Shepard's Loyalty Mission: The Cult of Harbringer

by Andy Wong Fey Hong

The Reapers are coming. Or have they already? And what plans do they have for their hated foe Commander Shepard, and all of his allies? Shepard's loyalty mission as he deals with the ghosts of his past, one which is Ashley Williams

1. Prologue

Shepard's Loyalty Mission: The Cult of Harbringer

Name : Commander Setsuna Shepard

Background : Earthborn

Reputation : Sole survivor

Mass Effect 1 decisions : a) Saved Council

b) Wrex survived

c) Ashley Williams as love interest

d) Kaidan Alenko was killed in action on Virmire

e) Followed Paragon path mainly

Mass Effect 2 decisions : a) Destroyed Collector base and broke ties with Cerberus

b) All team members survived

c) No love interest in ME2 (loyal to Ashley)

d) Followed Paragon path mainly

e) Retained Spectre Status

f) Preserved heretic Geth

Prologue

Deep underground, in a cavernous chamber that was as large as an American football field, a dark congregation of numerous red hooded figures was gathered. The chamber seemed to be modelled on the Franco-gothic architecture that was once common in the Catholic cathedrals of France.

Eerie red lights glowed from the chandeliers which illuminated the chamber. Also suspended in the air twenty feet above the congregation, were hundreds of candles. It looked as though it were held up by magic but most could see the tell tale sign of mass effect generators holding the candles up in the air, the occasional crackle of blue Eezo interrupting the red twilight emanating from the candles.

The air appeared to be intoxicating the congregation. All of them were murmuring incoherently, apparently in prayer. A few of them had fallen to the ground, screaming unintelligibly as though possessed. The rest of them ignored them even as froth dribbled from their mouths and their spasms resulted in them traumatising their own bodies, banging their heads and other parts against the hard stone floor.

It was a strange and horrible sight, even blasphemous to many religions of Earth. And if the congregations strange worship was not enough to convince one that it was an evil cult, the writing on the wall was literal in that cathedral.

Every inch of the walls except for one where a stage was situated, was covered in writhing bodies. At first glance, the bodies looked human. But in fact, the bodies only WERE human. They looked like they were stuck on the walls like flies but unable to escape beyond a few pitiful movements with their fingers and bodies. And then there was the moaning; the ghostly horrible moaning of all of them which rivalled that of the mad worship of the congregation.

And then the congregations worship stopped. Those who behaved possessed ceased their movements, the life slowly ebbing from their bodies as their numerous wounds continued to bleed. But strangely enough, the ground seemed to absorb the blood and the rest of the worshippers gave them a respectful space.

There was a stone stage at the end of the cathedral. It was raised high in the air for the entire congregation to see. Powerful mass effect fields held it floating there. To reach it, there were stone steps leading up to it, one group forming stairs to the centre of the stage. Red hooded figures lined the sides of the steps and in front of it, preventing the rest of the congregation to climb the steps. These ones guarding the steps were different: in addition to the red robes and hood which obscured their faces, each wore military grade armour with a deep blood red tint, and were heavily armed with Predator Hand cannons and Avenger Assault rifles. But what was also strange was that some of the guards were not human. In fact, from the body structure of half the guards guarding one side of the stairs, they were in fact Turian.

The reason for this was apparent at the mural which adorned the wall behind the stage. It was an elaborate picture of the former traitor Turian Spectre, Saren Arterius. But it was not the image of an organic Turian who was once the epitome of brutal efficiency in Council Space. It wasn't even the image of Saren when he had succumbed to the implants bestowed upon him by Sovereign to upgrade his strength and resolve.

It was that of the final form of Saren, stripped of his organic flesh and replaced with what could only be described as a Turian husk. A husk which crackled with mysterious red energy courtesy of Sovereign, because the husk WAS Sovereign. The husk of Saren Arterius was standing on what looked like the former Citadel Tower, seemingly in a re-enactment of the Battle of the Citadel only a few years earlier. However instead of Sovereign, it was a gargantuan Saren husk which was perched on the Citadel Tower. The husk was surrounded by burning ships of the Citadel fleet as well as that of the Alliance Fifth Fleet, some of which were firing at it. But its ghostly expression ignored them as though they were beneath its attention and instead, its gaze was upwards to the cosmos, both its hands reaching for the sky in worship.

And those hands were grasped by something alien and far larger, a form which filled out the entire upper half of the mural. And the mural was actually coming alive, the lines of paint detailing the mural crackling with the same unholy energy that had engulfed Saren at the Battle of the Citadel. The appearance of this unholy energy was what had caused the congregation to pause in its mad worship.

"AND HIS NAME WAS SAREN, THE ONE TRUE PROPHET OF GOD! THE ONE WHO WILL LEAD US TO TRUE SALVATION! THE ONES WHICH ALL THE PROPHETS OF OLD PREDICTED WOULD COME TO CLEANSE THE GALAXY OF THE FILTH THAT IS ALIEN AND THOSE WHO WOULD CONSORT WITH THEM!"

The crowd screamed, partly in terror but also in joy. For the one who spoke had just simply appeared on stage.

There was no smoke or grand entrance, he had just appeared and yet he had been able to capture their attentions the moment he spoke. He wore the same red robes but was not hooded. The man under the hood seemed to be normal, a white Caucassian man speaking with a New York accent with a touch of Brooklyn. He appeared aged, his thick black hair streaked with white, the hair on the side of his head completely so. A short white goatee stuck out from beneath his chin. His eyes were blue and somehow these shone brightly in the red twilight spectrum of the cathedral. His hands held apart his robes which showed a smart business suit no different from any other average working man on Earth who worked in an office.

In short, he looked like a completely normal human save for the fact that he was preaching to a congregation which worshipped humanity's worst enemy at one time. There was also the fact that when he spoke, the voice thundered throughout the cathedral and there was no sign of technology helping to amplify his voice.

"IT WOULD HAVE BEEN GLORIOUS! WE WOULD FINALLY BE ONE WITH GOD! ONE WITH THE TRUE MASTER OF MANKIND! FREE FROM THE SINS OF THE FLESH, FREE FROM BONDAGE OF OUR EARTHLY MASTERS! FREE MY FRIENDS, FROM THE SINS OF MAN!"

"IT WOULD HAVE BEEN GLORIOUS! A WORLD WHERE ALL ARE EQUAL! WHERE WE CAN FINALLY BE TRULY FREE IN EVERY SENSE OF THE WORD!"

"AND THE MOST HOLY FATHER SAW FIT TO GIVE US THE TRUE PROPHET! AND BY HIS DESIGN AND GRACE, IT WAS SAREN ARTERIUS! AN ALIEN! A TURIAN! OH HOW IT TORE MY HEART WHEN I REALISED IT WAS HIM! IT COULD NOT BE TRUE! HOW COULD THE SAVIOUR OF HUMANITY BY A DAMNED ALIEN!"

The preacher paused gathering his breath for his next point

"BUT THE WAYS OF OUR LORD ARE MYSTERIOUS INDEED. AND IN HIS EVERLASTING GRACE AND LOVE, HE OPENED MY MIND! I SOUGHT OUT SAREN, SOUGHT HIS TEMPLE. AND MY CHILDREN WHAT A TEMPLE IT IS! WHAT A TEMPLE INDEED. IN THAT TEMPLE, I WAS CLEANSED. IN THAT TEMPLE, MY EYES WERE OPENED. IN THAT TEMPLE I SAW GOD AND HIS NAME WAS NOT YAHWEH, THE GOD OF THE BLASPHEMOUS JEWS."

"IT WAS SOVEREIGN!"

The congregation broke into madness, resuming their worship and jubilation. Even those who were nearly dead on the ground began to move again, although there was something strange about their movements, it was not as random or strong as it once was.

"BUT WE WERE DENIED THE LIGHT OF SOVEREIGN! THE GOD THAT PROMISED US SALVATION AND GRACE! THE SALVATION THAT WOULD END ALL SUFFERING, FINALLY TEARING DOWN THE VEIL WHICH SEPARATED US FROM OUR LORD WHEN ADAM AND EVE SINNED! THE VEIL SUPPOSEDLY TORN BY THE FALSE PROPHET TWO THOUSAND YEARS AGO! A PROPHET WE WERE CONNED TO BELIEVED WAS THE ONLY TRUTH, THE LIGHT AND THE WAY!"

His voice was now softer.

"And now a new dark age has fallen. Armageddon is at hand. The galaxy is a cesspool of darkness. Humanity is now a slave to aliens, the stooge of the blasphemers known as the Citadel Council. The aliens now live on our very own soil of Earth, even in the Mount Sinai where Moses walked long ago, I see Asari, Salarians, Turians, EVEN BATARIANS!"

"Who made this possible? Who stopped our prophet from delivering us to salvation! Who, Who, WHO FORCED THIS ARMAGEDDON ON US!"

As if on cue, the whole congregation shouted their most hated name.

"SHEPARD!"

"Yes, SHEPARD! Another false prophet, a false hero that our ignorant brothers of humanity have come to trust and worship. Beware my friends, for he truly carries the sign of the Beast, the one who will deceive the world, promising salvation but in the end offering damnation! Against this false hero we must steel our hearts. But not only that. The time of passivity is over my friends! It is time to take action! It is time to plan! It is time to take arms! It is time to smite our enemies!"

The congregation erupted again in a fanatic display of joy.

"Never fear, never doubt my flock! The lord our god is with us! He is guiding me and by his grace, I swear I will lead you as well. Look to your cell leaders. Look to the priests of whom I was humbly selected to lead. But most of all, look inwards in yourselves, for in you a hero shall arise to smite even one such as Shepard!"

Suddenly the preacher stopped, as though he had seen something strange in the congregation but could not pinpoint where it was.

"See even now in our glorious worship, the enemy lies in wait, seeking the chance to sow discord and skew our true faith! An enemy in league with the beast that is Shepard, who is the hidden army of Armageddon. INFIDEL!"

He suddenly pointed and to the wonder of the entire congregation but one, red energy sizzled around the arm instead of the normal blue eezo which powered biotics. The red energy beam arced out like a lightning beam and struck out into the middle of the congregation into one man. The man screamed not only when the energy struck him but also when all of the surrounding congregation suddenly pounced on him, enraged that a non-believer had infiltrated their ranks.

The man was almost literally torn apart by the mob of furious cultists before the preacher's voice boomed, "Enough! Bring him to me! Even the lord can be generous to his enemies!"

Those immediately assaulting the men ceased their actions, then picked up the nearly dead man. Slowly he was passed along until he was finally handed to the guards at the base of the floating stairs. Two of the guards took hold of one end of the body and carried it up the steps, eventually placing him at the preacher's feet. The preacher had an almost compassionate expression on his face. He knelt down in front of the broken man and propped his body up with his own hands. When he talked to the man, the other man's voice was also amplified.

"What is your name child? Why do you come to disturb this sacred place?" he asked gently, almost like admonishing a child for being where he should not be.

"Go to hell you sick bastard!" the man spat out. "Worshipping the Reapers… do you have any idea what you're doing?"

"The question my son, is do you have any idea of what YOU are doing? Denying the salvation and the inevitable coming of our lord? Don't you want to meet him and be accepted in his loving arms rather than be thrown into the lake of fire?"

In spite of his pain, the man laughed. "Even if I believe in God, which I don't, I'm not stupid enough to think he comes in the form of a giant calamari I like to eat with my spaghetti Marinara."

"BLASPHEMY! DESTROY HIM! CRUCIFY HIM! BURN HIM!" the congregation was enraged now. They were even starting to shove against the guards at the stone stairs, eager to exact justice on the perceived heathen.

The preacher held up his hand and calmed the crowd instantly. "No my children, we will not become like our enemies. We will not fall to the levels of the heathens who enslave or kill their own enemies simply because they do not believe in their lies. After all, what are the words of these heathen? He is damned is he not? Are you all so weak that we cannot ignore his words, blasphemous as they are, as beneath us?"

"NO! WE ARE THE CHOSEN! WE ARE TRANSCENDED! WE ARE BETTER THAN THE HEATHENS"

"Yes we are CHOSEN! We are saved by the prophet Saren! Who can stand against us! Who can stop our holy and divine mandate to bring the light of Saren to the universe! Who can deny the lord which this man stupidly calls Reapers to come cleanse this galaxy and bring us to his glory?" the preacher shouted.

A soft chuckling broke the fervour of the worship. Somehow, the voice of the dying man was still amplified.

"Isn't it obvious? Commander Shepard."

Silence struck the congregation. The man spoke the name with such conviction that it was as though their own preacher was speaking. Except this wasn't a religious fanatic. This was a man who knew the Hero of the Citadel and his deeds with enough confidence that this cult was nothing compared to what the Shepard had faced already.

Even the preacher was struck by his conviction but quickly compose himself. Bending low and speaking to the spy alone now, he said, "Too bad Shepard can't save you now heathen. And I let you know now that you will not die. You will be one of us whether you like it or not. The power of the lord's holy spirit was left behind and it will indoctrinate you to our cause. When you meet Shepard, you will be one of us and will rip him apart for the lord."

The broken man grinned, showing all of his shattered teeth. "Don't count on it."

At that moment, the man's right eye exploded and his body went limp. The preacher cursed himself for forgetting that the man probably had suicide countermeasures, in this case an ocular nerve flashbang, to make sure he wasn't taken alive. But he still smiled and took advantage of the situation. To the congregation, the man was limp but still twitching from his death. The preacher then took up the broken body in his hands.

"If Shepard is so powerful, how come one who exalts him so can be turned against him?" he said as he gave a hidden gesture to the guards. Three of them then carried a strange device, a flat disc which stood on a large tripod. The disc was large enough to lay part of a man's torso on it. The preacher placed the body on it, stepped away and started praying in an incoherent tongue.

All of a sudden, a huge spike protruded from the disc, impaling the body and carrying it high into the air.

"And the lord will bring salvation to the heathens, and all will be made clean in his eyes!"

To the wonderment of the congregation, blue energy crackled around the body. The clothes the man was wearing were burned off leaving his naked body. But the body was changing. Veins were sticking out but instead of those which carried blood, they looked like blue wires criss crossing his skin. His skin was also turning blue and also hardened to the point it looked like scales. The process continued until the body looked like the husks on the wall.

Then the spike went down, retracting into the disc leaving its host on it. The hole in the chest mended itself with blue metal and what used to be a man stood from the disc, reborn into a husk moaning its eternal damnation.

"NOW WE PREPARE THE WAY FOR THE LORD'S NEW PROPHET! NOW WE WAIT FOR HIS VESSEL TO COME TO PAVE THE WAY TO HEAVEN AND SMITE THE BEAST THAT IS SHEPARD!"

"AND HIS NAME IS HARBRINGER!"

When the agent died using the hidden explosive inside his eye, so did the communications feed linking his visual data to the Illusive Man's terminal. The Cerberus leader was rarely moved by anything but even now he was beginning to feel vexed. This was the fourth operative he had lost investigating the cult that was rapidly spreading on Earth.

He didn't even know the location of their cathedral. The agent, like most of the congregation, had boarded a transport that somehow prevented him from locating the agent's location. The red hoods meant he didn't have much to go on with visual evidence. The only thing he knew for certain was that the cult's base was located underground and it was somewhere on planet Earth.

And now he had firm proof that this was not just a simple cult. Their preacher was charismatic and to date, defied all attempts at identification. Worst, they had the Reapers' indoctrination technology right on Earth and were using it to create some sort of local support for the Reapers.

This begged the question of how the Reapers were influencing the cult. The indoctrination technology was easy enough to come by, the Alliance had procured a large number of the dragon's teeth from the various Geth attacks which somehow went missing. But the preacher was displaying biotic abilities that was similar to the possessed Saren and still seem to retain most of his mind.

With the Collectors destroyed, this could only meant that the Reapers were coming, and they were coming soon. It also meant that they had not yet exhausted their supply of hidden agents in the Milky Way.

The Illusive Man pressed the bridge of his nose tiredly. Not for the first time, he wished Miranda Lawson was at his side. But his best and most loyal operative was no longer in his employment. She was Shepard's now, along with six billion credits worth of crew and equipment, including the Normandy SR2. The Illusive Man did not dwell too long on Shepard's breakaway though. He admitted to himself that he had accepted that Shepard would be Shepard and no way the Hero of the Citadel could ever be persuaded firmly to Cerberus cause. Hence the destruction of the Collector base.

Besides, Shepard had a point. The Normandy was ambushed while installing a Reaper IFF on it. There was no telling what would happen if Cerberus and humanity in general tried to use other Reaper technology. While it made sense to use the weapons of one's enemy against him, there was also the very real threat that said weapons could be disabled or otherwise manipulated by their true masters which would have made humanity even more vulnerable to the Reapers.

The Illusive Man cut the disrupted feed on his terminal and took a long drag at his terminal. His considerable efforts to infiltrate the cult had failed. Anymore spent would strain Cerberus' capabilities, already taxed to the max in their efforts to prepare for the coming Reaper invasion. He could no longer afford to risk anymore of his operatives. He needed them for other operations. This appeared to be an impossible task. And when an impossible task came up, there seem to be only one person in the galaxy who was capable of doing it.

The question was, would Shepard answer a call for help from a man he distrusted? More importantly, was it in the Illusive Man's best interest for Shepard to continue on his own path against the Reapers?

To be continued...

Author's note

This is something I envisioned a long time ago: Shepard's loyalty mission to put his ghosts to rest so that he can fight the Reapers with total conviction. This story will have multiple endings as well, such as if there was no Love Interest in ME1 but romanced Tali in ME2. For the moment, I want to take the challenge of having Ashley as LI in ME1.

Hope you guys will be along for the ride.