"You face a difficult choice..." jeered the celestial voice. Damn right he did... Death, death, or death, and three different flavours of apocalypse.
William Shepard was no stranger to darkness. He had killed, there was no way around that. He had pulled the trigger on countless lives, and his actions had doomed many hundreds more, something that still haunted his sleeping hours. But all of those had been for a purpose, he told himself. He couldn't do this – he couldn't bring himself to ruin more people than the Reapers themselves had done...
For the first time in countless months, he stopped, and in a single moment of exhaustion he dropped to his knees, head bowed in weary submission.
"Choose," the shimmering child demanded, but Shepard wasn't listening. Images were flitting behind his tightly-shut eyelids – Anderson, bleeding and broken in the chamber below; Liara, gone from his side as Harbinger struck; the Normandy, darting in and out of the maelstrom in the skies over Earth.
"No," he growled, with what little energy seemed to be left.
"You must choose..." Catalyst continued.
"Because you say so?" Shepard grunted back. He was met with silence.
"The cycle ends here. You have the power to choose..."
"What choice?" he bellowed, finding some inner reserve of energy to vent his anger. "Whatever I choose, we're dead and gone! I won't be a part of that!"
"Then we will continue," the child murmured, with insulting serenity. "And your worlds will burn."
"Have you not been keeping up with your little 'solution'?" Shepard muttered. "They're already burning – Earth, Thessia, Palaven... If we have to die, we'll die in firelight, not darkness."
"That isn't your decision to make..."
"And it's not yours either..."
With that, silence fell throughout the Catalyst's chamber – where were they, Shepard wondered? The Presidium? The Crucible? There was no hint of walls or a barrier between them and the space outside, but somehow the chamber was full of precious oxygen... Muffled echoes came drifting in every now and then, a tiny flare of light signifying each lost ship, every crew snuffed out of existence. At present, he could do nothing but pray the Normandy was still in the fight...
After several minutes – or maybe they were hours – of that interminable silence, Shepard felt, rather than heard, a shift in the space behind him. The Catalyst didn't leave any echo as mundane as a footfall, he merely strode through space, leaving no mark in his wake.
"So be it," he echoed, in a sinister tone. "The cycles will continue... More will die, and their deaths will be on your shoulders..."
"Why the guilt trips?" Shepard asked – if he was going to bleed out here, he might as well go out with some questions answered. His side was bleeding profusely, as he watched the Catalyst retreat.
"We owed you the choice..." Catalyst mused. "And you shunned it..."
"No," he replied, shrewdly. "You've been winning this war – our planets are falling, even now our fleets are about to fail... Why not just kill me here and take victory?"
"We owed you the choice..." the star-child repeated.
"Bullshit. You're scared."
Shepard had risen slightly now – he was on his knees, but was no longer on all fours. For all the good it did him, the pistol he had acquired was still hanging limply from his bleeding hand. Finally, the Catalyst turned, as if paralysed by his accusation.
"Why should we be afraid?" the celestial voice asked. "We are the solution. We bring enlightenment, perfection... ascendance."
"And it's coming to an end," Shepard growled.
"The cycles will never end, you have made sure of that... Millennia have failed to break us, human, why should this cycle be any different?"
"Not this cycle," he grunted. "But the next, or maybe the one that follows it... Or the one after that..."
"The cycles will continue," Catalyst asserted.
"For now," Shepard muttered. "But every cycle gets better – that's right, isn't it? Before us, the protheans came closest to beating you. Now we've – I've – come even closer. You cleanse organic life, but each cycle passes information to the next – the Crucible, the prothean beacons, the artifacts we leave behind... No matter how hard you try, you can't quite get rid of us, and ever cycle gets better at fighting you."
"It will never be enough," the child almost whispered. For the briefest of moments, though, his form seemed to shift – then again, and again, as if in indecision. Shepard could have sworn he saw the silhouettes of Mordin, Thane, Ashley, and innumerable others whose faces bore no meaning – every victim of the Catalyst's solution, he supposed...
"That's what this is for, isn't it?" he continued. "You're trying to scare me into choosing. I can wipe you out, and take my friends out at the same time-"
"Friends? You mean the geth synthetics," Catalyst scowled.
"Or," Shepard persisted, ignoring him, "I take control of you – for however long it lasts – and you get to live. Or I take this 'synthesis' option of yours and do your job for you... I lose friends and allies, or I serve your cause. You're a bit too organic for your own good..."
"We are the ultimate ascendance of life," Catalyst asserted, with seeming confidence.
"You're still life, though," Shepard muttered. "Part-organic, part-synthetic, if we're right, and I suspect we are. And anything even a little bit organic has the same flaw – you're scared of death. Why else would you preserve yourselves like this?"
"The solution puts an end to fear... We escape death and extinction – forever!"
"Tell that to Sovereign..."
"Enough!" the Catalyst echoed, and for the first time, there was a hint of emotion, any emotion, in that voice – a very organic mixture of fear and anger. "If you will not make your choice, then we will make it for you... The cycle continues. Harbinger!"
Shepard's blood froze. A loud crash echoed through the space behind them, and as he twisted around he saw the remnants of a turian dreadnought scattering into space, twisted crewmen's bodies scattering out into space amidst fire and debris. Through the wreckage, a glaring purple form was emerging, and six golden eyes were staring through the black void of space. An unearthly growl announced Harbinger's arrival, as he crashed against the side of the Presidium – if this was indeed the Presidium – clawed limbs gripping the walls around them as he loomed over creator and nemesis alike.
"Shepard..." the Reaper leered. His voice was guttural, and it felt as if the very metal around them was trembling and quivering with energy from every syllable. However powerful his voice felt, however, it was no longer terrible, no longer terrifying. There was nothing more he could do to Shepard, nothing more the Reapers could throw at him, and the scars of battle were evident even on mighty Harbinger's form – a jagged line of black ran perilously close to one of his lower eyes, and the crest of his body was marred by a steel scar – the gouge marks where a salvo had torn into his skin.
"It ends, Harbinger..." Catalyst mused. "Shepard is too weak to end this..."
"As I predicted..." Harbinger growled.
"Enough with the mind games," Shepard sighed. "I don't care what you say – I'm not moving."
"Then you die," his old foe replied, with a vicious note of pleasure.
"Fine by me," the Commander replied, staggering onto one knee. "Just let me die on my feet."
"Nobility in death," Catalyst observed, and for a moment Shepard expected him to make some respectful remark. Then, he remembered who he was talking to. "We have evolved past such things."
"Yeah..." Shepard muttered. He was well aware of Harbinger's scarlet maw swelling behind him, as a mechanical roar began to fill the air in the chamber. "That's the problem."
He turned, and the scarlet glare filled his eyes. This was it.
"No more games," Harbinger growled, and he wasn't sure whether the Reaper was talking to him, or to Catalyst. Either way, he merely stood, staring at the field of red before him. He chanced one last glance at Catalyst – the ethereal form was still watching from afar.
That was good. If this was Catalyst's last memory of humanity, it should be like this – eyes wide open, head held high, defiant to the last breath.
The swirling scarlet was at fever pitch now, and he could practically see the anticipation in Harbinger's hateful stare. A few more moments... stand strong for a few more moments... the last moments...
A deafening roar filled the air, and Shepard's eyes shut tightly, as he felt a blast pass over him, and toppled to the ground. Above the din came an unearthly screech, a mechanised roar of...was that victory? It sounded more like pain...
Shepard opened his eyes. That was novel in itself. So was his continued existence. So surprising was this, his faculties failed to notice the far more pressing matter – the rush of flames and wind in the vista before them, and the steel eagle diving at Harbinger's back.