The seeker swarms were stinging him over and over and over again. His barrier was up and at full strength, but it wasn't doing anything. That seemed wrong, but he didn't have time to think about it. His arms were going numb, his jaw ached from him clenching his teeth, and still the Collectors were dragging the colonists away. They took everyone around him, each time staring at him and flaring their mandibles to taunt him before carefully packing another person he had sworn to protect into a pod. He tried to scream, to fight back, to do anything, but he was frozen, unable to do anything.

And then the Collectors stopped their labor, their ranks parting, the giant bugs kneeling to her. Or at least whatever was wearing her skin like a suit, since it couldn't actually be her. She would never betray these innocent people. She wouldn't have betrayed him! So it couldn't actually be her. The glowing red scars on her face, faint as they were, were just further proof that she was no longer his Shepard. That…thing had been through too much surgery and bioengineering for any of the real her to be left.

She advanced on him, closing in until all he could see was her face. Those terrifying red lines still marred her once beautiful skin, but her eyes were the eyes he remembered, the eyes that he dreamt about more often than he cared to admit. They softened to an expression he remembered from two years ago, an expression he thought she saved for him, and the joy that flooded his heart healed it to an extent that hadn't seemed possible in the wake of her death. He wanted nothing more than to hold her again, to know that everything, from the ache that he had carried since her death to the thousands of missing people, everything that had gone wrong in the universe was going to be right again. He found himself suddenly free from the paralysis. So he reached for her.

Before he could touch her, she erupted in flames. She screamed for him to help her, to save her, that she loved him and didn't want to be alone any longer. He fought to reach her, but some unseen force kept pulling her out of reach. He ran after her, not willing to let anyone take her from him again, but she eluded him. If he could just run a little faster, stretch a little farther…he was so close…

Kaidan fell onto the floor next to his bunk, knocking the wind from his lungs. He lay there for a moment, stunned and disoriented, then smacked his forehead against the cold tile a few times. Slowly, he unclenched both his hands and sat up. 0400, according to his omni-tool. He ran a hand through his hair and sighed. No way he'd be able to get back to sleep before he'd have to be up again. 'Might as well go for a run. Again,' he thought as he reached for his boots. The streets around his temporary apartment would be fairly deserted this early in the morning. The solitude his now regular early run afforded him gave him time to think and a much-needed opportunity to pull himself together before having to report in.

He had been cleared for active duty a few days after returning to the Citadel, but only because he had still been angry at and distrusting of Shepard and determined to find the truth about the colonist abductions, no matter where that lead his investigation. The doubt hadn't started creeping in until after the dreams had started a week or so later. What if he had been wrong? Councilor Anderson had finally admitted that he had seen Shepard before Horizon, that she had discretely asked about Kaidan. Her popularity made it hard for her to be a complete ghost, and her tenacity would have prevented her from sitting in some remote facility when the Reaper threat was still very real, and that was the only way he thought it possible for her to have stayed completely off radar for two whole years. According to Anderson, there hadn't been so much as a whisper about Shepard until a few weeks before she came to see him. Kaidan hated to admit it, especially since, if it were true, he had been a complete idiot, but Shepard's explanation seemed logical, if not entirely plausible. Especially since he now had first hand experience with the Collectors—and the bodies of even more advance Reaper-created husks than they had see on Eden Prime—on Horizon.

She still hadn't responded to his letter, and, while that pissed him off, perhaps it shouldn't surprise him. He wanted nothing more than to track her down and make her give him a response, any response, but he was being sent to investigate a Collector sighting reported by the Turians. She had apparently survived for a little over two years without him. She could handle a few more months. Stopping the Collectors was more important. Shepard and their whole mess would just have to wait.