pausing a moment, Shepard swallowed and glanced back from where she had come. The ever-present blue glow from Garrus' visor watched over her from the edge of the trees she had left. He had been joined by Liara, now, and at their feet clung five small, shy asari children. Looking towards her as their mother gestured with pride in Shepard's direction, each one of them fixed her with their luminous, yellow eyes.

Smiling back at the small knot of her closest friends, Shepard felt her nerves ease and her muscles relax. Turning back towards the Council and Hackett, she felt words return to her and stepped on to the stage.

Karen Shepard's words at the Remembrance Ceremony would continue to echo in the hearts and minds of each person present that day for years to come. One person could not change a galaxy, but she could provide it a compass. A direction in which to point. They had not fought for the righteous and just alone. They had fought for the kings and the cutpurses, the wealthy and the destitute, the strong and the weak. For, as Shepard posited, what is life? How do you define life? Through the barrel of a gun? In the pages of a textbook?

They may not know what the future holds in store for them – but one thing was clear. Every people, every race, every unevolved species now had a chance. The only chance that mattered.

Finis.

