Mass Effect Wake
Prologue.
Shepard was floating in an ocean of nothingness. It was not dark. Darkness would imply an absence of light, there was simply nothing. She tried to move her head, to look for any clue as to her surroundings. Not only did she see nothing but there was no sensation of movement, no tensing of neck muscles, no narrowing of eyes, she couldn't be sure if she had moved at all. Was this even real? Did she even have a body to move?
She floated there for an indeterminate period of time, alone with her thoughts and unanswered questions.
After a while she saw something and once she saw it she was sure she had been staring at it for an age without recognition. Dark tendrils, sharply contrasting against the nothingness behind, were weaving their way towards her. She tried to raise a hand to ward them off but of course nothing happened. One of the bigger tendrils broke off from the pack and barrelled down on her. As it got closer Shepard began to feel a great pressure squeezing her, crushing her. The pressure seemed to compress the non-air and cause phantom sounds, they sounded like no language that Shepard had ever heard but somehow she understood their meaning; 'I am Harbinger.'
The tendril slammed into her. Black liquid cascaded over her body, filling her eyes and ears and mouth, creating contrast between the nothingness, the darkness and her own pale flesh. With contrast her feeling of self was defined. She knew who she was.
A cramped garage on the Vancouver docks. The room is full of cars, motorbikes and sky cars in various states of disassembly. It is dark save for the strobing white light of a blow torch; the air stinks of hot metal. The garage has two occupants, a swarthy man with a ponytail and a leather jacket who is lost in his extranet goggles and the welder: an auburn haired teenage girl whose face is hidden behind a featureless tinted visor.
The door is yanked open to emit a stream of sunlight and a man, trailed by the incessant cackling of seagulls. The newcomer is tall and broad shouldered with buzz cut blonde hair and a very crooked nose, he has a magazine clamped under his arm. He flinches away as he enters.
"Jesus Christ! Do you want to blind me, is that it?"
The girl with the visor looks up then twists a nozzle on the torch, the flame fades.
"That's better."
The ponytailed man rises form his chair at the noise, removing his goggles as he does. "You get it man?"
The newcomer brandishes the magazine "What d'you think J?"
Michael 'joy ride' Vargas or 'J' darts forward and snatches the magazine from Blondie's meaty fist and leafs though it eagerly.
"Yo that's sick."
"Pretty kinky right?"
J nods as he ogles "hey Shepard take a look at this. The girl lifts her visor to expose a pleasant, slightly boyish face with a band of freckles across her nose and a quizzical look in her green eyes.
"What is it?"
J tosses the magazine over the skeletal 'speed gryphon' bike between them. She catches it in both hands. On the cover the word 'FORNAX' is written in block capitals, underneath a blue skinned Asari poses suggestively in a red bikini. Shepard snorts derisively and throws it right back.
"You pervs."
An insufferable smirk spreads under the blonde man's bent nose.
"Don't be like that Ellie we all know you're into it."
Elizabeth Shepard or 'Ellie' glares at the man, her green eyes suddenly flinty.
"Fuck off Gil."
She drops the torch and visor and shoves past him into the street with a muttered
"The boss has a job for me."
He leans out of the door and shouts after her: "I'm just sayin' is all."
Ellie. Ellie Shepard. Elizabeth Shepard. Shepard. My name is Shepard.
She was sitting slumped against the dais at the heart of the citadel. The Illusive man lay dead at her feet, killed by his own hand. Admiral Anderson sat to her right, he wasn't moving so he was probably dead too. Warmth seeped over her fingers, hot blood coursed over the hand clamped to her side. Lifting her hand to eye level she tried to look past the haze of blood loss and fatigue. She was bleeding out. A dry chuckle escaped her parched lips.
'I'm not going to make it. Even if we win I'm going to die.' She couldn't keep Kaidan's final words from echoing around her head.
'We know the score. We know this is goodbye.' Deep down she had always known it would end something like this, ever since Elysium.
But she wasn't dead. Was she?
Armed with her new found memories Shepard found the strength to briefly repel the dark tendrils with a blast of solid thought-form. I am Elizabeth Shepard and I am alive.
Suddenly she was falling, plummeting through nothingness to impact a shimmering field of tall grass. Opening her eyes Shepard took in her surroundings, she was lying in a sun dappled park next to a large manmade lake. She knew this place: Xujiahui Park in Shanghai. She and Zoe had whiled away many afternoons here in their youths. Sitting up she saw that the park only had one other occupant; a young boy, maybe six or seven, walking purposefully towards her. The catalyst.
The boy crossed his arms and fixed her with a blank eyed stare that was as cold as the reaches of dark space.
"So you made your choice." It wasn't a question.
"Is this real?" Even as she asked it she knew it was a stupid question. She hadn't been to Xujiahui in over twenty years. The catalyst's outline seemed to flicker as it spoke, as if it was a holo-vid screen on low power.
"That depends on your perspective. Your corporeal form was been dissolved and this conversation is not taking place on any physical plane, so no, by your definition this is not real." Shepard had expected that but the reality of it still shook her badly.
She remembered. She remembered limping to the crucible's control panel and placing her hands on the terminals, then pain, the worst pain she had ever felt. Worse than the brutal hazing rituals of the 10th Street Reds, worse than the Eden Prime beacon, worse than dying by explosive decompression. Looking down she could only watch in horror as she slowly and excruciatingly turned to ash.
Shepard sobbed; dry heaved then looked up at the silent figure of the catalyst with venom.
"Why have you brought me here?"
"The location was lifted from your memories. It was meant to be comforting, to help ease your passing." The boy's image continued to crackle and break down.
"My passing?" Shepard asked incredulously.
"Yes. That is the price of your choice; the Reapers live on, directed by your memories and sense of morality at the cost of your life. I am only here to pass the torch. It will be over soon." With that the child-thing dissipated entirely, leaving her all alone in the verdant park.
Jumping to her feet she tried to reach the spot where it had vanished bit her legs gave out form under her.
"Wait don't go! I don't know what to do! I don't know what to do."
The sky was blackening and the entire park began to vibrate until the whole vista shimmered back into nothingness. The dark tendrils swept back in and this time they consumed Elizabeth mind, body and soul.
Her last thought was of Liara's smile.
After another indeterminate period of time something stirred in the space where Elizabeth Shepard had been.
Eternal. Infinite. Immortal. The woman I was used these words, but only now do I truly understand them. And only now do I understand the full extent of her sacrifice. Through her death, I was created. Through my birth, her thoughts were freed. They guide me now; give me reason, direction. Just as she gave direction to the ones who followed her, the ones who helped her achieve her purpose; now my purpose.
To give the many hope for a future; to ensure that all have a voice in their future. To right the wrongs of the past; to provide a voice to those too weak to speak for themselves.
The woman I was knew that she could only achieve this by becoming something greater.
There is power in control. There is wisdom in harnessing the strengths of your enemy. I will rebuild what the many have lost; I will create a future with limitless possibilities; I will protect, and sustain; I will act as guardian for the many.
And throughout it all, I will never forget; I will remember the ones who sacrificed themselves so that the many could survive. And I will watch over the ones who live on, those who carry the memory of the woman I once was, the woman who gave up her life to become the one who could save the many.