Part I: A New Future, For All of Us

John Shepard could barely stand. Every bone in his body ached with the pain of breaking. It was all he could do just to keep his tired head held up and his eyes on the ghostly apparition before him. Darkness saturated the corners of his vision, and the floor tugged at his body trying to drag him down into oblivion.

"You have altered the variables," the childlike apparition said. His voice was so familiar, so much like the child John had tried to save on Earth during the Reapers' initial siege. However, there were other voices mixed with his and the cold language of this being betrayed the image of the scared boy that Shepard had seen on Earth.

"So what does that mean?" Shepard sputtered as blood filled his mouth. Blood trickled down the side of his face from the gash where the reaper beam had slammed him against some shrapnel at the gate to the Citadel.

"We must find a new solution." The phantom turned from the weary soldier and paced a few steps along the platform towards the Crucible's center. Beleaguered and exhausted, the commander limped weakly to keep up with the child. "It is now in your power to destroy us. But be warned, others will be harmed as well. All synthetic life will be destroyed. Even you, who is partly synthetic, will not come away unscathed." The catalyst pointed to the Crucible's energy reactors to his right. Shepard envisioned Anderson going for the reactors, unloading his weapon until they burst in destruction.

"Or, like your Illusive Man attempted, you can seize the energy of the Crucible to control us. Your body will cease to exist, but you will assert dominance over the reapers, and they will be at your command," as he explained this, the specter pointed to Shepard's left, where a pair of electrical pylons stormed with electrical energy lancing out in every direction. Shepard pictured the Illusive Man trying to grasp the handholds on those pylons, paying the price for control as the surrounding electricity swarmed over his body.

"So the Illusive Man was right after all," Shepard stated with shock.

"Yes," the boy replied, "but he could never have taken control, because we already controlled him.

"But I can," Shepard remarked.

"You will die but you will control the Reapers. Your body will be disintegrated, but your thoughts and even your memories will continue. You will no longer be organic; your connection to your kind will be lost, though you will still exist as a disembodied consciousness." Shepard mulled over the choices the catalyst was giving him. "There is also another option," The boy continued, "Synthesis."

Shepard raised his eyebrows wearily. "And that is?"

"Add your energy to the Crucible's. The chain reaction will combine all organic and synthetic life into a new structure, a new DNA," he explained.

"How can my energy be added to the Crucible?" Shepard's gaze drifted across the monolithic construction before him.

"Your organic energy, the essence of who and what you are, will be broken down and dispersed. The energy of the Crucible, combined with your essence, will rewrite the fabric of all organic life in the galaxy. Organics and synthetics will finally have an understanding of each other and be perfected, and live in harmony," The child went on "synthesis is the final evolution of all life, and is eventually inevitable. The paths lie before you, you must act." The possibilities swam through Shepard's mind. Images of reapers on every planet throughout the galaxy collapsing and falling inert rushed through his thoughts. He swooned with the effort of imagining all of the horrors and chaos brought on by the reapers coming to a resounding end with their destruction.

"Let's get this over with," he spat.

"Do what you must," replied the ghost.

John Shepard looked across the Crucible to the energy reactors powering the entire station, the destruction of which would wipe the reapers off of the face of the galaxy. He began to limp along the causeway toward the tanks never looking down, never letting his eyes off that symbol of finality.

As he sauntered painfully forward he thought of Liara, his beloved. Her supportive smile in his mind greeted him warmly. Her memory caused emotions to well up in Shepard as tears began to stain his cheeks; regret of what could have been choked him as he came closer to his goal. Garrus, his best friend, rested an elbow on the stock of his favorite rifle, cocked his head and whispered to Shepard, "You're the best damn soldier I've ever met, even if I'm the better marksman. I've got your back Shepard."

The memories of his fallen comrades rushed into his mind's eye: Thane smiling at him and praying for his soul's salvation; Mordin, happily riding the elevator up the spire on Tuchanka to his doom; Kaidan bracing himself up against the drive-core bomb on Virmire and gunning down geth until the world went white; Cortez ramming his shuttle into the harvester that would have ended Shepard and his team, giving up his life in the process; Anderson, the closest thing to a father that Shepard had had since his parents were killed, saying the words that he would treasure forever in his heart: "You did good son… I'm proud of you." He had just barely made out the words as Anderson bowed his head and passed on into darkness.

Shepard's heart crumbled as he relived the deaths of his closest loved ones. He couldn't stop the tears from pouring out of his eyes, but he could use the strength his friends had lent him to finish his mission. He stood up a little straighter, doubled his pace and pushed with all his might toward the end of all the suffering.

Crossing over the catwalk that had risen into place to allow access to the Crucible's energy reactors, Shepard raised his gun with a grunt of pain. Pointing his weapon at the plate-glass casing of the energy tanks, a snarl grew across his lips. He didn't need to aim; his target was all he could see. He squeezed the trigger, a crack appeared in the glass, he fired again, and another split marred the covering, anger welled through his body as he pulled the trigger over and over.

He burned with the righteous anger of an entire galaxy made to suffer at the hands of the reapers. He kept walking closer; the glass was close to shattering. Another squeeze: a depressurizing surge of gas from the tanks. Yet another shot rang out accompanied by a belch of flame and bursting glass from the reactors. Gouts of fire erupted around him as he walked right up to the reactors, close enough to reach out and touch them with his hand; he lowered his head, but not his gaze, and emptied the rest of the chamber from his hand cannon into the breaching energy reactors.

A flash stole his vision and he couldn't feel solid ground under his feet anymore. Rocking explosions flung Shepard's weak body away like a rag doll. Something slammed against the back of his skull, and he knew no more. The compounding detonations from the damaged reactors built until they shook the entire Crucible and the energy beam flowing through the oculus of the combined Citadel and Crucible burned from a passive blue to an angry blood red. Arcing bolts of energy leapt out of the focused beam and licked the entire structure like fiery strands of spider web.

An orb of red swelled and grew from the Crucible until it consumed the Citadel and even Earth like a tidal wave of fire, everywhere it touched reapers fell and their minions were devoured by flame. As the red wave dissipated, the Citadel began to tear apart at the seams as it fired a brilliant crimson beam at the Sol Relay. Catching the rush of rampaging energy like a slingshot and firing it off into hyperspace, the Mass Relay shattered into pieces, but the beam raced through the galaxy to the next relay, sending out a shockwave of flame in that system, and again to its next destination, coating the entire galaxy in waves of torch red salvation.

Cheers and cries of victory went up throughout the galaxy on every world that had felt the Reaper invasion. But Shepard saw none of it; his world was dark.