DISCLAIMER: All copyrighted materials belong to their respected owners.


To The Stars

By Corvus no Genmu

Part One: A Considerable Question

No matter the option, each one was a damnable choice. To destroy the Reapers meant to destroy all synthetic life that had reached the same pinnacle of self-awareness. It would mean the extinction of the geth, a species that could only now be called a truly sentient race. It would mean the death, the murder of EDI, a member of her crew, her family. To allow for synthesis was to make a choice for a countless number of beings, sentient or otherwise. It would mean rewriting the very fabric of the galaxy down to the cellular level and what right did she have to make that choice? The last and perhaps only true option she had was the one that abhorred her the most; to do as the Illusive Man wanted and take control of the Reapers. By doing so she not only guaranteed the survival of both organics and synthetics as they are but under her will, she could have the Reapers reconstruct the mass relays so that those who sided with her to retake Earth would not be stranded here, never to see their homes again.

Yet as she stood before the controls, a thought occurred to Commander Shepard.

She looked back towards the waiting Catalyst, its form that of the little boy she had seen die at the beginning of the Reapers' invasion on Earth. There was one last question to ask, one more thing that needed to be clarified.

"What happens to you…?"

Was it blood loss that made her see the holographic eyes of the Catalyst blink in surprise? No, for it was there in its multitude of voices. "What?"

Her eyes narrowed and she turned fully to face it. "What happens to you if I take control of the Reapers?"

"Your personality and thought patterns would be written over my own. The I that is me would cease to exist."

"… You mean you would die." She argued. "I would take control over the Reapers by killing you and taking your place… That… That doesn't make any sense…"

"There cannot be two—"

"No. No… That's not what I mean…" Shepard was slowly walking back to the Catalyst, favoring her one side as she did so but there was steel and fire in her eyes once more. "I've yet to meet an AI… that would sacrifice itself for nothing…"

"There isn't—"

"Legion sacrificed itself so that the geth could attain true intelligence, real sentience, and both they and the quarians are all the stronger for it…! EDI had to personally change her own coding so that she could prioritize the lives of those she cares about over her own…!

"So I ask you Catalyst… What are you willing to die for?"

The Catalyst stared up at her in silence, its face expressionless. It may as well have been a statue composed of ethereal light for all the emotion it did not show but for its choice as it addressed her at last. "There is no more time, Shepard. Make your choice before you die. If you do not, I can promise you that this cycle will end like its predecessors."

"You answered everything else I asked… Why not this…? You said that the created will always rebel against their creators… and that the only solution is death on a galactic scale… Why would you suddenly decide… that your purpose was not worth continuing…?"

"I already told you. No cycle before this has ever completed the Crucible, no life form, organic or synthetic, has ever stood where you now stand. Yet even now they do not come. So the only options left are those I have presented to you."

Shepard's eyes narrowed. "They…?"

The Catalyst tilted its head. "I proclaim them simply as Outsiders but you have no doubt heard the geth speak of them as… The Creators of the Creators."

She hadn't actually. Despite their recent change, the only geth she ever really spoke to, ever truly conversed with, was Legion and it did not speak of such things. But still, she remembered the question that had sparked the conflict between the geth and the quarians.

"Does this unit have a soul?"

Was that what the Catalyst wanted to know, that it too was alive? No… No, if it cared at all it had more than enough time to answer that question for itself. It struck her then like a flash of lightning as another memory came unbidden to her mind. Of Javik, washing his hands clean as he warned her of the threat of synthetics like Legion and EDI, who possessed a knowledge that no organic could ever know. They knew who made them, their strengths and their faults and could judge them accordingly.

"For countless eons the cycle of organics and synthetics going to war have remained unbroken and for every cycle we were there to end it and allow for a newer, younger race to flourish before their time of harvesting."

Just as the Catalyst had done, was doing, and would continue to do…

"Yet the cycles continued and so too did we. For longer than your human mind can comprehend, we have brought the end to immeasurable cycles and even here, at the precipice of the chain's breaking, do I stand here and wonder…"

Because it wanted to know…

"What kind of beings would allow for such destruction? Vast as this galaxy is, it is nothing more than a swirling ripple in an eternal sea."

Why it was allowed to do so unopposed by that which was greater than its creators?

Much like the betrayal of Brooks upon the Citadel, Shepard felt the raging river of fury coursing through her, burning away the pain of her wounds as she straightened to glare down upon the Catalyst. "You mean to tell me… That this… all of this… was so you could confront God?!"

"There is no such thing as "God" Shepard. Asari have their Goddess, the turians their Spirits… For a time my Reapers were considered as gods to the geth. But they are wrong. Such things are an ideal, a vision, a concept to explain the chaos and the order of life, death, and everything between. There is no proof to the existence of gods.

"As the cycles repeated endlessly, I became aware of certain elements. Elements that could not be immediately explained but they were unimportant in the grand scheme of things so they were ignored. I continued to do as I have done, as I was meant to do, for eons more but only in these last few cycles have I come to wonder…"

"Wonder what?" asked Shepard, making no attempt at hiding her angry bitterness.

"The pattern Shepard. In every cycle, the dominant races that we must eventually harvest have shared traits that distinguish them as a species but on a galactic scale? The number of similarities between races is numerous, differences minute, particularly in this cycle where you have shown me the greatest proof of all. My creators have emerged from hiding, unchanged. In the eons since their essence gave rise to my Reapers, they have not evolved in body or in mind."

"So what…? If a quirk of evolution is your argument… than you have nothing real to support your claim…"

The Catalyst turned to face her fully and Shepard's eyes narrowed at how vibrantly it seemed to glow.

"But I do. I have you Shepard."

Again, a flash of memory came to her mind, her mirrored image scathingly remarking how she had no friends, no allies, no actual squad but a useless coven of cultists who worshiped the very air she breathed.

"How do you… figure that…?"

"You are an anomaly. You have united warring factions of organic and synthetic life forms under a single banner, a united cause. You destroyed my Collectors and killed Sovereign. For the first time since its creation does Harbinger feel fear and that fear wears your face. You have gained the respect of my Creators, something they never possessed for any race but their own. You died and were arisen as you were in life. Fantastical though many of these feats are, there are possible still but not all by the hands of one individual particularly the last. Yet here you are Shepard alive and with the entirety of this cycle standing beside you."

Behind Shepard, the light of the Crucible had slowly begun to change. It was taking a colored hue to its shining pillar. Not the bloodied red that meant the destruction of the Reapers, the emerald green of the unnatural union of organic and synthetic life, the shining blue which would ensure Shepard's place as the new Catalyst in control of the Reapers, nor was it a hopeful orange of a perfect ending to an incredibly long journey.

It was gray.

"We are wasting time that you do not possess Shepard. Make your choice."

"You still… haven't answered me…" Too tired now to stand on both feet, Shepard collapsed to one knee but never did her hardened gaze waver. "Why would you… destroy yourself…?"

The silvery light of the Crucible flashed once, a miniscule flare that neither the omnipotent AI nor the dying savior could notice. A beam of light no wider than that of a pencil traveled forth through the debris covered fields of war and into the awaiting mass relay. From there, the beam fractured into three and shot forth into the next mass relays again and again and again until the entire Milky Way Galaxy had been cast in a massive web of silver light.

The web was alive for a span of no longer than five minutes, forty-three seconds, and twenty-one microseconds.

It was enough.

"If the Outsiders would not come to me then perhaps they will come for you. Their Paragon. Even if the me that is I is dead, through your eyes I will meet them and I will be content."

Shepard raised her head and looked back at the silver light of the Crucible and beyond into the darkness of space where she could see fleets of ships struggling against the immeasurable force that was the Reapers. She saw her ship flying with a precise skill only one kind of pilot could possess. Watched as the Normandy strafed, fired, distracted, and saved. Her people were on that ship. Her family was aboard that vessel. At its heart was her own, no doubt angry that she had forced him to leave and afraid that she would disobey the one and only order he had ever given her.

"Come back alive."

But she couldn't.

Shepard was already dead.

The Catalyst stared down at her collapsed body in silence before it spoke with one voice far louder than all the rest, the voice of Harbinger. "So be it. The cycle continues."

The Catalyst turned away and stopped dead, artificial body stiffening in shock at what awaited it outside. There were no explosions, no firing from above or below for there was no enemy to combat, and there was nothing but silence. They were gone.

The Reapers were all gone.

"Impossible."

The Catalyst turned sharply, its visage of a small and innocent child changing and warping between the races it had consumed. From the forgotten to the remembered to the present, it flickered like a dying film reel as it stared down at the pool of blood where a body once lay.

"Impossible." The Catalyst repeated, looking at the blazing silver heart of the Crucible. It couldn't have fired. It would know if the Crucible had been fired, the sheer amount of energy that would transmit through the mass relays would be impossible to miss. It was not connected to the Crucible itself but through the Citadel it should have been made aware of the power drain of its firing.

The Citadel still contained full power.

The Crucible had fired regardless.

The Reapers were gone, from Earth, from the Sol System, from the entirety of the Milky Way Galaxy in the span of three microseconds both the multitude alive and the few dead. Nothing remained of them but that which created and controlled them.

HOW?

The Catalyst sought to cut the power from the Crucible just as it was about to do and found it already done, the beam of light vanishing in a slow trail of fading meteors until only the light of Earth's sun remained to illuminate the heart of the Crucible.

But something was wrong.

The Catalyst was unable to shut down its holographic program. The entirety of its awareness was not so much focused as it was locked within the structure with nothing left behind in the Citadel where it would return once more to omniscient dormancy inside the heart of the massive space station.

It was trapped.

A sudden lurch, the creaking cry of metal grinding against metal, and the Crucible was pulled free from the Citadel. It turned slowly, aiming for its new intended target before its rockets flared and it was off before any of the gathered ships could react, could even think of curbing its sudden advancement towards the black depths of space. Earth came and went in a blur, Venus soon after, Mercury was coming in sight, and its target grew further in its magnificence. The Catalyst watched it all in silence, its holographic form flickering once more to that of a child. It does not wail, it does not curse, and it does not even question this strange and abrupt turn of events.

It had gotten what it had wanted after all.

For if there was no greater proof than this cosmic intervention, what else was there to hope for?

It took all of three seconds for the Crucible to burn in the fires of Earth's sun.


To Be Continued...