Prologue A:

Lt. Commander Robert Edwards was lost on the Citadel, in an area that he was sure few had ever seen. He had followed a lead on Cerberus activities to the Citadel, arriving just before Cerberus had seized control of the station. Or maybe it was the Reapers who had seized control. It was getting increasingly hard for Edwards to think of the two as separate factions. He knew that most Cerberus agents were indoctrinated but wasn't sure how far up Cerberus hierarchy the indoctrination went. Edwards believed it went all the way to the Illusive Man but his evidence was circumstantial.

Cerberus had already attempted to take over the Citadel once during the war. That attempt had been a conventional coup including sending assassins after the Council. Commander Shepard and her Normandy team had been responsible for thwarting that take-over attempt at the cost of lives of Thane Krios and Major Kaidan Alenko. But this attempt was different. It wasn't clear how Cerberus had taken control of the station; Edwards assumed they would have used their best inside people on the previous attempt, but this time the take-over seemed effortless. Knowing that the Citadel was of Reaper design, Edwards thought it likely that the Reapers had directed the attack. It was the only way that Edwards could see Cerberus pulling this off. If so, it would confirm that indoctrination went all the way to the top of Cerberus.

The control that Cerberus had over the station was complete. They had moved it from the Widow system to the Sol system and then had closed the arms, locking it up tight. Some had managed to get off the station. Those that didn't were being rounded up, perhaps to become more Cerberus shock troops, perhaps to become Reaper forces, or maybe just to be killed and processed to make another Reaper.

Edwards had been hiding since Cerberus first established control of the station, getting into areas Cerberus thought they had sealed off. He'd seen things that would give him nightmares for a long time. In Cerberus bases he had raided before the war he'd realized that death wasn't the worst thing that could happen to you; now he had seen how much worse things could get.

His hiding had led him deep into the Citadel, where he now stood near some keepers who appeared to be processing dead humans. "This just gets better and better," Edwards muttered to himself. He walked the corridor to the end and upon exiting saw an artificial ravine. To either side the walls shifted and moved, as if reconfiguring the area. That sense that had kept him safe so many times told him to turn back; something wasn't right here. There was nothing he could put his finger on but his unconscious mind had noticed something that he wasn't yet able to recognize.

"Nowhere else to go Bobby," Edwards' said, knowing that talking to himself wasn't the best sign. This wasn't a mission he could bug out on and come back to later. He had a sense that, at least for Earth, the end game was now. At a minimum, he had to find a way to establish contact with someone off the Citadel and see what the situation was. He had found nothing behind him that would allow that, so he went forward.

"SAI," Lt. Commander Edwards asked, "are you picking up any unusual readings?"

SAI, or Strategic Analytical Intelligence, was Edwards' modified virtual intelligence. He had built it from a prototype of the Andromeda Initiative's Simulated Adaptive Matrix, or SAM, that he had collected from a raid on an abandoned Initiative base. Edwards had intentionally limited its capabilities to keep it from being a full blown artificial intelligence, wanting just the analysis component. Plus, he'd seen the scorn heaped on Alec Ryder for his work on SAM, and had no desire to suffer the same. Also, as technically oriented as he was, he still distrusted AI's.

"No, Lt. Commander. I'm not picking up anything outside of normal variation," SAI replied.

SAI had been a great benefit to Edwards the last few months, but increasingly he saw why the Andromeda Initiatives Pathfinders would need the full SAM. SAMs were tied directly to their users, essentially seeing the world through the pathfinders' senses. There were things that SAI just couldn't handle because it couldn't observe everything that Edwards could. SAI resided on Edwards' omni-tool and had access to all the omni-tools sensors. But those sensors didn't cover everything that Edwards' senses did. But to use a full SAM would mean not only creating an AI but also having one of Ellen Ryder's implants in his head. He had a prototype implant from the same raid where he got the SAM prototype but lacked the expertise to get it to work.

As Edwards reached the top of the far side of the ravine he entered a room. Two bodies lay on the floor; one was Admiral Anderson and the other was the Illusive Man. Edwards had never met either man but was acquainted with the careers of both. He had seen enough dead bodies to know they were gone, but he followed his training and verified that was the case. He was surprised to see that the Illusive Man had apparently killed himself. There was also evidence that the Illusive Man had a high level of Reaper tech implanted in his body. Edwards had his confirmation that the Illusive Man was indoctrinated, though it seemed a little late.

That the Illusive Man would be on the Citadel made sense, given what Edwards knew of the Cerberus take-over. But how had Admiral Anderson even gotten on the Citadel and why would the Admiral in charge of the resistance on earth be up here on the Citadel? The only reason Bobby could think of was to open the arms, but why would that be important?

Edwards knelt to examine Anderson and then the world exploded.

Prologue B

Commander Christina Shepard started forward. She remembered telling the Illusive Man that there were always options; now she had been given options. She didn't have to destroy the Reapers, according to the Catalyst, she could control them instead. But it wouldn't be her controlling them as she would be dead. Her thoughts and memories and ideas would be directing the Reapers as she, what? Merged with the catalyst, she supposed since controlling the Reapers was what the Catalyst had been doing. But she didn't think anybody, not even she, could or should be trusted with that much power. She was certain the Catalyst shouldn't be wielding it.

Then, the Catalyst had told her that she could "join her energy" to that of the Crucible, thereby changing the fundamental structure of life through-out the galaxy. Organic and Synthetic life would no longer be separate but merged into a new hybrid form of life. This, the Catalyst claimed, was the final solution to war between Organics and Synthetics; each perfected by union with the other. But, even if that were true, Shepard didn't believe she should make that decision for all life in the galaxy.

Neither were what she had come here to do. She had come to destroy the Reapers. Doing so would allow the species of the Milky Way to determine their own fate. Was war between Organics and Synthetics inevitable? The Reaper on Rannoch had said the war there proved it was so, but the war on Rannoch had ended in peace between the Quarians and the Geth. Both Quarians and Geth were part of the fleet that had come here with the purpose of destroying the Reapers. Shepard didn't believe that war was inevitable any more than she had believed that the genophage was necessary to prevent war with the Krogan.

While the Catalyst seemed sincere that all options were viable, Shepard couldn't trust it. Not with this much on the line. The Catalyst had long ago devised the Reapers as a solution, but they solved nothing. They were instruments of destruction and she was here to make sure they were stopped. The Catalyst was not omniscience nor infallible. What if control was only temporary or if synthesis wasn't the utopia that the Catalyst believed it would be? Shepard decided she had only one choice.

"Dead Reapers are the way we win this." Admiral Hackett's voice hung in Shepard's head. This was the mission. In the end, choices or no, it was inevitable that she would complete the mission. She was a naval officer and a born leader, but she was no scientist or Admiral. Trust the chain of command is what she'd told Lieutenant Kurin on Thessia and that's what she'd do now. The chain said the Reapers had to be destroyed.

Shepard began to pull the trigger and then the world exploded.