Prologue

Shepard's vision was filled with blue sky, and he felt the grass around him bend to the wind. He was wearing work clothes that had sweat stains from a hard day of working on his farm. A brisk summer breeze cooled the burning sensation that the midday sun was leaving on his skin.

I could get used to this. It's been a long time since I could lie down and just relax. Shepard tried to recall what exactly was keeping him from doing this more often, but all explanations seemed to elude him. He merely shrugged and closed his eyes, letting the sun beat down on him.

Suddenly, a rumble shook the ground, and sounds of distant shouting reached his ears. Both felt familiar somehow, as if they had happened to him before. Shepard squeezed his eyes tighter, trying to ignore the new sensations as his mind worked to find why they felt so recognizable. A scream from beside him broke his reverie.

"CARMINE!"

His eyes snapped open and found the open mouth of a thresher maw in his face. His work clothes had been replaced by armor, and his hands were wrapped around his sniper rifle. Shepard looked at the rest of his squad lift their rifles and fire at the monster that had just tossed Carmine to his death.

Lifting his sniper rifle, Shepard took aim at the white glowing eyes on either side of the open mouth and fired. It was the only thing he knew that would make the beast retreat. He didn't want to see McNeil or Thomas being eaten by acid, not again.

However, every bullet that Shepard shot seemed to pass right through its intended target. He saw the maw begin to convulse.

"MCNEIL, THOMAS, GET DOWN!" Shepard yelled.

But it was too late. The acidic projectile struck the two marines and began to melt them into a puddle behind the cover they had taken. Shepard turned to the last surviving member of his squad only to find that Garza had taken off in the opposite direction. He tried to chase after her, but his legs felt like lead. No matter how fast or how hard he tried to pump them, his legs wouldn't move faster than a slow crawl.

"Garza! Stop!"

Garza did not stop. She kept on running away from him, right into a squad of three batarian slavers. She skidded to halt in front of them and tried to run back towards Shepard. Garza didn't make it two steps before one of the batarians opened fire on a fusion cell next to her, blowing it up and sending her crashing to the prefabs on one side of the alley.

Shepard threw an Overload tech mine, followed closely by an Incendiary mine and two bullets. As each slaver fell, they winked from existence. Shepard took no note of this, focused on reaching his down squad mate.

As he made it to her prone form, Shepard pulled off Garza's helmet only to find Scott's face staring back up at him. His eyes were wide with fear and his hands were wrapped around his neck. Blood trickled in between his fingers.

"Hold on, Scott. I'll get you patched up. We are going to make it out of this," Shepard reassured him. He began to apply some medi-gel to the wound, hoping it wasn't too late.

Scott's only reply was a wet cough that sprayed Shepard's face with blood. Scott's eyes searched frantically, pleading for anything to save him from the darkness that was closing in on him. Finally, his eyes stopped moving and began to cloud over. He released one last breath and was still.

"Scott! C'mon, buddy. Don't do this to me." Shepard frantically pushed on his chest, trying to get blood back to the brain. After what seemed to be an eternity, he stopped, knowing it was too late. Shepard squeezed his eyes shut, wishing that, when he opened them again, he would be back on his farm, lying in the sun.

A tortured scream forced his eyes open, and Shepard watched as Corporal Toombs clawed at the ground, trying to stop the unseen force that was dragging him into the earth. Before Shepard could get to his feet to help, Toombs was gone.

What the hell is going on? Shepard thought, as he stumbled to the last bastion of hope. How could everything have gone so wrong?

At last he saw his destination, the shuttle that would take him away from his wretched place. As Shepard moved toward his escape, each step became more labored, more weighted. He felt like some power was trying to trap him in this hell, this nightmare.

Shepard would not allow himself to be trapped here. He had things he needed to accomplish in the world beyond this one. People were counting on him being there. He would not fail them. He had to escape this place.

The pressure, the beast, fought harder and harder with each step that Shepard took, yet he continued. Each step was defiant and assured in its rightness. Shepard was steps away from the shuttle when his foot struck something on the ground. He blinked in surprised and looked down. Shepard saw a body of a woman, just a meter away from the safety she was desperately trying to reach.

Pvt. Holt. The name came to Shepard like a soft whisper. As soon as he tried to grasp at it, the thought slipped through his consciousness. All Shepard was left with is that he knew this person, and he needed to help her.

Shepard slipped his arms underneath her knees and back and lifted. The beast didn't fight him as he made his way to the shuttle. Shepard didn't know whether he should be grateful for its absence or wary that it may be trying something devious.

He pushed the thought out of his mind as he laid the woman on a medical gurney in the shuttle. He slowly pulled off her helmet and watched as her eyes blinked open. Shepard smiled. He hasn't seen those eyes in over ten years.

"Amanda. I'm so glad you are all right," he said as he pulled her into a tight hug.

"Am I all right?" she responded flatly.

"Of course you are," Shepard tried. "We are going to be fine."

He pulled her into a kiss, but, instead of the soft, warm lips that he remembers, his lips were met with cold flesh. A metallic taste flooded his mouth as a thick, sticky liquid pass his lips.

Shepard pulls back and sees red coming from the inside of her mouth. He looks at her shoulder and sees a bullet hole with blood trickling from it.

"Hold on, Amanda. I'll go get the med kit and patch you up."

Shepard got up to retrieve the med kit that hung on the wall of the shuttle. He turned around, only to be surprised that Amanda was no longer laying on the gurney. She was standing in front of him, only a meter away.

"You shouldn't be up. You will reopen your wound if you move too much after I apply the medi-gel," Shepard said as he closed the distance between the two.

"But there is no medi-gel."

Her voice stopped him in his tracks. It was cold and lifeless. Shepard looked at the kit in his hands to find out that she was correct. There was no medi-gel, but there was a needle and thread for this exact situation.

"Then I'll sew you up and get you out of here as fast as I can."

"But you don't know how to do that. You're only sixteen."

Shepard looked down at himself to see that, again, she was right. His armor was replaced with the clothes he wore during the raid. He was no longer in the body of a twenty nine year old N7 soldier, but a sixteen year old boy.

"But I-"

"I'm dead, Troy. And you can't do anything about it," Amanda interrupted.

He should have been glad to hear his first name again. No one had called him Troy since he left the colonies when he was eighteen. It was always Shepard. But this was not a happy moment. Amanda's words were poison that seeped through his skin and made him sick. She was accusing him.

"I tried, but-"

"You should have tried harder," she said, cutting him off again.

The beast returned roaring and slammed Shepard with a force unlike what he felt before. His legs buckled, and he fell backwards onto the bulkhead. Even with the additional help, his legs could not hold Shepard up, and he slid down to the ground. Amanda loomed over him.

"We would all be alive if we never left the forest!" she screamed. "We should have waited them out! But you just had to go home didn't you; had to check on your parents. They were already dead, and now we are all dead! All of us, except you!"

Scott, John, and Hannah appeared before him. The left side of Scott's throat was ripped apart where the bullet had struck him. John Shepard's torso was riddled with bullets where the batarian slavers shot him. Hannah Shepard had a single bullet hole in her forehead where the same slavers executed her. They began to whisper, blaming Shepard for their deaths.

Shepard squeezed his eyes shut and put his hands over his ears, trying to shut them out. It didn't work. Even through his eyelids, he could still see. Even through his hands, he could still hear. There was no escape for him.

When the whispers quieted, Shepard opened his eyes. Amanda was no longer there. Instead, it was Corporal Thomas. His armor was almost totally eaten away by the acid. Muscles and bone were exposed where the acid ate into his flesh.

"We should have left after we saw the first destroyed building. We didn't have the intel that we needed to try to take on the main colony," he said without passion.

"We had orders to-" Shepard tried to reply.

"Orders are only as good as the men who give them!" Thomas yelled back. "And we all know how much of a bastard Lieutenant Commander Diaz was!"

Garza, McNeil, and Carmine materialized next to Thomas. Garza's face was torn open with shards of glass still stuck in some of the open wounds. McNeil was eaten away much like Thomas was. Carmine's limbs were bent at odd, unnatural angles. Again the whispers started, accusing Shepard of not being fit for command, for not doing what was best for his team.

This time, Shepard did not close his eyes or ears. He would not give the beast the satisfaction of him cowering like a child in a corner. He slowly got to his feet. The whispers increase, trying to force him into submission.

"ENOUGH!" Shepard screamed.

The whispers stopped

"I did what I was commanded to. I did my duty!"

A laugh echoed in the small shuttle as Thomas, Garza, Carmine, and McNeil vanished. Shepard's blood ran cold. He knew that laugh. That laugh used to bring happy memories with it. But it wasn't the same that Shepard remembered it. It was icy and critical, biting at Shepard's waning resolve. It was the last card that the beast had to play, and how it loved to play it.

"So you think you did your duty," the voice calls out.

Shepard watched as a shadow began to take form of a teenage girl.

"Daily…" His voice caught in his throat.

"Was it your duty to leave Scott, me, and Amanda behind? Was it your duty to not get back in time to help save us? Was it your duty to watch me get my throat slit?"

Daily walked towards Shepard until she is half a meter in front of him. Her throat was sliced open, and every step she took resulted in blood oozing from the gash. After she stopped, Daily just looked at him with empty eyes.

"Day, I-" Shepard tried.

She didn't let him finish. "It was your duty to stay with us. It was your duty to protect us. It was your duty to get all of us out alive!"

With that, Shepard was assaulted by the voices of Scott, John, Hannah, Amanda, Thomas, McNeil, Garza, and Carmine. He couldn't make out what exactly what they were saying, but he didn't have to. They were blaming him, rightly so.

Shepard tried to crumple from the force that the beast was pressing on him, but Daily caught him by his shirt before he was able to fall. She lifted him up so she could stare at Shepard in the eye.

"You should be dead with us."

Shepard's eyes shot open, and he quickly sat upright, gasping for air. He felt a night breeze that chilled his skin that was slick with a cold sweat. As the rest of his mind began to wake up, Shepard realized that his arm was outstretched, and his fingers were wrapped around a familiar object.

Before his mind could grasp what he was holding, Shepard's stomach roiled. He discarded the weight in his hand, tore off the sheets covering him, and ran to the bathroom. Just as he reached the toilet, the contents of his stomach spurted from his mouth. There wasn't much. Shepard learned that eating before he went to bed was a bad idea long ago.

After a few dry heaves, Shepard pulled himself up to the sink to wash the sickening, acidic taste from his mouth. Shepard eventually looked up to the mirror, hoping that he would see himself, slightly ragged and sleepy, but his face. He wasn't so lucky.

Instead of his face staring back at him, Shepard saw Daily in the mirror. Her face was twisted with rage, just like in his dream. Slowly, her face changed to Amanda who looked at Shepard pleadingly. Then the image changed to Scott, then Carmine, and then all the others that had died under his leadership.

The faces were always at the forefront. Even as the rest of the nightmare slipped away, their faces remained. They tormented him. They reminded him of those that he failed. His own personal set of demons, paraded out in front of him by the beast, by his guilt.

Finally unable to take any more self-loathing, Shepard left the bathroom and walked back into the bedroom that he rented. As he entered, he caught a slight, metallic odor in the air. Shepard placed the smell instantly.

Shepard searched the tangled sheets and found the discarded weight. It was the pistol that he kept under his pillow whenever he was on leave. He walked to the other side of the room and began to inspect the wall that he was pointing the gun at. Shepard found a small bullet hole. He shook his head.

"Well, there goes my security deposit."