Mass Effect: Another Illusive Man - The Opening Act Chapter 1: The Beginning, a mass effect fanfic

Mass Effect: Another Illusive Man – The Beginning

DISCLAIMER: I do not own the Mass Effect series or its affiliated products, Bioware and its affiliates, or any other series'/copyrighted item I may mention.

**Author's note: I would like to point out I this is my first fanfic so please be gentle (send suggestions by private messaging if you have an account here on this site), and I also apologize for any mistakes I make with canon because I do not have all of the DLC so I am going according to the Mass Effect Wikipedia which as you know may not cover all of the minor details in-depth and the integration of non-canon elements into the story may not be perfect but I am trying to keep them at the very least semi-believable. Sincere regards from a fellow reader/writer/Mass Effect fan**

"Talking"- normal conversation will not have any changes

"Talking"-characters thinking to themselves OR are mentally conversing (telepathy, facial expressions, etc.) will be in Italic in normal speech format, written words will be in bold as well

Ian's POV April 8, 2015

It had been raining for the last two days here in London, that was what an "English Summer" was according to the stereotype people thought of when they were asked what summer was like in England, well not only rain; fog was expected too but right now the aforementioned fog seemingly clung to the London skyline and covered the Thames River in a thick blanket of semi-transparent grey clouds. I really didn't want to see what it was like outside the nice warm cab but, yet all I wanted to do was watch out the window while continuing a conversation with the six foot tall twenty-two year old young woman to my left, not to mention she was the first friend I made since coming to England and probably my closest one as well.

"You know I really hate it when it rains like this, right Sherry?" I had said in a rather depressed tone after turning my head to glance off to my left in order to look at "Sherry"

She had her shoulder length brown hair up in a bun surprisingly, she wearing a worn pair of blue jeans with a new looking black t-shirt featuring a picture from the original Hellsing anime series featuring all of the main characters in a sort of 'family photograph'-esque image with the names of the voice actors beneath the names of the characters (Hellsing was and probably always would be her favorite anime especially since she had seen Hellsing Ultimate sitting in a store she frequented and I, being the generous soul I am, had bought it for her twenty-first birthday which pretty much set the almost hilarious chain of events in motion that led me here with Sherry leading the way) was hidden partially beneath a replica of an N7 leather jacket that she had bought online, her face had no make-up as usual, and her dark green eyes were now staring at me after giving me a quick eye-roll look. When Sherry finally replied after a few seconds it was in an amused tone.

"You know Ian you really should lighten up; after all it is only a light mist for London this time of year. Besides we are going to be indoors at the Convention anyway.", and after she had said that the cab we were in had just stopped in front of an old Victorian style building that was currently holding the event we were here in London for.

The Convention was the second one being hosted by its current sponsor according to the poster sitting in the lobby next to the door clerk, and according to Sherry no-one even knew the name of the private collector hosting it. What they looked like and where they had come from were completely unknown as well; these missing facts had given the Convention a somewhat mysterious air to it as it always seemed to take place on a day with rain, or fog, I felt it was rather fitting considering what I heard was featured last year. This year the Convention was featuring exhibits, vendors, comic books, anime, manga from the last three decades all the way back to The Creature From The Black Lagoon, and the list grew in scope to even include the Mass Effect series, a private showing of the new Halo game that was just revealed at E3 and the unveiling of several other new releases ranging from books to games, and even movies as well. This Convention was also the only thing that Sharon "Sherry" Whitworth had decided to bring me along with because she didn't want to go alone and since I was a fan of the Mass Effect and the Hellsing series', which she wanted me to compete in a contest for the best 'Alucard Impersonation and Costume', which of course was all about who looked the most like Alucard when they were dressed in the full costume, the iconic red duster with matching wide-brimmed fedora, a black two-piece suit, a white dress shirt with a red cravat around the collar, black wire rimmed glasses with yellow lenses, and finally a pair of white gloves and black riding boots; the winner of this contest was going to be walking away with a 1 inch to 6 inches scale replica of Alucard's coffin made out of ebony which featured everything from the inscription "I am the bird of Hermes eating my own wings to make me tame." on the coffin's lid, and a name plaque on the base which was prearranged to be engraved for the winner by the convention's host.

I also never will understand, let alone know where she found out what my clothing sizes were so she could provide me with the costume because everything managed to fit my six foot seven inch height down to my shoulder width, and hat size. She even managed to get the shirt size correct down to the length of the sleeves and the collar size.

While I got out of the cab I watched her pay the driver before looking around and noticed almost everyone was looking at me in curiosity. "Sherry are you sure I look alright? I am only asking because people are looking at me weird.", I asked in a nervous tone because I personally thought I must look like a complete weirdo with my normally short black hair had been grown out to a length that nearly reached my chest since April 12th of last year, after Sharon had convinced me to enter the contest almost immediately after she had gone to the last convention last April which was held by this same mysterious collector, my grey eyes were hidden behind the yellow glasses, and my pointed yet apparently "handsome" facial features as Sherry had told me once when she was helping me tie my cravat because I had never worn one before, somehow fit with the costume I was wearing, and I couldn't help but grin slightly as the cab drove down the street because I had caught a brief glimpse of my reflection in the rear window before it left, what I had seen left me awestruck because with the costume I was wearing I almost resembled Alucard with just two exceptions and they were the Jackal and Cassul, the pistols he carried in both of the Hellsing manga and anime series which I was unable to include for obvious reasons. Just as I had started to think of what might be inside the building this year based off of what Sherry had told me I heard an almost childish giggle slightly behind my right shoulder and I turned my head to see what was so funny and saw Sharon looking at me covering her mouth with her right hand and taking a picture with her pink and beat-up flip phone with her left hand, and to my surprise she actually crossed the five feet between us and gave me a quick hug before moving off to my right again and started to hang off of my shoulder throwing me slightly off balance.

I was honestly shocked that she had given me a hug in the first place because she was not the kind of person to express her emotions physically aside from her facial expressions and body language. However getting a hug from her was completely unexpected; leaving me with a slightly confused look on my face and for some reason I was prompted to ask, "What was that for Sherry?"

Before she answered she giggled again before replying, "Nothing really, you just look so cute right now dressed up in that alright?.", which after she had said that she tilted her head off to the left slightly before giving me a warm smile which made me smile back because she had never said I was "cute" before aside from right now and I couldn't help but wonder if something special was going to happen today to change my life. With those final words exchanged we then went up the short flight of concrete steps to the main doors of the building, which after a short walk left us at the admission desk which was occupied by a man in his mid to late thirties wearing a red doorman's uniform with close-cropped red hair and wire frame glasses who looked rather bored despite being hounded by a group of almost twenty people who were trying to sign in and show their tickets which were bought for entry to the contest and also to claim seats for myself and Sherry in the event I lost the contest.

It was almost a whole minute before Sharon and I were waved over to the desk by a young woman in her mid to late twenties that was wearing her champagne blonde hair back in an oriental style that had joined the desk clerk shortly after we had arrived. When we had gotten up to the desk we were handed a log-book which we had to sign and were told to go in. I knew Sharon had already shown her the tickets but I then the receptionist had told us to go on in when I had noticed I was still holding the logbook and I turned to hand it back to the receptionist when a white gloved hand had caught hold of it and I heard a deep bass voice say,

"Thank you for returning this and for joining us today sir, and I must congratulate you on your costume, it is the first one I have seen today that has the owner's hair at that length."

I followed the arm, which was covered with the black sleeve of a well-tailored suit, up from the hand that had grasped the logbook and caught sight of a red cravat tied around the collar of a white shirt, which was covered by a black vest, looking up from the cravat I was continuing to move my eyes up until I had to tilt my head back when I saw the shoulder length black hair and finally saw the pale face of this very tall individual which was framed by a pair of rectangular yellow lenses set into thin black wire framed glasses and the first thing I thought was "Please tell me he isn't in the contest too because that suit is pretty much identical to when Alucard checked into that hotel in Brazil."

Wwhich of course after my apparently visible look of surprise I heard him say, "Before you ask, no, I am not here for the contest, I am merely here as a judge, and I am also the 'Mysterious Sponsor' behind this convention that I am sure you have heard about by now," then opening the logbook to the page I had signed he continued, "Mr. Stone, and since I already know your name I suppose I should introduce myself.", while he had mentioned introducing himself he had suddenly bowed his head slightly which caused his glasses to slip down his nose slightly revealing something I had never seen before, dark amber eyes, I had heard that it was possible to have them but that it was exceedingly rare but there was something odd about this man's eyes, they were tinged a dark red that closely resembled brown near the pupil and the outside of the iris, "I am James Brennan and it is always a pleasure to meet fellow fans of the Hellsing series,", which he paused again while briefly looking at the open logbook page again before continuing, "and you must be Miss Whitworth, should either of you need anything such as a tour of the exhibits I have brought from my personal collection please let me or one of the staff know."

Then someone off to my right interrupted with a sudden shout of "Sir you may want to find somewhere to run off to, there are some Newsies coming to try and get you to do an interview!", Mr. Brennan had straightened his back up to his full height which I guessed was around seven feet give or take 1-3 inches, but I noted he was looking at where the shout had come from, yet another desk clerk had arrived from the direction of the men's bathroom on the left side of the lobby after which the man called 'James Brennan' had given a very exasperated and heavy sigh before he looked at the clerk who had given the warning and replied with an appreciative nod which was returned with a quick hand gesture that resembled a half-hearted, but respectful, salute from the right side of their head.

We were quickly ushered through the twin doors by Mr. Brennan, the doors were made from what resembled oak in a very dark chestnut varnish with wrought iron handles, once they had been opened Sherry and I got our first glimpse at the hundreds of people inside the almost museum-like interior of the building which was filled with to the brim with what you would expect at a convention like this, vendors, exhibits, a few games, and what immediately caught my eye was where Mr. Brennan was heading, he was heading up to a large stage that was built into the left side of the building which after he had walked about a yard from the door he had turned slightly and gestured to Sharon and I to follow him which once we had caught up he had pointed to the stage and said, "That is where you will be getting your contestant ID number and where you will be handing in the tickets for your seats so I would suggest you hurry because the contest will start in about twenty minutes so if you want to look at any of the exhibits I would suggest against wandering off, otherwise you may not get your seats after waiting as long as you did."

To which Sharon and I almost answered at the same time, "Alright! Thank you for hosting this convention by the way!", to which Mr. Brennan let a crooked grin creep over the right side of his face which was eerily like how Alucard had done so on numerous occasions which had caused Sharon to give a very low gasp of surprise before she gave a quick tug on my right sleeve causing me to ask, "Is something wrong Sherry?", she had then looked up to my face and responded, "You mean you didn't see that grin he gave us?"

"Oh no, I saw it Sherry, I just think he is just a little odd that's all. Try not to think anything of it, okay Sherry?", she had given me a look after that reply that seemed to tell me that she thought I wasn't taking her seriously enough, "Sherry can you do me a favor?" I asked hoping to help lessen her feeling of worry, she decided to simply reply with a nod after which I said, "Sherry if he bothers you too much you let me know alright? You are the closest thing to family I have and I care about you so please let me know if he gives you any trouble.", I had quickly said after giving the now departing figure that was James Brennan a rather worried look, I couldn't help but notice the similarities between him and Alucard myself and there were more than enough of them to cause myself to have a few questions as to whether or not there was a faint possibility that something was for lack of a better word, off about this convention.

The Contest was relatively straight-forward, get on the stage one after another until the audience and the judges saw your costume, then when all of the contestants had done so the impressions were done next, the scene I had decided to act out was quite simple thankfully, I chose the scene from Hellsing Ultimate where Alucard was addressing Sir Integra before going to Brazil, personally I thought I could do better but after seeing the thirty contestants before me I had a fairly good idea about who was going to be walking away with the trophy, it was a toss-up between myself, a contestant from Leipzig Germany and a contestant from Russia who definitely had the height, and outfit to match myself for the costume part of the contest. After a quiet debate amongst the judges which included Mr. Brennan it was down to a tie-breaker between myself and the Russian contestant, what the tie-breaking round was completely caught both of us off-guard, we were supposed to imitate Alucard's laugh from when he was on the H.M.S. Eagle the British aircraft carrier from Hellsing Ultimate. The Russian competitor "Demetri" was actually able to make a laugh that was pretty close to how Alucard's laugh sounded; When it was my turn I decided to just imagine the scene and go for it, and I just started with the chuckle gradually building up to that insane laugh he had the effect was quite visible even amongst the judges and the crowd gathered to watch the contest.

I had just finished my attempt to imitate Alucard's laugh, and I was watching people in the audience to gauge the reactions the judges might have, and judging from the number of people actually shuddering in their seats, or actually cringing from the soul chilling laughter I would guess my attempt was apparently pretty close to the real thing. Looking over to the judges after I had finished I could see some of the judges were just finishing up with their votes but I could see Mr. Brennan's grin and I felt a shiver work its way down my spine when I saw it and all I could do was think, "Damn-it he reminds me of Alucard and it is starting to really creep me out."

With a gesture from one of the judges I turned to quickly walk off of the right side of the stage stopping just behind the edge of the entrance to the stage waiting for the result of the judges' votes; looking out at the left of the judges I could see Sharon giving me a thumbs up along with her mouthing "That was so awesome Ian.", and all I could do was stand in the shadows in the doorway and give her a thumbs up in return along with a quick nod and a tip of my red wide-brimmed fedora. Looking over to Demetri I saw he was actually looking at me like I had already won this contest, but being my usual self I held out my hand and said, "That was a pretty good laugh we had huh?", to which he had replied in a heavy accent I couldn't quite place and a rather deep chuckle.

"Yes it was, but I don't mind taking second because I still get the chance to get a photo with the trophy and the winner, as do you, if you end up losing, but with that laugh I seriously doubt you will be taking second today my friend."

During this conversation he had clasped my hand and we were shaking hands. Shortly after we stopped shaking hands Demetri had leaned in a bit and asked quietly, "So who is the pretty face out there giving you all the attention?"

I was honestly a little surprised he had decided to ask about Sharon and I was at a loss as to what I should say, which Demetri gave a slight chuckle and said, "Considering that reaction I am guessing she must be pretty close to you correct?"

Attempting to recover my composure I had given the short reply of, "Yes she is, actually she is my best friend here in Britain, and quite possibly," looking out to the crowd, or more accurately at Sharon, as I was finishing what I had been saying, "…something more if fate allows."

Demetri didn't waste any time picking up on what I had said and replied in a knowing tone, "Ah I know the feeling, this is actually similar to how I met my dear Anna, she is actually sitting three seats behind your friend.", indicating a young woman that couldn't be any older than twenty-four or twenty-five years old with black hair and a very attractive face.

I honestly couldn't help myself from replying, "I hope you two are happy Demetri and it has been a pleasure meeting you."

"Likewise, mister?"

"Oh sorry, I am Ian Stone, I was originally from the United States but moved here to York about a year and a half ago. Where would you be from then?"

"First since you have given your given name and family name, I am Demetri Zolkovich, born, raised, and living in Moscow."

ust as Demetri had finished his side of our proper introductions we both heard Mr. Brennan coming up the stairs on our side of the stage, who gave us both very quick nods of appreciation for our participation and a very soft, "Thank you, both of you have done an admirable job so I have arranged for the rest of our top ten contestants to enjoy a meal at a restaurant across the Thames I attend regularly, and as for you two I would like to invite you and a guest for each of you to join me for dinner after the convention closes for the evening at half-past seven.", with a light clapping of his hands and indicating a small cart that was hidden behind a velvet stage curtain, " Now then let us finish up the rest of this contest then shall we?", and as he stepped onto the stage proper the audience suddenly became very quiet after Mr. Brennan had walked up to the podium on the right side of the stage pushing the small cart with the First Place prize in all of its dark splendor, and a single silver trophy resembling an ornate cross which I had seen in Manchester Cathedral when Sharon had taken me there for a Sunday Service last year before Christmas, which I had spent with her and her family, the second trophy had a small plate on its base which simply stated, with just enough space for a name to be added, "Second Place winner of the Costume Contest as was hosted by Mr. James Brennan."

Mr. Brennan stood at the Podium withdrawing a single black envelope from within his suit's left side, clearing his throat for dramatic effect he began, "Ladies and Gentleman, Lords and Ladies alike I am proud to announce the Winner of this grand contest is…..", at this point he had just pulled the slip of paper out from the inside of the envelope, "Contestant number thirty-one, Mr. Ian Stone!", at this he had turned to his left with an arm raised with his hand open to present the doorway that was previously behind him, which I had walked out of at the mention of my name with my head held high and shoulders straight, stopping just off to his left side within arms' reach. Mr. Brennan turned to produce the faithful replica of Alucard's coffin to me with both of his hands cradling it as if it would break if held with only one hand, gently taking it with my left hand and carefully tucking it into the crook of my left arm I reached with my right hand to accept his right hand, which he had offered for a handshake I whole-heartedly accepted. While we were shaking hands he had called out for Demetri in order for him to receive the Second Place trophy which he had accepted with as much enthusiasm as I had and as a photographer had readied his camera all three of us had posed to have our picture taken with Mr. Brennan towering over Demetri and I while standing in the rear of the picture, Demetri on the right side of the picture and myself on the left. Silently I was thinking to myself about what to do about this trophy for the trip back to York, and since it was already five-twenty-five in the evening leaving us with very little time to actually look around the many exhibits and attractions that were available in this building it meant that Sharon and I were going to be rushing through the exhibits . Surprisingly enough Mr. Brennan had suggested a look at his collection of theatrical props, which surprisingly Sharon wanted to see quite eager to do so especially after I had won the contest.

The collection Mr. Brennan had was quite impressive, masks from several versions of Phantom of the Opera, old play scripts from well-known plays such as Mid-Summers Night Dream, and Romeo and Juliet printed in the 1830's in a cured leather-bound cover, a dancer's costume dating back to Victorian England, and a very impressive collection of masks from all corners of the globe including several from Japan and Africa. By closing time we were all ready for that dinner which we were surprised to learn was going to be held at an Italian restaurant down the street which required a suit and tie, because Sharon and Anna weren't dressed for the occasion Mr. Brennan had offered to purchase appropriate attire for them which they both had attempted to pass on, but Mr. Brennan would hear none of it eventually convincing them to join us so that Demetri and I would not get into any sort of trouble without them while I was somewhat surprised at such a suggestion Sharon just started laughing uncontrollably and accepted the offer finally, after I did a little bit of silent prodding with a few facial expressions, namely the infamous 'puppy-dog eyes', she always hated it when I did that because she would cave in from my inability to get my lip to quiver properly.

The dinner was uneventful and featured an expensive meal and wine was the standard fare for those of us who were able to drink it , namely Sharon, Mr. Brennan and I because we could arrange for a cab to take us back to our hotel, and Mr. Brennan was able to do so because apparently he was able to call his private driver to take him back to his estate. Demetri and Anna had politely declined the offer of wine on reasons of personal preference.

It was nearly nine in the evening before we had finished our dinner with our host, Demetri and Anna had left earlier at around eight to get back to their hotel in order to get some rest before catching their plane back to Moscow, and Sharon and I had left shortly after the cab we had called for arrived to take us back to our hotel. By morning my trophy was waiting down in the hotel's office, after it had arrived after having my name engraved on the plaque, which Sharon and I had decided to head back to York a day sooner than expected after Sharon had received a call from her neighbor about her cat falling ill, after spending almost three hours nursing "light" hangovers we called another cab and were on our way back to York.

It was a fairly uneventful drive in the back of a black Honda Civic owned by a cab company Sharon's father had been running for the last ten years. The conversations between Sharon and I about what we had seen at the convention and our observations about Mr. Brennan's appearance and behavior were the hot topic for most of the ride back to York, but before we could get to a "petrol station" (a gas station) as our cab driver had expected to stop at to let us stretch our legs a bit and grab a quick breakfast for ourselves at a nearby restaurant Sharon had told them about, the inside of our cab was suddenly engulfed in a bright green light and Sharon, the driver, and I were overcome by a mixed sense of vertigo and nausea which had us slowly slip into unconsciousness.

If there was an observer nearby to watch the scene unfold they would have seen what appeared to be a translucent green pool of light open in the middle of the black Honda driving down the road, which had swallowed the rear half of the car and the front half kept moving forward before coming to a stop and along where the middle of the car used to be there was a clean cut that was glowing a bright pale yellow from extreme heat, and the driver had quickly gotten out of what was left of the car and called the Police hoping they would get there quickly.

Somewhere on Omega the rear half of a black Honda Civic had fallen from almost a meter off the ground and into the middle of an empty street filled after exiting a similar pool of green light that had disappeared as quickly as it had appeared. In the back seat there were still two figures held in place by their seat-belts. The figure on the right side which was wearing a grey blouse, and dark red knee length skirt had started to slide forward when she jerked awake in response to her unplanned change of posture. It took her a few moments to realize that both she and the male figure on the other side of the seat were alright and in one piece but the first thing she noticed about where they were was the horrible smell, the refuse lining the street, and that there was no front to the car. It had taken her a few seconds to get her seatbelt undone because she felt light-headed and that her friend, Ian, was covered in sweat, and had become paler than his normal light cream complexion. When she had gotten onto her feet she had already decided to get Ian out of the seat and make sure he was alright, acting quickly she undid the seatbelt and had half-dragged, half-carried Ian over to the side of the street they were on and looked around to see if anyone was around to help to which she was surprised that no one was in sight.

Upon putting Ian down on the ground she tried to gently shake him awake which didn't work in the slightest before quietly addressing Ian, "Ian I am so sorry about this," raising her hand above her head she brought her hand down in a shallow arc two times.

Ian's POV

I was in darkness, darkness seemingly stained by a bright green afterglow similar to what happens when I had looked at a bright light for too long when I felt something hit my face and I faintly heard someone call my name before I realized I was laying on a hard surface somewhere when I heard, "Ian can you hear me? Ian! COME ON DAMNIT WAKE UP!", SLAP, and before opening my eyes I knew I was going to have something hit me again and I raised my arm to catch whatever it was and caught something that I thought was probably an arm.

Upon opening my eyes I discovered I was on my back looking up at Sharon and she was very scared I was about to ask why when I remembered what had happened and took in our surroundings before I realized I was still holding onto her hand and let it go before I was overwhelmed by a powerful combination of smells, sulfur, pollution, and a smell similar to the stench of death, "Ugh, Sharon where are we?"

I had asked through tightly clenched teeth and a certain pair of gloves I had grabbed from my coat pocket were pressed tightly against my nose as was Sharon's own hand which I had quickly offered one of my gloves which she had greedily accepted and placed under her own nose. Looking at Sharon she had quickly explained what she had seen and what she believed had happened to the car, I had taken the time to look around while she was telling me what she had already seen and what I saw did not inspire hope, it looked like the inside of a massive stone cavern with one big difference, there was a city built inside it, turning to Sharon I had said in a shaken voice, "Sherry is it possible that we are asleep and that we are sharing the same nightmare, because if we aren't is there a good explanation as to why I think we are on Omega?"

She looked at me quizzically but I simply pointed out a series of buildings that resembled a tower hanging from the ceiling of a large cavern with buildings and alleys built into the sides of the stone walls, and the state of the street we were on could easily be what could have been passed off as a street on Omega.

The only thing Sharon was able to say was a muffled squeak before finally saying, "If we are on Omega I want to get out of here before we meet Aria."

Suddenly from behind us a male voice replied weakly, "If you want to do that do you mind giving me a hand? I have a ride off of this rock and I am not going very far in my condition."

Both Sharon and I had turned to who had said that comment and saw the only other person on the street shuffle in a drunken fashion into the almost nonexistent light from a nearby storefront, the person who had approached us was Kai Leng, but there was a big difference between what he looked like in Mass Effect 3 and how he looked right now. He was bleeding from what appeared to be several gunshot wounds in his left shoulder, and upper arm and there were no signs of Reaper cybernetics on his face. Upon seeing this Sharon had run forward and caught Kai Leng as he started to fall forward from exhaustion, blood loss, or both. While I stood there attempting to come to a decision on what I should do and against my better judgement I walked forward to help Sharon move him over to the wall to his right so he could lean against the wall without injuring his left arm further. While Sharon and I were doing this I had paused long enough to look down the street again looking for anyone coming in our direction, which thankfully was empty aside from the three of us as far as I could tell which worried me beyond belief.

"Sharon do you see anyone?", I asked with more than just a hint of worry in my voice.

Which made her reply hesitantly, "No I don't, why do you ask?"

I replied, "I was asking because I don't see anyone either and I think we should get him out of here right now because when was the last time you ever saw a movie with a supposedly empty street that didn't feature someone getting killed on it, especially when it looks like it normally accommodates a lot of foot traffic?", my reply had caused even Kai Leng to take another look around the street before he spoke in a slightly slurred manner.

"Alright, we need to get to Dock thirty-five, I was supposed to get aboard a ship leaving here two hours from now and I can make sure they take you," while he had said this he was looking at what we were wearing with tired looking eyes, "because you people are obviously not from here otherwise you probably would have shot me for my Omni-tool or valuables by now considering how old your clothes are."

Tto which both Sharon and I looked at Kai Leng incredulously before saying, "Says the man with a top-knot.", surprisingly enough it actually got a chuckle out of Kai Leng.

It was nearly an hour long walk for the three of us because Sharon and I were attempting to carry Kai Leng between us on our shoulders in order to try keeping him from keeling over and both Sharon and I were feeling very tired and were sweating profusely which Kai Leng had noticed from where he was. I was going over my options because I was worried about not so much Kai Leng leaving us on Omega so much as I was having Sharon in the sights of even a single pirate or worse Cerberus if this was in the middle of 2186, or more accurately the Reaper Invasion's little surprise where Cerberus took over Omega, that and I wanted to make certain nothing happened to her.

Kai Leng had given us very detailed instructions on how to get to Dock thirty-five and with a little luck we had managed to avoid drawing the attention of several groups of Blue Suns mercenaries which appeared to be looking for someone judging from the amount of 'Find the Bastard already, Aria isn't paying us by the hour!'s, from back in the direction we had come from and judging from how loud they were getting the mercenaries were slowly making their way towards Dock thirty-five. By the time we had reached the walkway that would take us to the entrance to the docking bay's main loading area for passengers and small cargo we heard people talking around the last turn to the platform, and from what I could tell we were walking in on the middle of a conversation between at least two people using some kind of electronic voice distortion system that sounded similar to what Cerberus soldiers sounded like in Mass Effect 3, with that I quietly said to Sharon, "Sherry stay here with him while I see if those people up ahead are with the Blue Suns or not alright?", after I had said this all I had gotten out of Sharon was a brief nod while she carefully leaned Kai Leng against the wall to her left. While I walked up to the corner I had taken off my hat and tried fanning my face because all of a sudden I had felt warmer than I had been, while I leaned far enough around the corner to see a pair of soldiers in white combat armor with black and yellow trim, "Well that answers the question of who we were hitching a ride with, now to find out if the Blue Suns were going to be boarding this flight too.", I thought grimly and stepped out from behind the corner slowly clearing my throat to get the attention of the two Cerberus troopers which one of them immediately called out, "Hands up now!"

I just stood there while replying, "I would suggest you get over here and help me with your associate because he's been shot…..", after which I was about to turn when I suddenly pitched forward and I seemed to watch the floor come up to meet me, while I was falling I heard one of the troopers start to call for a medical team from the ship and told the other soldier to check on me.

Third Person/Narrator's POV nearly a day later

In the hallway near Dock thirty-five a group of eight soldiers wearing Cerberus combat armor were helping a group of people in medical uniforms carry Ian, Sharon, and Kai Leng onto a transport heading directly to a medical bay which was similar in size and shape to the Normandy SR-1's medical facility with a group of four people suddenly running up to the soldiers running Omni-tools over Kai Leng first which he was placed on the farthest operating table from the doorway, while two of the medical personnel were suddenly yelling about radiation poisoning and ordering for the soldiers to get spare uniforms from the supply officer and to have one of them help with stabilizing Ian, and Sharon who were now unconscious and were barely breathing. Almost an hour later Kai Leng was sitting upright with bandages over his left shoulder and arm, while he was typing up a report to submit to the Illusive Man about his last assignment he had asked how the two people who had brought him to the ship were doing to which one of the medical personnel, a woman around her thirties with short red hair had walked over to him and told Kai Leng about how close it was, and that they were somehow exposed to an unknown form of radiation but that there were not going to be any long term effects surprisingly.

Kai Leng was now looking back to the two figures which were now covered in plastic sheeting to minimize the risk of secondary radiation exposure to the crew as he quietly said to no one in particular, "Who are you kids? I know you aren't from Omega, and you took the time to help a complete stranger who was shot…", Kai Leng suddenly had a thought although he initially dismissed it had come back unbidden when he was attempting get some sleep and looking over to the two unconscious forms across the med bay he decided to do it anyway, calling to the nearest medical technician on the night shift he requested assistance to reach the transport's QEC array and mentally prepared himself to face the Illusive Man.

The Illusive Man's POV/third person

In a dark room that was lit dimly with a pale red-orange light from the red giant Anadius The Illusive Man had just finished a conversation with Kai Leng over an uplink to one of the QEC's installed on Cronos Station and he was not pleased with its outcome.

Kai Leng had succeeded in his mission killing several underworld contacts who had refused to follow through with a business arrangement to supply Cerberus with refined Eezo and several tons of black market laboratory equipment, but what had angered him was the fact that Kai Leng was bringing a man and a woman that were around twenty years old to Cronos Station. Unknowns, that was what The Illusive Man disliked about his position, a single unexpected event taking place because someone with an unknown agenda, or an unknown person with an alias and a well-established motive could upset even the most well laid plans and he expected that at least one of these two unknown civilians could do unthinkable damage to his organization if he wasn't careful. The Illusive man was considering just closing the reports Kai Leng had sent which apparently contained the results from the pair's medical scans. It had taken him a few moments but something was telling him to look at the report in depth, sighing quietly he then activated one of the controls from the hybrid Holographic Haptic Interface and opened up a private line to the main dining hall in the section his office was in and requested a pot of coffee brought to his office along with a steak dinner which he was told would take about an hour to be brought up due to the time, looking over to the clock on one of the holographic screens near him he audibly sighed after seeing the time, it was half past noon in other words lunch hour, acknowledging the person taking his lunch request once more he then added a request for them to be prepared for at least a pair of additional meals to be added to the current workload before closing the comm., looking back to the screen holding a holographic cover stating "Medical Examination of Unknown Personnel on 5/20/2179" noting the date was almost a day prior to Kai Leng's report by QEC, he opened the file skipping past the normal medical statistics and looked for the section detailing the radiation the unknowns had been exposed to and was surprised when he had recognized the radiation signature from somewhere. Widening his pale blue cybernetic eyes at the amount of radiation both of Kai Leng's passengers had been exposed to and finding out that they would not be suffering from side-affects was astounding.

The Illusive Man brought up a search program he had written to aid in managing his files and input the radiation signature's profile and set the search program to look through all files Cerberus R&D had submitted as well as all public and government files his organization had managed to acquire. He was just finishing up with the medical file for the unknown male when he reached the section detailing previous procedures they had undergone which was extremely short. He was surprised when he found out that only the removal of the appendix, and the removal of the "wisdom teeth" were the only operations performed, and there were no indications of any of the inoculations Alliance military personnel received let alone what the average human normally would, opening up the file containing the list of personal affects which was archaic in The Illusive Man's opinion, a red leather duster with matching wide-brimmed fedora, wireframe cosmetic glasses with round yellow lenses, a black suit with matching vest and pants, a collared white shirt, red cravat, a pair of white gloves featuring a modified occult symbol on the back of them, a ring with metal keys, a cell-phone that apparently still worked that dated back to around 2014-2015, a plain silver colored fob watch with matching watch-chain and pin, and a black leather wallet currently filled with no less than thirty English Pounds Sterling which according to the serial numbers on the bills were apparently printed at or around the year 2014. Leaning back in his chair he looked at the driver's license found in the wallet, it was supposedly issued in 2014 and was going to be due to expire on the fifth of December if he was reading it correctly, thinking only for less than a second he began to run a background program to authenticate the license before he started another one to look for this Ian Stone in the Alliance's civilian and military databases. While he waited for the results on his search his lunch had arrived and spent almost an hour enjoying the meal as it had been the first thing he had eaten in almost twenty-four hours due to a medical appointment he had in one of the medical facilities onboard Chronos Station to look into his mysterious headache which the only thing the good doctor had been able to confirm so far was that it was nothing easily identifiable and told him to come back on the following Friday for a full medical examination. He had just finished his meal and sent it back to the main dining hall hurriedly and once the person sent to retrieve it had left The Illusive Man opened the file for the woman called Sharon Whitworth according to the License found in her pocket-book, which he was about to start a search for her through the Alliance's Naval database because of her N7 jacket when the results for the search into this person known as "Ian Stone" arrived with a triumphant deet-deet emanating from one of the consoles on the enlarged haptic interface surrounding him looking towards the now flashing light on the projection, he tapped it opening the report and began to read the results he had been waiting for.

"A full database search has been completed, no references in the Alliance's civilian or naval databases have been found, further searches have been triggered as per back-up search subroutines, however no individual named: IAN STONE, has been located in any known database fitting this individual's vital statistics. Do you wish to run this search again?"

The Illusive Man was now quite curious about these two mystery individuals now, while he was setting up the search for Sharon Whitworth he ordered the search program to expand the search to all surviving United Kingdoms' databases for both Ian Stone and Sharon Whitworth and activated the program. Leaning back in his chair once more he heard another triumphant alarm notifying him that the search for the radiation profile had been completed he turned to the console he had set the search on and looked at the file with a look of what could be deemed as shock, shaking himself from his stupor he looked at the two screens holding the images of Ian Stone and Sharon Whitworth and said in a very cold voice, "Project Emerald Flame… how did you two get involved in that little project of Miranda's I wonder?", looking back to the screen he opened the file and began to read the highlighted section.

"If you enter Null Space in the Local Cluster in order to arrive at a location designated in the Omega System you will take a journey that would last up to two months in a standard freighter using the Relays and conventional drives you could arrive in the Omega system in approximately eighteen hours if we use our current version of the drive system on a ship of approximate weight, size, and equipped with the same propulsion systems as an Alliance Kilimanjaro class Dreadnought. Furthermore I am obligated to report the existence of Cherenkov radiation (see attached file on Cherenkov radiation and effects of exposure) and the potential dangers of activating an N-Space Drive in orbit of a natural stellar body such as an asteroid with enough mass to generate sufficient forces of gravity. These potential dangers include but are not limited to the unintentional creation of a direct entrance into Null Space that is unable to be properly closed, possible interdimensional travel (travel between alternate universes may be possible if carefully controlled), and radiation poisoning which is 90% lethal in all simulations and animal testing. As a reminder this prototype is based off of Prothean Artifact No. 3083-18-A81-L located in Vault 37 onboard (Location Redacted)."

The Illusive Man looked down at his wrist-watch and saw that it was almost 6 PM which reminded him that these "guests", as well as Kai Leng, will be arriving in about eighteen hours, which The Illusive Man wanted to be present for the "debriefing" and in a well-rested state so he could have some answers given to him first hand, moving over to the consoles running the database searches on Ian Stone and Sharon Whitworth he set them to send the results to his personal computer in his quarters, then sent a message to Miranda Lawson asking her to immediately check over her project again and set the computer in his office to shut-down completely once it had sent the results to his quarters. Once he had finished with performing the modifications to the information retrieval programs he shut-down the haptic interface and headed to his quarters which was almost an hour long walk using the elevators which thankfully were faster than the elevators on the Citadel but the delay in returning to his quarters was caused from a power failure in one of the corridors which he normally would have used to avoid the normally high foot traffic in the other corridors, however trying to open three sets of hydraulically controlled doors by hand was not something he would willingly do without some assurances. By the time he had reached his quarters it was 7:15 PM according to his watch. Opening the doors to his quarters was easy a quick wave of his flared Omni-tool deactivated three separate electronic locks, and deactivated several security devices inside and after the haptic interface on his door flashed green instead of the normal red a locked door would have displayed allowing him to enter upon his approach revealing a fairly large room with large window providing a view of space and the warm glow of Anadius shining through just enough to provide enough light to allow The Illusive Man to walk inside and turn on an old desk lamp that was connected to an outlet in the top of desk integrated to the wall, looking just to the left of the lamp he placed his hand on a dull black section of the dark grey surface of the desk which had a green light flashing slowly on the corner, after about a second of waiting a section of the desk's surface opened to reveal a laptop of seemingly common manufacture from an Earth-borne electronics manufacturer called Elysium-Tech, a relatively new manufacturer based off on Elysium and yet became one of the Alliances major contractors for military computers within less than a decade, opening the messages he was expecting to see he was surprised to see no mention of the people called Ian Stone, and Sharon Whitworth in any official or unofficial census within the last two centuries, absolutely no mention of Sharon Whitworth in the Alliance Navy, other than a Master Chief Petty officer onboard the Kilimanjaro, but it was obviously not the Sharon Whitworth Kai Leng was bringing because all indications show that she is from York, in the UK and not from New Orleans in Louisiana, in the United States which meant only one thing, if The Illusive Man could manage to convince them to work for him he would be able to deploy an untraceable asset if they were trained properly.

Upon receiving this revelation he decided to sleep on it, after spending a few minutes going through his usual routine checking for any additional messages and ordered the retrieval of half of an old twenty-first century car that appeared on Omega as well as any other objects relating to Kai Leng's "guests" and performed a few changes to his schedule for in the morning to allow for the debriefing of Sharon Whitworth and Ian Stone, then upon thinking further on the subject at hand, he cleared his schedule for the next few days, he doubted that they could have any sort of training in resisting interrogation but he was concerned about the volume of information they may have or what they have learned about his organization. Those thoughts troubled him right up until a persistent headache he has had since his time on Palaven after the First Contact War (or the Relay 314 Incident as the Turians called it), moving over to the medicine cabinet in his quarters' bathroom he picked out a mild sedative he had been prescribed by one of the medical staff onboard Chronos Station before he went to bed, thinking aloud before he closed his eyes, "I wonder, do these two 'guests' of Kai Leng's have anything to do with Miranda's little project out at Minuteman?"

Third Person POV

Cerberus Transports like the one Kai Leng now stood in the crew quarters of a heavily modified Kowloon class freighter which instead of the normal single deck it was redesigned to instead use a pair of decks as well as a third deck on the Bridge and Engineering sections which were easily modified to conceal guardian laser batteries and in the Bridge area a suite of advanced electronic warfare equipment and advanced sensors designed to detect any kind of occurrence from a mass effect field changing its output to a small speck of stellar debris somehow being thrown through a Relay, to Cerberus it was a major advancement in their black ops division, but right now Kai Leng was more worried about the female passenger, now known to be called Sharon Whitworth according to her supposed identification card.

she had just woke up from being chemically flushed of radiation and was now attempting to wake up the second passenger, a one Ian Stone; both of them had helped him get to this transport on Omega and he was taking a major risk by just having them brought onboard this freighter because of Sharon Whitworth's supposed connection to the Alliance's N7 special operations, however he doubted that connection completely because she did not carry herself in the same fashion as other N7 operatives, let alone the fact that she was far too young to be an N7 because they usually require several years in the Alliance Navy in order to be considered for the N7 program for just the level of field experience they were expected to have.

Grimacing he remembered the hell that he was put through before receiving his N7 designation and the fight on the Citadel that ended it all, banishing the thoughts from his mind again and taking a steadying breath he cleared his throat to get the attention of this Sharon Whitworth, which surprisingly enough he did and so he started in a calm tone, "Miss Whitworth please step back from Mister Stone he still needs his rest…"

"Don't tell me what to do!"

He was caught off-guard by the sudden outburst of anger that was directed toward him. He stood there stunned for maybe a second before he saw the still figure of Ian Stone begin to stir slightly and heard a muffled "Ugh… my head Sherry have we been out drinking that Lager from Sullivan's private stock again? My head feels like we have because everything is kind of fuzzy yet."

"Ian oh my god! Are you alright, do you hurt anywhere?"

"Sherry please calm down and… wait. Where are we?"

Kai Leng sensing his opportunity to talk to someone who was level headed albeit somewhat dazed he said in a calm voice, "You Mister Stone are onboard the privately owned freighter you brought me to and I have had the radiation you were exposed to flushed from your system and which according to the medical personnel onboard you two are extremely lucky."

Noting Ian Stone was going to say something he stopped so he could hear him from almost two meters away and surprisingly enough Ian Stone had motioned for Sharon Whitworth to lean in towards him, which Kai Leng barely heard Ian converse with her in a hushed tone which he hadn't heard Sharon's reply but he did hear Ian, "Sherry please tell me that isn't Kai Leng…"

Kai Leng straightened his back involuntarily because he realized he had never told either Sharon, or Ian, his name which set alarms off in his mind and he was very concerned because if they know who he is what kind of information do these two have on Cerberus, Kai Leng was thinking grimly, "If they know who I am I wonder what else they know because if they know my name then they almost certainly know about who I work for, although… that isn't necessarily a bad thing because if they will work for Cerberus and by extension The Illusive Man they could be almost untraceable assets.", Kai Leng's train of thought was suddenly interrupted by the announcement that they were approximately an hour out from Cronos Station which he noticed both Ian and Sharon tense up visibly which made Kai Leng raise an eyebrow in slight amusement at their surprise but then he thought, "I wonder if they know that Cronos Station is where we are headed?", sighing momentarily he decided that he would ask Sharon later because she appeared to be the most easily coerced into disclosing information when pressed, which meant she would have to be interviewed after they knew they couldn't get information from Ian. Kai Leng then looked to Ian who was now slowly getting up from the bed and was silently appraising him in his mind, "Hmm a tough person to read for once, withdrawn yet confident but according to his body language near Miss Whitworth she obviously is important to him so that is a way to acquire information from him obviously, no obvious physical maladies such as a sprain or other injury to exploit for leveraging information through physical pain, however the way he acts indicates he may have information on our organization or at least myself so I need to keep an eye on him, now about Miss Whitworth."

Kai Leng then looked over to Sharon out of the corner of his eye after she had moved over to the main entrance hoping to apparently leave, "she on the other hand is far too easy to read through her body language, timid and shy but not easily intimidated, she keeps her distance from Ian even though she always seems to lean towards him indicating she has feelings towards him but she chooses to avoid showing her emotions outwardly to most people and finally she seems to also have quite a bit of information about our organization so the question is who will crack first Miss Whitworth or," looking back to Ian who is now on his feet and looking at Kai Leng in an appraising manner of his own, "him? Well, well, well, this is interesting he has been observing me while I was watching Miss Whitworth, at least he is smart to do so when I am not watching otherwise I would have masked my thoughts better."

Kai Leng stood there for a few moments not moving or speaking just staring back at Ian who suddenly had a wry smile plastered on his face and slowly shook his head slightly and started to walk past Kai Leng but before he passed him he said to him softly, "You know Kai Leng I would suggest you don't try to get information out of her by threatening me or her directly, mostly because the last person to threaten her physically ended up waiting for their bones to knit in a hospital for nearly two months, besides I would tell you and The Illusive Man information if either of you asked… politely.", after Ian had said that his smile only grew wider but it was hidden from Sharon in such a manner that she didn't see or hear Ian speak to Kai Leng at all which indicated to Kai Leng that he had an agenda which he was not sharing with Sharon and that made him wince slightly behind the visor-like eye-display he was wearing, he had opened his mouth to reply to Ian but before he could he was interrupted by the ship's intercom, "Attention all hands we will be docking in 45 minutes."

Kai Leng heard a sigh escape from Ian who asked in a somewhat resigned manner, "So Kai Leng, any chance my friend and I can get a quick shower before our little meeting with your boss?"

"Sure, and I can order tea and biscuits for you two as well."

Ian looked at Kai Leng with a look of disappointment tinged with amusement before replying, "You know Kai Leng sarcasm doesn't suit you at all."

Ian's POV

It was a surprise that both Sharon's clothes as well as mine were cleared of whatever radioactive materials we had been exposed to, while we were unconscious in the medbay, so at least we would be able to avoid wearing unfamiliar clothing we needed to break in. We had just gotten off of the ship and were told to wait in the airlock for an escort, why they wanted one for us when Kai Leng was already doing so was completely unrealistic.

I couldn't help but think to myself when I saw the inside of the airlock, "So this is the inside of the infamous Cronos Station? I think I like it better when it was just a bunch of pixels in Mass Effect 3 because it looked way better trashed all to Hell."

I just couldn't believe my luck I went from the gutters of Omega to the halls of Cerberus' secret headquarters and all thanks to a mishap that left me irradiated, tired, cranky, and above all anxious to use my least favorite option, convince Jack Harper AKA The Illusive Man to hand over partial control of Cerberus just so I could try to save a few lives, or my favorite option work with them until Shepard was up and about after Lazarus and stick him/her them all the way to the end, honestly the second option was far more appealing because I could prepare a few surprises for good ol' Harper including a coup' of my own by weeding out disloyal Cerberus personnel and organize them although I do have more than those two options.

Pausing momentarily in my thoughts I couldn't help but wonder, "What kind of Shepard am I going to have to work with anyway? A Paragon, a Renegade, male, female, 'sigh' I suppose it doesn't matter that much as long as there is one that saves lives does it?"

It was just when I had reached the end of my internal dialogue the inner airlock doors opened to reveal a squad of five Cerberus troopers with the one in the lead wearing Centurion armor and a modified Mattock resting in their arms rather casually, that in of itself told me that we were not their top priority at the moment which meant something was going on somewhere else.

"So it is time to go for a REALLY long walk then I guess, huh Kai Leng?", to which I saw Kai Leng, who had been leaning on the wall opposite of me working on his Omni-tool just raise his head a little and give a slight grunt before saying;

"Well according to what I just read, yeah, it is going to be a very long walk to where you are going, miss Whitworth on the other hand is going to some guest quarters we have set aside for her…"

"Guest quarters? You mean prison cell?", and I was surprised when he shook his head slowly and repeated what he said albeit paraphrased;

"GUEST QUARTERS, on this side of the station actually," looking at his Omni-tool again he then added, "and according to my Omni-tool we have about twenty minutes before you are supposed to be in my boss's office so I could let you see them first, however," he paused again looking directly at my eyes, "you will have to ask me nicely instead of going out of your way to annoy me like you have been trying to do.", the way he had said it told me he actually meant it.

"Heh, Kai Leng, you have a deal I suppose.", I then added in a polite tone while hiding my hands behind my back in such a way so as to give the impression of clasping them behind my back instead of revealing the fists I was making while I spoke, "Kai Leng will you please take us to see these 'guest quarters' that your employer has been so kind to have set aside for Sharon?", and out of the corner of my eye I saw Sharon visibly stiffen and turned her head at me slightly while giving me a look that said, "Ian, what the HELL are you up to?", and all I did was turn slightly to my right towards the airlock which Kai Leng took as a signal to head to the guest quarters and walked slowly so Sharon was able to catch up to me but before she could lean in to ask me what I was up to verbally when I just tilted my head slightly to my left and quietly said;

"Sherry, right now I want you to remain calm and just relax because I am going to see if I can't get some help in getting either you or both of us home because honestly I don't want you here if things go sideways, and another thing. What do you know about Cerberus before Mass Effect happened?"

Sharon looked at me as if I was asking her a stupid question before she said, "Well Cerberus is a pro-human terrorist group isn't it?"

"Yes, keep going Sharon."

"Well they were founded by…", Sharon looked around and leaned in very close to my left ear and said "Jack Harper, an ex-Alliance operative or something like that, look Ian, I really don't see what you are asking me these questions for."

"Sherry, one moment. Hey Kai Leng what is the date anyway!?", Kai Leng turned his head slightly to his right and replied;

"Well let's see it was Saturday yesterday so… it is the fifth of June 2179. Why do you want to know, wait… did you lose your Omni-tool Ian?"

"Don't say my name like that you son of a b-" suddenly I felt a hand on my shoulder and I realized I apparently was not thinking to myself like I thought because I heard Sharon say in a soothing tone;

"Ian calm down he is just trying to get under your skin, can't you see that?"

I just chose to reply to Sharon as best I could, "I know Sherry.", sighing quietly I started again, "As I was going to say to you earlier, it is 2179 almost four years before the events of Mass Effect and that means that this is a point in time which can supposedly be manipulated carefully it could be possible to prevent a lot of lost lives, I am not saying it is the right thing to do, however, it is better than doing nothing. What do you think Sherry?"

"Ian that is very dangerous thinking because if we cause a even a small change we could cause even more people to die."

"Sherry, I know, which is why I was thinking about Cerberus, seriously think about it, this organization doesn't even show up on Shepard's radar until the first Mass Effect because of those projects they were working on which could be prevented in the first place, and this entire organization could be redesigned, and redirected towards a role more befitting its namesake, this organization could be 'The Guardian at the Gate' that Harper created Cerberus for in the first place, besides I don't believe he is under the control of the Reapers by now anyway."

Surprisingly Sharon was thinking over my rather insane suggestion rather carefully before she continued our conversation, "How do you intend on working around him anyway?"

"Who, The Illusive Man?" Sharon simply nodded to me quietly so I just replied, "Well the thing is if he isn't under their control already or we are arriving early enough we could find a way to get him to either step down or prevent him from being manipulated further, which both of those are fairly easy to accomplish, on the other hand," looking around quickly to make sure none of our escorts weren't close enough to hear us, "there is always the mutiny option, and even working with them up until Shepard is up and about after Lazarus is preferable to doing nothing because we could sabotage Cerberus and its projects easily enough with what we know."

With my last comment Sharon suddenly stopped and was looking at me with slightly wide eyes before she looked over to her right and she said quietly, "Ian something is wrong, can you ask for a table I could borrow for a bit?"

I couldn't help but look at her with a worried look in my eyes before asking her, "Sherry is this another one of your 'bad feelings'?", and after I had asked her that she nodded slowly which answered my question all too well, reminding me of when I had gotten that cold feeling in my stomach when my I lost several friends in a car crash. "Alright Sherry, one moment.", looking back over to Kai Leng who had stopped our escorts, who were now looking at us as if we were planning on running off somewhere, "Kai Leng, is there a table Sharon can borrow?"

Kai Leng had raised an eyebrow at my request before pointing to a door on Sharon's right which we approached and it opened once we were within a couple of meters from it revealing a lounge with a view of part of the red star Anadius on the right side of the large window, revealing a dimly lit bar counter, several booths arranged in a horseshoe pattern to fit the walls and tables scattered in the spare floor space, and Sharon calmly walked over to the table closest to the door and pulled a small wood box covered in etchings depicting a Elizabethan garden from her N7 jacket's pocket, I always knew she had carried them in there but the look on Kai Leng's face suggested he hadn't even bothered to check her jacket's pockets for some reason, he was about to make a gesture to one of the soldiers but I looked at him and calmly shook my head in a slow manner stepping aside to let him see what Sharon was doing and he had paused just short of giving the silent command to move in, he and I were watching Sharon open the box withdrawing a deck of old Tarot cards. Kai Leng sent me a questioning look which I simply replied with a finger raised to my lips in a quieting gesture and gave a slight shrug in my shoulders afterward, while Sharon pulled a few cards from the top of the deck. According to what I knew about the Tarot you were supposed to use a certain number of cards but Sharon used however many she felt she needed to see, and she only pulled three, to me they were just cards and the "gift" as she called it was different in every individual, I myself had had a few instances of déjà vu which I knew to trust on several occasions during my previous job experience as a "personal security expert" aka semi-professional gardener with a knack for finding missing items and locating people of… questionable character for the local constabulary on the side.

I risked a look over at the cards she had drawn and flipped over, The Tower, The Ace of Swords, Death, "Well this is just dandy isn't it? The Tower, the Ace of Swords, Death... this means what then? Wait, The Tower… Chronos Station possibly, but then what is the Ace of Swords then? Could it refer to Kai Leng, Harper, me, maybe something else I wonder? Death is fairly self-explanatory, it means death in the physical sense or metaphorical, life or rebirth, and change in life when it does show itself in the Tarot ,at least as far as I understood from what Sharon had told me." Dismissing the thoughts from my mind for now I instead focused on Sharon looking for some indication as to what she saw in the cards and what I saw was Sharon, and she was shaking when she saw the Death card and just as I was about to ask her what was wrong she gathered her cards up and put them in the box and quickly shoved it back into her jacket and walked quickly back into the hallway. Before I could try to say anything to her, she had wrapped her arms around me in a manner that left me shocked, she was holding onto me as if she was afraid I was going to leave her. All I could do was stand there dumbstruck and place one hand on her back and the other on her head and gently brushed her hair saying;

"Sharon everything is alright I'm here, I'm right here, don't worry.", and I heard a muffled reply,

"I know Ian just, please don't ask me what I saw, just please don't ask me.", I was still stunned so I did the only thing I could,

"Alright Sharon if you want to talk just remember I'm here for you," removing my hand from her back I gently lifted her chin and looked her in the eyes, "please remember that no matter what happens, alright?", and all she did was give me a solemn nod before she looked over to Kai Leng and asked him to have someone take her to the guest quarters.

Kai Leng had a confused look on his face which vanished just before he nodded to the soldier in Centurion armor which he motioned to Sharon for her to follow him, and as they walked down the hallway they took a left at an intersection.

Kai Leng then looked at me and asked with a cold demeanor, "What was that about?", and I decided to tell him what cards she had drawn,

"The Tower, The Ace of Swords, and Death, Kai Leng, that is all you, and I, need to know."

After my reply he simply looked at me with an expression that told me he was not satisfied with my answer before ending the conversation with the statement, "We need to get you to my Employer before he becomes impatient mister Stone."

We were walking down a hallway with windows on the left side overlooking a large empty space near the Illusive Man's office if I remembered correctly from Mass Effect 3. In my mind I knew what I said in the next few minutes was going to decide Sharon's fate as well as mine, up ahead was the set of sliding doors I knew opened to a ramp with another set of doors before I meet face to face with HIM, The Illusive Man, Jack Harper, the poor bastard who lost everything during the First Contact War, I honestly pitied him because of what had happened on Palaven, he lost two people who were friends and co-workers, and from that day forward he might have been manipulated into even creating this organization by what I could only assume was a Reaper Indoctrination device, but that was as far as that pity went, from this point on he was exactly that Jack Harper or The Illusive Man depending on how this played out.

Taking a deep breath at the foot of the ramp I then proceeded to walk forward towards that last set of doors. I couldn't help but notice that there was only one person walking behind me, turning my head to the right so I could glance behind me I saw Kai Leng walking about two feet behind me with my curiosity appeased I looked forward toward the final set of doors again which opened at our approach giving me my first glimpse at The Illusive Man in person, he was wearing his trademark business suit, his normally serious looking expression, and there was a small table to his right with two glasses and a decanter of what I had to assume was scotch, bourbon or some other kind of amber colored alcohol, and in front of the table a single seat set so whomever sat there had a view of the sun and by extension him to the right, and to the left the door I was entering. When Kai Leng and I were about halfway to the empty chair the door closed and the green lock indicator flashed an angry red telling me that I was not leaving until The Illusive Man said I could which was fine by me at this point, I didn't want to leave until I was sure of Sharon's safety. Looking at The Illusive Man again I bowed slightly at the waist letting my hair fall forward slightly before uttering a greeting,

"I would like to introduce myself properly before we begin, I am well aware of Kai Leng mentioning my name by now however I feel it is only polite, I am Ian Stone and I cannot decide if it is a pleasure to meet you in person or not yet, considering this is not the kind of meeting I was hoping for."

The Illusive Man looked off to the side where the chair was and indicated I should take a seat before he replied, "I see. What kind of meeting were you hoping for then? One over a very long distance maybe?", he had added with a hint of sarcasm which did not go unnoticed by me, thinking for maybe a second before I walked calmly to take the offered seat before he withdrew the offer. I smiled slightly as I made my way to the offered chair and let out a slight chuckle.

While I was taking my seat I kept my eyes on The Illusive Man which in hindsight was a mistake, however I felt I could trust Kai Leng to not do anything without orders from him explicitly, as I was in the process of getting comfortable on what was I had to admit was probably a very expensive, yet simple, hard backed office chair, I replied to his question very calmly saying, "No, I was just hoping for a nice polite, and private, chat in a very,", indicating the room with my right hand by panning it around the room, "comfortable chair and a friendly atmosphere with no prying eyes or ears aside from yours, Kai Leng's, and whatever cameras and auditory recording devices you have installed here, Mr. Harper."

I was hoping for maybe a sharp intake of breath from him or something to indicate shock at the revelation of The Illusive Man's name however the only reaction I received was from Jack Harper, and that was just a blank look which quickly took on an aspect of anger at the realization that I had just revealed that I knew his last name, which told him just how much I may actually know about him specifically, as well as the fact that Kai Leng now knew his REAL name.

"Do you want to explain how you know my name Mr. Stone?", the rage in his voice was barely hidden at this point and I just sat there waiting for him to calm down somewhat before continuing the conversation.

"Well the same way I know Kai Leng was an N7 graduate up until he killed a Krogan using his service blade." I had said in a careful and level tone while looking quickly at Kai Leng as I made that statement, "Which, I might add, brings me to my first question in this meeting of ours.", looking back to Jack Harper I continued, "Tell me Mr. Harper, what would you do if I told you I could offer you information which could prevent further deaths or fates like Ben's or Eva's?", the question was apparently enough to soften the rage somewhat and was replaced with the impassive look I was used to seeing as Jack Harper seemed to calm down at the mention of information being volunteered,

"I would ask what the price is of course, then I would ask for the information. Now why don't you tell me something I want to know before we get started properly..." Harper had a threatening look briefly reveal itself in his features, "How do you know my name?"

I couldn't help but reply calmly despite the cicumstances, "I read it in a book of course."

In response Jack Harper leaned towards me slightly and said just one word, "Bullshit."

"I assume you have tried to run a background check on myself and Sharon by now correct?", both he and Kai Leng nodded, "Well, you know I don't have an identity by now then, I also apparently do not have any form of public record, no Omni-tool, no mass effect or Eezo based technology on my person, and," looking Jack Harper in the eyes, "you also probably checked with the 'Broker by now as well and turned up absolutely nothing correct?"

Kai Leng suddenly caught my attention from the corner of my eye by involuntarily straightening his back in surprise at the very suggestion that the Shadow Broker was unable to find information on someone, and Harper simply sighed and nodded looking much calmer than he did before for some reason, "Yes, you are correct Mr. Stone, now what do you know about this supposed threat then?"

"This potential threat as you call it is very real, and very old, it is the same threat that left that little artifact you saw on Palaven Mr. Harper."

At the mention of Palaven and the monolith he had encountered Jack Harper leaned back in his chair and seemed to be digesting the information I just told him before replying, "So you mean to tell me a threat, potentially thousands if not millions of years old is going to reemerge?"

"Yes, I am, and you were there to see what just one monolith could do, imagine what more of them can do to this galaxy. Now imagine if you will," leaning slightly forward in my chair, "that you have a chance to stop an extinction level event on a galactic scale caused by the creators of those monoliths."

After I had said that last sentence Jack Harper shook his head and smiled wryly as if I had told him a bad joke before saying, "You are insane, there is no way there were more of those things out there other than on Palaven."

I could already tell that my first argument was dead in the water. Thinking quickly I decided to mention something I shouldn't, "So you think that I would lie about something so obviously insane? Okay, see you in about," looking up to the ceiling as if I was in thought, "let's see it is, 2179 you said, correct Kai Leng?"

"Yes I did, what does that have to do with it?"

"Well basically in about four years from now all Hell is going to break loose on a certain Alliance controlled colony in the Traverse, and I will be proved right regardless of what happens here today. Do you really want to throw away even the slightest hint of danger based on the possibility that I am insane?"

Jack Harper sat there for a moment unmoving and utterly silent before asking, "Four years you say? What exactly happens in four years?"

"Nothing much, just a Geth incursion resulting in an attack on a Human colony that found an intact Prothean Beacon at an archeological dig, and… oh yeah, the first HUMAN Spectre is recruited and placed in charge of the Normandy SR-1 to go after a rogue Spectre which I will not name."

With the end of my last sentence Jack Harper's face was still an emotionless mask until what I had said sunk in, and when it did his face then acquired a look of concern which he raised an eyebrow in confusion and disbelief before he asked, "How do you know about the Normandy Project?"

However before I could reply an alarm sounded making all three of us look at each other in various states of surprise and mine was the worst because I knew that I was several years too early for this to be happening, "What the Hell is going on?", I asked while trying to remain calm as I hurriedly got up out of my seat while Jack Harper was attempting to access the security network to get a report.

Then Kai Leng did something I did not expect, he tossed me an old Predator handgun from somewhere on his person making Jack Harper demand, "Kai Leng what are you thinking giving him a gun?!"

"I am thinking sir, that if he is in fact here and willing to work with us he only has one pistol and I can take him down before he can hurt anyone."

"Fine,", looking at the Haptic Interface he had activated he said to Kai Leng, "a security detail on deck 20 found a dead maintenance worker, he was killed by a single gunshot to the back of the head and from the angle it was up close and personal, and…", Jack Harper looked at me when he seemed to think about saying something when he just shook his head and said, "Miss Whitmore is missing, and according to the security detail that found the bodies of the guards I had watching her quarters we have at least two intruders on deck 40 and they probably have her.", Kai Leng looked at Jack Harper and asked what his orders were while I just stood there as time seemed to stop.

"What the Hell do you mean she is missing HARPER!?" I asked with rage slipping through my previously calm if not surprised appearance, to which both Jack Harper and Kai Leng looked at me with an indifferent expression.

Harper blinked once before rising from his chair, and tapping a seemingly random button twice on the Interface floating nearby, in less than a second several ceiling panels slid upward disappearing from view behind neighboring ceiling panels, while a pair of weapon racks holding a variety of weapons I recognized including at least four or five Mattocks, Talon handguns, Hornet submachineguns, and what looked like a pair of Dragoons dropped down from the ceiling on several hydraulic arms while Jack Harper moved over to the rack with the Mattocks throwing the top of his suit's over the chair I had previously occupied before picking up one of the Phalanx pistols and loaded it with an ammo block and in a somewhat rushed manner said, "I mean Mr. Stone, that my organization is under attack by unknown hostiles, and as far as I can tell you and miss Whitmore are the only reason they could be here aside from wanting me dead, and taking our research, as to how they are here, I have no idea other than they have access to resources similar to my organization and a ship with an IES Stealth System, which was supposedly impossible until the Normandy was built or until the IES Stealth System's blueprints were in our hands." then looking at me while switching its safety off while it was folded and placed it on the chair. Almost immediately after placing the Mattock on the chair he grabbed one of the Hornets closest to him and began to load it while he asked Kai Leng, "So you think you can trust him with that gun, why?"

"Well sir, I believe that he is interested in keeping miss Whitmore safe is more important to him than anything else."

Surprised by what Kai Leng said I asked him, "What makes you so sure about that Kai Leng? What is it about me that makes you think you can trust me with it?"

"Honestly," he paused, looking at me before continuing, "I have a 'gut feeling' about it."

After Kai Leng said that Harper cleared his throat to get both Kai Leng's attention and mine before he said "Very well Kai Leng, Mr. Stone."

Harper tossed the now loaded Hornet to me in its collapsed form which I barely caught and held it in both hands after I had placed the Predator in my shirt's breast pocket, looking at it before nodding slightly to Jack Harper before I asked, "So which one of you wants to explain to me where the safety is?" which drew a low groan out of Kai Leng who quickly gave me a brief explanation on how to operate it.

I looked back to Harper as he was pulling the Phalanx off of my chair, and kept it at waist height with both hands after he had tossed a Mattock in its folded state to Kai Leng, before he looked at me, "According to our security network the intruders have landed multiple shuttles with no registry or identification code in the hangar three decks below us meaning they have at least ten to twelve fully armed squads heading up here and to the labs.", and as if to emphasize the point the locked door to the office we were in suddenly flashed green and opened revealing the squad of Cerberus soldiers that had been patiently waiting for Harper's orders.

The Centurion in the lead shouted, "Sir! We need to get you out of here now!", then looking at Kai Leng the Trooper closest to him was silently notifying Kai Leng, "According to Bravo and Delta squads they managed to secure the elevators on this floor, however by now the enemy are probably using the maintenance controls to override them in order to access this level."

"How many intruders are there?" I asked quickly, the Centurion suddenly turned to face Kai Leng who gave him a brief nod to coninue, "We are unable to determine how many there are onboard the station however we know for certain there are at least twenty of them heading up here right now and, wait one.", holding his left hand up to his helmet and touching part of it near where their left ear would be, "according to Bravo Squad the enemy has breached this floor at maintenance door fifteen and are proceeding along the corridor, it appears that they are attempting to push up the corridor to access the Vault on this level sir, and-" the Centurion held his hand up to his helmet once more, "the enemy is dividing up into two groups, one appears to be coming for you sir and the other is continuing through to the Vault, we should get you off of the station immediately."

The Centurion moved towards Jack Harper as if he was expecting him to get behind him while Jack Harper looked down the hallway. Instead he turned to the Centurion sharply before looking at me for a few seconds before saying, "No, you and your men are moving to meet them head-on at the security post just down the hall, Kai Leng take the utility tunnels and cut off their access to the hangars by any means necessary, Lieutenant have one of your men get demo-charges from the armory on this floor and use them to restrict access to this side of the station so they have to come to you, once they are dealt with head to Vault 37 and make sure the enemy can't get inside, Mr. Stone I want you to follow me through the labs to Vault 1.", not seeing that I had a choice in the matter because in order for me to help Sharon I needed to live through this first, and I needed help in order to even begin to think about helping Shepard let alone the galaxy to prepare for the arrival of the Reapers, with that simple conclusion I nodded slightly before following Jack Harper down the corridor and into what I knew was going to be the worst day of my life in this reality, or at least until the events of Mass Effect were supposed to occur anyway.

The hallway was still clear when we reached the security post; upon reaching it the five soldiers Harper had ordered to secure it moved inside the security station's office control room and activated several turrets that were located along the routes the enemy was currently taking which were successful in their task up to a point. It also gave us Jack Harper, Kai Leng, and I our first look at the enemy. Soldiers wearing black armor that almost immediately reminded me of the Alliance soldiers wore in Mass Effect 3 with what looked like modified helmets similar to a Death Mask helmet and Kahne Hadar chest plates, there were at least five of them moving in a line at the head of the group heading towards Harper's office equipped with Omni-shields, and what looked like a trio of N7 Slayers moving behind them along with a look-alike for a Cerberus combat engineer except they were carrying what looked like a carrying case of some kind on their back instead of a VI controlled turret. Looking at another screen I saw a group with almost the same kind of load-out except instead of "Guardians" in front they had regular soldiers, and instead of a trio of Slayers there were engineers and two of them were carrying what looked like laptops with heavy armor plating on the sides in their left hands, and then I saw them, a group of three at the back of the group heading to the "Vault" another Slayer look-alike without a helmet revealing a woman with black hair with side-bangs that went down to about an inch below their jawline while the rest of her hair slanted upwards slowly tapering off to an even cut where their neck and skull met, noting the sword she was wearing was based on the design of the ninjato similar to what Kai Leng was wearing except it was made from a dark grey material that looked almost black and there was a rifle of some kind occupying a space on her back that I couldn't identify off-hand. Then there was the pair of soldiers next to her, one was wearing armor which reminded me of the Adept off of Mass Effect 3's multiplayer and was holding a black colored Vindicator and then there was the soldier in-between the Slayer and the Adept look-alikes, they were wearing what resembled a cross between a Dragoon's armor, and was wearing what looked like an Aegis helmet, and what drew the most attention were the obvious modifications to the chest area in the form of additional armor plating, bulkier armor on the limbs, and the back of their armor had some kind of armored pack that had been extended up behind their neck and hooked onto the shoulders with armor plates covering the spaces between the neck and shoulders, thin faintly glowing blue lines stretching down from the pack across the chest, down the arms and the rest of the armor as well occasionally weaving beneath armor plating apparently added to cover the exposed joints, yet despite the added weight it did not appear to hinder them in any way, looking at their armor for some reason made me think "A Mass Effect based system of some sort possibly?".

The only things all of the soldiers we had seen on the security consoles had in common were the black armor, all of the troops with assault rifles were equipped with what looked like Avenger assault rifles, the Guardians/Paladins were equipped with what looked like modified Locusts so they could be fired with one hand by using what looked like a stock that was about six inches long and actually had part of it curve up and was able to be connected to the armor plating on their forearms, and the engineers appeared to have Carnifex pistols. The last thing they all had in common was a lack of regard for prisoners and those who questioned orders; they had failed to take a single person captive when they surrendered.

We had were about to leave when one of the Cerberus soldiers turned the audio on for the console showing the group heading for the Vault on this floor when the group suddenly stopped on the screen when a pair of doors to the right of the enemy soldiers opened revealing a group of men and women in lab-coats who suddenly cried out when all of the soldiers turned in almost perfect unison with weapons raised to face the scientists who all had their hands raised above their heads expecting to be taken prisoner when the soldier in the Dragoon-like armor raised his hand but didn't say anything when one of the lead soldiers in a cold emotionless tone said, "Acknowledged, no prisoners.", I had already told the trooper who had turned on the audio to shut it off but it was too late, all eight of us standing in the security station heard the pwit-pwit-pwit of the discharge of Avengers and the screams that followed, I was horrified not because they did it in the first place, or the fact they killed them in cold-blood but because of the thought that crossed my mind when I saw it happen, "What if they did this to Sharon? I promised I would be here with her, I promised I would help her get home, God no. NO!"

I was turning to Harper and when I saw his face, he had obviously been thinking to himself as well, however his face was not one of horror, it was an image of pure rage, rage and bloody vengeance. I could have said something but then I heard it over the speakers in the security post, "Sir did we have to execute them? Intelligence suggests that almost all of the scientists here are…", looking back to the screen I saw the Slayer look-alike was speaking to the soldier that was in the modified Dragoon armor and the way that this person looked at her made my blood turn to ice, I couldn't see his face through the helmet but I could almost feel a silent menace to his gaze and I saw her visibly back up a step before she was slammed heavily into the wall behind her without him so much as moving his arm or the blue aura of active biotics, the only things we all had seen was his left hand twitch as if he was slapping something, a visible dent in the metal plating that made up the wall, the Slayer's unmoving form on the floor at the base of the opposite wall and what looked like several pieces from her sword were laying on the floor. Then we heard a hissing voice that was coming from the helmet the supposed Dragoon was wearing which was obviously human as it had been electronically distorted in the same manner as Cerberus troops had theirs, "Soldiers this is the way one who questions our orders die.", the figure had said and then they drew their pistol, a black colored pistol with what looked like a long barrel attached to it which I instantly recognized.

"They are Alliance or were Alliance because that is an M-11 Suppressor handgun." I said with horror slipping into my voice as I realized what was happening while I commented to Harper and Kai Leng which I could see from the corner of my eye, was looking at me in curiosity tinged with something like surprise before we heard the muffled twunt-twunt and we saw blood spray from a pair of holes that suddenly appeared in her chest where her sternum was and she slowly slid to her right and stopped on the floor laying on her shoulder.

"This has to be a black-op." looking over to my right I realized it was Harper who had made the comment.

I asked Harper, "The Systems Alliance?"

"Possibly Mr. Stone, however if it was, they wouldn't have stopped with just a few shuttles and black ops personnel…" before he could finish the rest of his sentence there was movement on the screen catching all of our attention, and the group was moving again towards their objective, and we saw the woman on the floor start to stir slightly as she reached to her suit's combat belt and pulled something from it and with the same hand made a brief motion with her fingers and then made a circular motion on her chest.

"Sir, I think she is using medi-gel on those chest wounds." one of the troopers in the security post commented.

I turned to Harper and said, "If we want to know who sent them our best source of information is right there bleeding out."

"Right, Mr. Stone you are with me, everyone else do as I ordered." Harper had said with an authority that carried like a hammer fell.

Just as I had started to leave the security room I felt a hand on my shoulder and I turned to see an arm covered with a long white sleeve and that told me exactly who it was, "What do you want," thinking for less than a second I added politely, "sir?"

"No need to do that yet Mr. Stone, I opened that storage locker because I know enough about you already to realize you don't have an Omni-tool," Harper then held out a pair of gloves with a disc integrated into the palms along with what appeared to be wiring extending from them to the end of each finger and thumb before he collected his Phalanx off of a nearby shelf above a set of lockers anchored to the wall with a series of empty weapon racks above them, "I am also assuming you don't know how to use it so I will tell you how to operate it on the way to that woman."

Llooking up from the gloves he had handed me I realized just what this meant, he was trusting me with an Omni-tool, a small handheld computer that could cripple this entire station if I had the know-how and the right programs. "Thank you." then pausing for a moment considering what I should do with the Omni-tool "Can you show me how to add offensive applications and give me a crash course on how to use this?" indicating the newest 'weapon' in my arsenal with a simple heft of the glove-like Omni-tool before I added, "Don't worry about explaining the civilian apps yet I can always ask someone about them later, because right now I am more worried about how to use this with relative effectiveness in combat here and now." then realizing I had one more minor problem, "What should I be calling you when I am in the presence of other members of Cerberus anyway? The Illusive Man, T.I.M., Sir, your last name with Mr. in front of it?"

"We will discuss that, and to what extent your involvement with our organization will be later, for right now however, we are going to go get a little intel." by the way he was acting and how he indicated the security console showing the somewhat motionless black-clad woman. I could take a guess as to what he had in mind.

I nodded my head slowly before quoting an old saying, "'The enemy of my enemy is my friend.' Correct, Sir?" I said with my best attempt at humor for the situation.

Harper replied, "In this case," he then looked back to the console before continuing, "it is more on the lines of everything has a price, and her life is worth its weight in gold to us, or to be more accurate a little information about who sent her."

We were moving down the hallway away from the security post towards one of the labs on this level which according to Harper had an access to a maintenance corridor that would lead to another lab which once we entered it would give us access to a section the enemy had 'cleared' meaning we were walking into the aftermath of their assault. I was not looking forward to it at all for two reasons, first there would be a lot of dead people, and second I was afraid of whether or not Sharon was going to be among them and what I would do after I found her there. Banishing the thoughts from my mind I immediately tried to think of something to focus on other my own fears, and I found that when I thought of our short term goal, get to the wounded woman halfway across a massive station that could withstand a relatively large Alliance fleet bombarding the Hell out of it.

We thankfully reached the lab quickly enough that I did not have the time to think further on my fears, Harper was explaining what he was expecting to find inside, prototype armor, Omni-tools, some weapons undergoing modifications for research purposes, and so on. Why he decided to mention the full extent of what was being researched in this particular lab was beyond my understanding. Once we were in front of the door Harper activated his Omni-tool and started to manipulate it to unlock the door which had the orange colored lock indicating it needed to be bypassed in order for us to access the lab beyond it. As Harper was attempting to unlock the door he was giving me a crash course in operating an Omni-tool which allowed me to select a pair of combat applications I felt I needed, Overload and Incinerate along with probably the most useful in this case, an Omni-blade melee application, I felt it would be useful not because of my being a fan of the series or wanting to get up close and personal but because I knew that at some point I would be forced into a situation that would require a quiet takedown, or I might get into a situation where grabbing an opponent and slamming them down on my side of whatever cover they had been using would be useful for taking out an opponent like a soldier that hadn't been paying attention. Once he had the door open I could see inside and what I saw was something out of my own little science-fiction wish-list, Cerberus Shade armor, refits for part of an Atlas mech sitting in a large bay that took up almost a quarter of the lab which had what appeared to be a cargo lift on the opposite side of the room, and another shorter and far more sleek looking mech was sitting in the back of the room locked into a collection of arms and power conduits while painted in a literal patchwork of white and grey digital camouflage with the same orange material as an Atlas being used for the cockpit cover but instead of the rounded cockpit cover the Atlas had this mech had an almost triangular cockpit cover that latched into the edges of its 'torso' with a near transparent coating of the same camouflage over its familiar orange canopy, the mech was about a meter or so shorter than an Atlas at my best guess while maintaining a leg structure that was similar to its supposed predecessor which I could guess was difficult seeing as how the "waist" was partially hidden beneath where the pilot would be, standing at about two and a half meters high and all of its armor was slanted for armor thickness that would place it at around what you would expect from early World War II tanks ranging from 20mm (about 0.787 inches) at my best guess to around an inch and a half covering the joints, its arms actually had hands and not claws mounted above the guns on the lower arms and what looked like two clusters of box-like containers with sixteen hexagonal plates which extended from the shoulders and ending somewhere behind the cockpit between a pair of stubby wings, looking over to a console next to it I saw vital statistics such as mass, systems, armor thickness, fuel economy, and weapons just to name a few. Looking at the top of the console I saw the name Project Griffon, XTJ-02 Valkyrie class mechanized infantry support unit (or MISU), reading further I saw the list of weapons, 2 modified CM-33 anti-fighter mass accelerator auto-cannons, 2 Hell-Fury micro-missile pods (16 missile payload for each pod), and 2 EX-07 Disruptor Cannons.

"Disruptor cannons?" I said aloud while looking at the currently inactive mech standing in front of me and thinking "I wonder if they are similar to the Phase Disruptor Cerberus Phantoms and N7 Slayers use?", but before I could ponder further I was called over to one of the tables by Harper and on it was a suit of what looked like Cerberus Shade armor but it had an armor plated vest on the chest as well as a straight edged sword that resembled a katana sitting next to it on a small table with what looked like scanners moving over it in an attempt to find flaws according to the images and a statement below the collection of images was an order simply stating that it was to look for indications of stress fractures from a test performed earlier at 08:48 according to the time stamp next to it, and below the main image was a name and I found myself reading aloud out of interest, "Mono-molecular Service Blade - ninjato model 3-Var. 2A", "A ninjato? I think I saw one of these in the antique collection Sharon's father owns." reading further I read overall weight 3kg, blade length 76.2 cm (30 inches), research notes: The edge of the blade is modified to carry electrical currents from a capacitor in handle and base of the blade via ultra-conductive materials interwoven into the blade's edge, which can also be used to divert electrical discharge from Overload and Neural Shock Omni-tool combat applications in place of battery usage, additional variants include an Eezo based compound introduced into the blade's edge during the forging process which once an electrical current or discharge is introduced to the blade the compound can reproduce the effects of a Biotic Warp attack on contact increasing anti-armor capability by roughly 80% in combat situatons. Supplemental note: The materials currently used in Mono-molecular Service Blade construction to date have proven brittle and in many cases have shattered easily under combat conditions including gunshots and contact from another sword. This model, (3-Var. 2A) uses a new alloy blend roughly equivalent to the titanium alloy blend used for Alliance armor plating onboard their newer ships, this variant however uses a high density ceramic blend of equal strength which is nearly half the original weight of the Titanium alloy used in the original Katana model 3's design."

I looked once more to Harper and I couldn't help but ask, "So what did you want to show me anyway?"

"Nothing, put it on." I was surprised beyond belief, yes I realized I didn't have any sort of protection from guns at the moment however the last thing I had expected was to be ordered by Harper to put on some apparently random armor, looking at the Shade armor laying on the table in a manner of surprise and confusion I then returned my attention back to Harper who was in the process of putting what appeared to be a flak vest of some kind over his white dress shirt. Before I knew it I heard him say, "If you have information as important as you say you do, put it on, now."

Shaking my head I replied, "Right sorry."

"Don't be, just get it on, I am going to make sure the next lab is clear, in the mean-time however see if you can find anything you can use in here."

I noticed he was looking squarely at the small arms, and other 'light' equipment which told me he was hoping for me to pick equipment that I didn't need training to use. Looking to him once more as he left I said in a very cheery voice, "Oh don't worry I think I can manage to scrounge something up.", the tone I had made him stop and look at me with a worried look on his face before he continued to the other end of the lab to start opening another set of doors which were made out of a thick glass with the same grey metal used in the frame as was the rest of the station, looking back to the Shade armor I took my time taking it apart, before I could actually put it on I had to remove my personal items such as my wallet and keys, thankfully finding places in the armor's combat belt to place them, when I withdrew the plain silver cross Sharon had given me for my twenty-fourth birthday from around my neck, I hesitantly put it in one of the pouches in back of my armor's combat belt slowly and held my hand on the outside of the compartment for a moment, I found myself wishing I knew what happened to her. After about five minutes I found myself thanking the designer of the Shade armor because it had been far too easy to put on, and the only thing left on the table aside from the helmet was the coat-like outer layer which once I slipped over the sleeves of the suit I felt a tingling sensation and my hair stood on end as I could feel it adhere itself in place with magnetic seals, and electrostatic discharges, grabbing the helmet and placing it over my head I could see the Heads-Up-Display (HUD) flicker to life as I heard the hiss as the suit became pressurized. Suddenly I was prompted by the helmet's HUD to perform a series of body movements which as I did them I could feel the suit begin to shift and seemingly accommodate itself to my body structure and build, then it prompted me to raise the hand I wanted to use for my Omni-tool, I honestly couldn't decide which one I wanted so I decided to raise my left hand, and suddenly there it was the same bright orange glow of an active Omni-tool. Looking through the loaded applications I was bombarded with a stunningly large list of loaded applications as well as a set-up request for the installation of a Mass Effect Field Generator which surprised me, looking at the table I hadn't seen anything then I looked around and saw a simple disc which matched the image provided by the Omni-tools prompt, inserting it into a slot indicated in the installation manual, the suit suddenly felt lighter and on a whim I jumped slightly and did a twist in mid-air which left me land lightly on a table behind me which made me laugh lightly because I had never been able to jump very high so I avoided playing basketball and now I could probably do a slam-dunk. Looking ahead I realized I was standing just in front of the sword I had seen earlier, spinning slightly to catch hold of the handle with my left hand I was surprised when the Omni-tool brought up another display on my HUD and I grinned when it brought up a list of combat apps in the upper left corner of my armor's HUD, and it displayed a list of what it called, 'Default Combat Apps.' I was unsure if that was what I wanted so I switched the sword over to my right hand and I focused on the list of Combat Apps., Phase Disruptor, Cloak, Overload, and surprisingly enough my right hand gave me another indicator on my HUD telling me that I had an Omni-blade app loaded which was currently disabled until I told it otherwise, a deep blue indicator bar flashed into existence across the bottom of my HUD and another indicator bar had made itself known on the left of my display, it simply stated 'Capacitor Charge' with a small icon resembling the sword I had picked up and a bar that was slowly filling itself and stopped at about halfway which told me someone had left the sword in a hurry while they were in the lab, probably once the fighting had started.

Picking up my Hornet SMG and Predator pistol from the table I placed the ninjato on the open magnetic slot on my left shoulder, I had placed the Predator in the area normally reserved for shotguns in such a way so that the handle was on my left side, and my Hornet SMG was being held in my right hand. Looking ahead to the door that Harper had opened while I was getting ready I noticed a crate off to my left that was a very familiar red and white, grinning I walked over and pressed a button that was visible on the side allowing me to open the lid after a brief struggle revealing cylindrical objects that made me grin even wider, frag grenades, grabbing two which I placed on my armor's combat belt on the left side. I then proceeded through the open door and saw a lab that was filled with what looked like something out of a gun enthusiast's dreams, walls filled with weapons from all over the galaxy as far as I could tell, N7 weapons, Cerberus made Talons, Eviscerators, Mattock rifles, Harriers, Hornets, Dragoons, and many other weapons I didn't recognize were on shelves, mounted on walls, laying disassembled on tables, along the far wall was a firing range extending from the far right wall to about halfway across the room ending in a large one foot thick wall of glass, with very visible armor plating lining the end of the firing range with the targets.

Looking around the room I saw Harper opening another door with his Omni-tool and I saw the sign mounted on the wall next to it, it read, "Xenoarcheology Vault 1 Division Alpha", overcome with curiosity I walked over to Harper slowly and asked, "What's in there, Prothean artifacts or something?"

Harper just kept staring at his Omni-tool for a few seconds before he answered, "Actually yes there are a few inside, this is one of the xenoarcheology divisions on this station that are currently studying the contents of the Vaults on this station." he looked like he was going to say something else before the door's lock indicator flashed from a deep orange color with red outlines to a completely green icon which rotated in a counter-clockwise fashion before it disappeared opening up to a large dark room, before I could ask what was inside the lights slowly began to flicker to life revealing something which I could hardly believe was onboard Chronos Station.

Prothean artifacts ranging from Particle rifles in various states of disrepair or disassembly laying on tables or on shelves to an obviously defunct Prothean Beacon, armor from long dead civilizations which I didn't recognize, and finally what had caught my attention, a single dark grey metal pillar with faintly glowing yellow lines spreading out from the base all the way to the top of it, the pillar in question was maybe a half-meter wide and was almost two meters tall and was very angular as if it was made to resemble a crystal that was rhomboid in shape (diamond shaped similar) if you looked down from the top of it towards its base. All of these awaited us and when the lights in the lab slowly flickered to life in the formerly dark room they greeted us in the splendor of lost knowledge that could have remained undiscovered without the diligent work of whomever Harper had hired, or paid to bring them here by any means necessary. Looking at the pillar in the center of the room, I asked Harper a question that was bothering me ever since I had heard him say The Vault or Vaults, "How many of these Vaults are there?"

"Currently there are a total of 37 including Vault 1 which is located on this level and is split between this floor and the floor beneath us."

When I heard this I felt my eyes widen in surprise before I asked yet another question but this one seemingly appeared from nowhere, "What is that pillar anyway?", Harper looked at the dark grey pillar, after which its faintly glowing yellow lines began to glow a little brighter at the attention, and he hesitantly took a step towards it but quickly took a step back to put distance back between him and it, which caused me to look at him with a note of concern when he suddenly held his left hand up to his forehead and was holding it as if he had an extremely bad headache. I watched him move his lips as if he was saying something before I heard him utter, "Assuming direct control.", and in response I held up my Hornet and aimed it in his direction but not at him, and kept a non-threatening posture as he slowly straightened himself to a completely straight posture and looked at the pillar before he said, "Human, you will destroy that object.", I was absolutely confused and I didn't move from my spot because of it. Suddenly I had Harper's Phalanx pointed at my head and I heard Harper/Harbringer command me yet again, "Destroy that object now Human, or I shall destroy you.", I was tempted to tell him to crawl deep into Dark Space and die but something told me not to, looking at him I realized something, he couldn't destroy whatever that pillar was and he expected me to be able to. I couldn't help myself and I started to chuckle, which earned a response from Harbringer, "What do you find so amusing Human? Do you not fear death?"

I had to stop myself from replying now though, "You know Harbringer for an ancient, and rusty, old bucket of bolts and rotting flesh you sure have problems fighting your own battles." I had said while I was trying to catch my breath because my chuckling had devolved into full-blown laughter at its expense. The look I was getting from Harbringer looked as if I should be dead twice over but hey I could live with it because apparently he needed me to destroy whatever that artifact was, looking at Harper/Harbringer once more I noticed that the Phalanx in his hand was shaking slightly and I thought to myself, "So Harper is still in there and fighting, good to know I am not alone in this fight then.", regaining my composure from my laughing fit I finally addressed Harbringer once more. "Harbringer, you realize you should just shoot me, but you don't know how to shut that down by yourself do you? That tells me all kinds of things about that little artifact over there, one of those little facts is that you are actually afraid of it."

"Fear is irrelevant, it is a survival mechanism found in organics due to evolutionary processes, you will destroy it."

"No. I won't, in fact I think I am going to test a theory with that little piece of galactic history.", Harbringer was visibly trying to maintain their aim with the Phalanx pistol however while Harper was fighting what I could only assume was a losing battle as the gun was slowly regaining stability, thinking quickly I placed my Hornet on my right thigh and made myself appear to be folding my hands behind my back while I was using my helmet's HUD to modify my Omni-tool via voice command to activate silently and prepared an Overload while I was making myself appear to be straightening myself as if I was preparing myself to meet my fate, Harbringer kept his pawn's face straight, and took careful aim with the Phalanx but I saw what I was hoping for Harper put it all on the line for one last push and pulled his finger away from the trigger giving me the opening I was hoping for. Less than a second after Harper took that small victory away from Harbringer I threw my left arm in front of me hand open and released the built up charge from the Omni-tool and thankfully hit the Phalanx, which I was hoping to do, which caused Harper's hand to convulse and the Phalanx suddenly emitted sparks and began to vent, which was pure luck on my part and I ran forward with my right arm extended. Hooking Harbinger/Harper underneath their arms, I pushed him towards the artifact and the palely glowing yellow lines that were barely giving off light before suddenly lit up as if they were holding back a miniature sun in its depths and the closer Harbringer/Harper got to it the more frenzied they became trying to get away from my insane tackle, when the two of us had gotten within five meters of the pillar Harper's body suddenly went rigid and looking up I saw his cybernetic eyes flicker briefly. Then I heard Harper's bloodcurdling scream, stopping short of the pillar I watched as his hands went to his eyes and suddenly he collapsed, setting him down carefully I heard a voice in my head.

"Such an abomination must not be allowed to exist."

I had my brief moments of insanity before like most people but this was far different than the occasional wish to go sky-diving or try eating some raw ghost peppers, seeds and all. The voice was feminine, and immediately gave me the mental image of this one woman I had met in a pub I frequented while I was waiting for Sharon and her friends who wanted to grab some of the fish and chips the pub was famous for before we spent the night out in York for Sharon's twenty-second birthday, the voice was as I said feminine, soothing, had a lilting tone to it, and yet briefly reminded me of EDI's voice even though this one was more of a Soprano.

"Who the Hell are you, get out of my head...", was all I managed to utter before I heard something drop in front of me from the direction of the pillar, it was a small piece of dark grey metal about the size of my palm that had an almost gold colored crystalline material visible from where it extended from beneath its surface and then I heard the voice again but it was much clearer and hand a commanding tone to it.

"Who I am is none of your concern for now, I have severed the connection the 'Abomination' had created, pick up the Key Young One"

I couldn't control my own actions as I picked up the 'Key' as the voice had told me to, but before I could regain control of myself I heard the voice again, "Young One, gather the poor soul and continue on your way, the Key is your salvation from destruction, for I have watched countless other races fall before the Dark Tide from the shadows I inhabit. I assisted the previous civilizations before your's with the Device, what you know as the Crucible I know as your Salvation, use the Key, finish the weapon, fulfill what you believe to be Fate.",

I gave up on trying to physically talk to the voice verbally because it seemed to ignore me so I tried something a little different and thought of my reply solely in my mind. "What have you done to Harper?"

"Ah, you have learned already that I do not care for such simple and clumsy means of communication. I have severed the line of communication between him and what you know as the abomination called Harbringer."

"Yes but what did you do to him?"

"I have fixed him."

"That does not answer my question."

"You young beings are never satisfied with the simple answers, just be satisfied with the knowledge that his cybernetics were unharmed as was he, for he is only temporarily unaware."

"Unaware, do you mean that he is just unconscious?"

":sigh: Yes he is only unconscious, your lines of inquiry bore me, I must terminate this communication for time grows short, we shall speak later at a time of my choosing, keep the Key with you or in a truly safe place, do not allow anyone or anything other than this Commander Shepard, yourself, or myself near the Key, Young One."

"My name is Ian Stone not Young One what is yours'?"

"Again you ask for a title that I do not have, you may call me Oracle if you must have a title to call me by.", with the end of the last statement this "Oracle" gave me a name to call it by, and the conversation told me many things about "her" if indeed it was female, I had the impression that she was more of an it with a female persona. I realized I was on the floor with my eyes closed, looking around I saw Harper on the floor who was slowly getting up looking at his Omni-tool and asked what happened and about a second later why he felt like he was hit by a charging Krogan.

I helped Harper get up and quickly explained what happened while I was attempting to drag him towards the locked door on the opposite side of the xenoarcheology lab. I had already placed the "Key" in the pouch with the silver cross Sharon had given me and thought to myself, "Hang in there Sherry, just please hold on a little longer.", realizing I hadn't asked Harper how he was doing I quickly did so as politely as possible and he just gave a curt response of, "I'm fine let's just get to that woman now!"

"No need to get snippy, after all I have almost no combat experience."

"What do you mean by that Mr. Stone?", he had asked with a hint of curiosity while he finished unlocking the door.

I stood there for a moment before I replied, "I mean, I have not fought anyone with the intention to kill, Harper."

Harper stood there for a moment before he simply raised his Phalanx before looking at it and tossed it before asking for my Predator pistol which I quickly handed over and set up my armor's Phase Disruptor for quick use and reviewed the firing procedure which was surprisingly just as simple as holding my arm straight with my hand splayed open, hold my palm so that the emitter was pointed where I wanted it and flex my fingers outwards slightly in order to fire. Looking ahead towards an intersection I recognized from the security feed we had watched earlier, and I saw a trail of blood that started as if someone had been dragged and then it slowly turned into a trail of blood-drops down the hall as if… realizing what I was looking at I quietly said, "Hey,", while tapping Harper on the shoulder to get his attention before pointing silently to the blood trail before I quietly said, "since I am the only one with full armor I will follow that, you stay back and wait for a bit before following me.", silently Harper nodded and raised my Predator up to chest height while I walked slowly trying to keep my weight spread evenly across my feet so the soles of the boots my armor had would muffle my footsteps because of the soft rubberized coating I had noticed they had.

I had followed the trail of blood drops from the wall where the Slayer look-alike had been laying at the base of the wall down the hallway towards a room with an insignia I recognized almost immediately, a red cross. Holding my Omni-tool up to the door, I couldn't help but think that she had apparently made her way to the med-bay, without dying surprised me considering she was shot at a range close enough to have bypassed her armor's kinetic barrier judging from the lack of the telltale 'sparks' that would have appeared from a direct hit on her armor's kinetic barrier and that we had better hurry. Forgetting the need for stealth at this point I gave a light jog towards the door to the med-bay which still had a green light indicating it was unlocked, and slowed to a walking pace and stopped at the edge of the doorway and moved over to the other side so I could use my left hand to open the door while holding the Hornet up by my chest in order to cover my entrance through the door in the event that some of this woman's 'friends' had decided to come back and make sure she was dead, or in the event she wanted to kill anyone who found her out of principle.

Opening the door was easy, looking into the room was easy, but convincing the black-haired and armored woman holding a black M-55 Argus about an inch from my face to lower it was obviously not going to be. I could only just stand there with my Hornet raised at chest level with both of my hands now holding onto it for added stability and I was looking down the barrel of her rifle with neither of us saying or doing anything. The silence continued for a moment before Harper showed up and he slowed down when he saw the Argus pointed at my head, he was taking a position near the doorway to try getting the drop on the person holding the gun when I took my right hand away from the trigger of my Hornet and held it up while slowly moving the Hornet down to my right thigh with my left hand and the Argus mercifully pulled back from my face. I then realized it wasn't because the pale beauty holding the rifle was feeling charitable but because she was starting to fall backwards which I then ran forward and caught her and in the process I discovered she was bleeding from a hole in her back just to the left of her spine. Signaling Harper over to me I told him about her gunshot wound and he almost immediately told me it was going to take a miracle to save her at this point, and I replied with a statement which told him that if any more lives were saved because she lived long enough to tell us who sent her and where they came from that would be a miracle in of itself.

It took Harper a few minutes to stop the bleeding using the equipment in the med-bay but our new intelligence asset had said when she had briefly regained consciousness. She wanted what amounted to asylum from the organization that attacked us. We then found out she was in fact an N7 Slayer that was reassigned from naval operations and assignments to an Alliance funded watchdog group loosely affiliated with several anti-piracy organizations, which brought her to the attention of a supposed Black Ops group that was referred to as Hecate, in reference to a Greek goddess usually associated with magic, amongst other things. She also told us the approximate location of one of the Hecate operated frigates that had brought them here. After which Harper quickly accessed the communications network to send a message via QEC to Minuteman Station ordering a taskforce to intercept and capture the frigate, and another one to bring additional reinforcements to assist in retaking Chronos Station, and I wasn't surprised when Olegg Petrovsky had answered that call and notified Harper that they would be here in about an hour because Minuteman Station itself was apparently attacked and that the Cerberus forces there successfully repelled the forces sent to attack it.

Elaina had requested a sedative while she "rested for a short time" as she had called it Looking at the now unconscious form of the black-haired woman who called herself Elaina Duran I asked Harper, "What are you going to do with her anyway?"

"I am unsure, for now, Mr. Stone," turning to look at him I was surprised to see him looking at me in an apologetic way before he continued, "also I apologize for…"

I was shocked,"Jack Harper, apologizing? Did Hell freeze over or what? I think I better stop him before he ruins the image of The Illusive Man, a cold-hearted bastard.", quickly raising my left hand to cut him off I said, "No need, now you know exactly what is coming for us and that is by far more important to everyone's survival. Right now however," withdrawing "The Key" from my armor's combat belt and began to flip it around between my hands I continued, "I just want to know who this 'Oracle' is and what this", I held up 'The Key' in my left hand as I spoke, "actually does, because she and this," indicating the "Key" once more before continuing, "are connected, obviously. I also am inclined to believe she may be older than the Reapers because she said she was supposed to 'archive' this galaxy and that she had been watching 'the Dark Tide' as if she had been watching it from the beginning, whatever that means is up for debate however."

"That is something I want to find out as well Mr. Stone," he looked like he was going to continue before he started looking at the door while bringing his Predator handgun up to chest height while raising his left hand in a halting gesture before continuing, "I think we are about to have company, get to cover now!"

His order came just in time as the door to the med-bay opened revealing a pair of Hecate Troopers who fired their Avengers at where we were standing and missed us by a few inches while we dived behind a nearby desk. Drawing my Hornet I quickly assessed our options as I was sure Harper was as well, I readied my Omni-tool for a chance to use an Overload but I suddenly had a thought, the med-bay had only a pair of small tables aside from the desks Harper and I were taking cover behind and then I had an insane idea after I saw the lights above us, it was just simple strip lighting. Grinning beneath my helmet I tapped Harper's shoulder, catching his attention I said one word, "Lights."

Harper gave me a confused look before widening his eyes in understanding then he gave a quick nod before using his Omni-tool to remotely access the electrical grid that the med-bay we were in was connected to, once he was finished he said, "Ready."

"Okay," I said quietly before counting aloud, but keeping it low enough for just Harper and myself to hear my counting, "Three, Two, One, Now!", and as soon as I said "Now" I placed my Hornet on my right thigh and drew my sword with my left hand, and vocally activated my armor's cloak at the same moment the lights went out in the entire med-bay leaving the two Troopers standing in the outline of the well-lit doorway quickly realizing the danger the darkness posed they backpedaled into the hallway and took up positions on either side of the door. They never heard me coming as I ran towards them and once they saw the shimmer of my cloak re-adjusting to the rapidly changing light levels it was too late for them to stop me from beheading the Trooper on my left with a hard slash from across my chest, following through with the strike I made with my ninjato I spun around to face the last Trooper with my sword continuing through the doorframe's edge and out the edge of the door of the med-bay itself. The sight of a sword doing that must have caused the other Trooper to panic because he tried to run and I didn't give him the chance as I brought up my Hornet and fired repeatedly watching the triple round bursts impact their kinetic barrier before it failed completely and holes leaking red suddenly blossomed from their back up to the top of their helmet before they fell forward onto the floor. As I stood there in the hallway looking for more enemy soldiers I was hit with the realization that I had just killed two people, looking into the med-bay as the lights came back on.

Harper must have noticed the way I was acting because he asked solemnly, "Are you alright Mr. Stone?"

"No, Harper, I am not alright!", I snapped at him.

However before I knew it I heard the rapid stomping of boots and a cold distorted order or statement, "Contact ahead! Get to cover and engage.", looking behind me and what I saw made me snap out of my shocked state.

There were eight that Hecate Troopers had taken up positions behind the corners of the intersection almost five meters away from the med-bay's door and behind a small security desk in the hall near the far wall. There was a soldier that had taken up a position behind the waist high desk, wearing what looked like a modified version of the armor Elaina was wearing but the helmet was an almost exact replica of what Cerberus Nemesis snipers wore right down to the enlarged lens on the right side of their helmet and then I saw the rifle they were aiming at me, an N7 Valiant, before I knew what happened I felt hands grab me from my left side and pull me into the now re-lit med-bay just in time to see a flurry of mass effect propelled metal shards slice through the area I had been standing.

I had turned expecting to see Harper holding my shoulder but instead I saw Elaina who should have been out cold on one of the operating tables from the sedatives she had requested. "How…? I saw him give you enough sedatives to put a Krogan down." As I was indicating with a nod in his direction Harper who was currently tossing a table onto its side at an angle to provide better cover just about an inch past the edge of the door before he took cover in the doorway and shot out an exposed hydraulic system which according to a brief explanation from him, doing what he did had disabled the mechanisms responsible for closing the door. I then decided to look down to where the wounds on her chest were and I was shocked to find two patches of what looked like scar tissue just above the center of her sternum, looking back up to her face, which now had a faint smile etched on it which I was sure was there because of the shocked expression on my face. "How the Hell are those wounds healed?"

"Medi-gel does wonders." was all that she said in reply.

All I could think was that that was a blatant lie, "Bullshit, Medi-gel is only a bandage and anti-microbial, after this is over you, him," I indicated Harper who according to the scream of pain and someone yelling for a medic, just either injured or killed someone with the pistol I had loaned him, I suddenly thought, "Oh I better make sure to thank Kai Leng for that gun.", I then continued what I was saying before I completely lost my line of thought, "and I are going to have a very LONG chat about what these people are after and EXACTLY how you are up and walking, and no lies involved. Is that understood Elaina?"

The raised eyebrows and slightly sagged shoulders told me the point was made, and the murmured reply of "Yes, sir…" was far less enthusiastic than I was hoping for but I could live with it.

"Good, now, grab your rifle so we can finish what your associates started." when she turned to grab her Argus rifle I quickly added, "Also Elaina, don't blame yourself for what they did."

She turned with a hand visibly tightening on the under-barrel of her Argus rifle and she had a far off look in her eyes for a moment before she snapped back to reality and said, "I could have done something else to stop them from killing those people."

I put my hand on her her shoulder as I started to turn towards the hallway while replying, "Yes, you could have, and you could also have joined those scientists instead of giving us a fighting chance against this Hecate Organization, not to mention you wouldn't have had the chance to live to redeem yourself not only in our eyes but your own.", walking to the hallway I looked briefly into the hallway towards the intersection which was now filled with a line of five Hecate Guardians and the Troopers that were originally there were down to six instead of the eight there had been.

"Alright, let me try something first before we start slaughtering them alright?", I had directed the request towards both Elaina and Harper who were both looking at me uneasily. Increasing the volume on my armor's speakers I said as clearly as I could, "Alright listen up, you are either going to be dead or dying in the next few minutes so do yourselves a favor and surrender."

"Oh, how amusing, a Cerberus DOG wants us to surrender. I tell you what you step out from that room now after killing that insubordinate soldier in there with you and we will kill you quickly.", I listened to that statement and couldn't help but think, "Cerberus dog, huh? Well I guess I have to remind them that Cerberus was a WOLF not a dog."

Taking a moment to take a breath to calm myself I answered, "Cerberus is a wolf not a dog so you might want to reconsider your options because I am not the kind of person to leave survivors as you can see from your cohorts lying in pieces here by the door." after I had said that I heard something like a gurgle of rage or something from one of the Hecate Troopers, turning to Harper I asked him, "By any chance do we have any reinforcements on this floor?"

"At the moment? Just Kai Leng, he messaged me while you were having a chat with her," he indicated Elaina who was now giving him a look that could put a Krogan down faster than Ryncol could probably kill a human at the tone he had used, "that not only are the vaults below us secure, but that the enemy's shuttles below this deck are now disabled and that we have three squads moving to head off the group that was heading to Vault 1."

"What is in Vault 1 anyway?", I asked Harper in a serious tone while giving him a look that told him I was not in the mood for the run-around.

"Honestly Mr. Stone, an artifact similar to the monolith back there other than that it is unimportant at the moment.", he had indicated the door to the xenoarcheology lab with a quick jerking motion with his head.

looking back to Harper I asked, "Just HOW similar?"

"I will put it this way Mr. Stone, that monolith was the first evidence of a civilization older than the Protheans that was still intact and actively producing its own power, there was a second monolith of similar construction which was almost twice as large but its weight was almost half of the original and all scans indicated that it was a single solid mass."

"Okay so long story short, you have a giant alien paperweight that is really big, but these people," indicating the group of black armored soldiers down the hall, "are interested in it anyway?"

"Not quite bec-..."

I really wasn't in the mood for this crap so I interrupted him with a grunt and I said, "Not important he says, I tell him that there is a massive threat to our VERY EXISTENCE and he pretty much calls me insane before all of these alarms go off and he tosses me a gun anyway? Bloody typical." readying my Hornet I walk to the dead trooper about half a meter from the med-bay's entrance. Letting my mind wander I glanced to the dead Hecate Trooper's feet, and picking up one of them I dragged them into the med-bay's interior without exposing myself to the soldiers down the hall and then dragged the other one which was just lying in the doorway itself back into the med-bay, I began to look through their combat belts finding ammo blocks, Medi-gel (according to the package it was Medi-gel anyway and surprisingly enough the label was in English however, beneath the main label it said Nex Gen Incorporated), "NexGen Incorporated? I might need to look into them later and see if I can get this Medi-gel can be traced to this Hecate Organization's main base or something." and finally a one pair of fragmentation grenades on each of their belts, which Harper wanted one of them almost immediately which I obliged wholeheartedly as well as giving the soldiers one of them myself after watching Harper prime one and throw it by pushing down on the cylinder's top and twisting before pressing the button on the side to arm it and about two seconds after it skidded underneath the line of Omni-shield wielding Hecate Guardians the grenade I threw detonated turned after hitting the edge of a soldier's boot and rolled behind the desk before detonating turning the three soldiers behind the security desk into scattered remains, and two of the Guardians fell forward onto the floor lying completely still with massive holes with scorch marks in their backs with one of them impaled by part of what looked like an Avenger's stock. The grenade Harper threw, however it had happened, had bounced off of the ceiling before falling onto the head of the Hecate Sniper that had just popped up to try and shoot at us before detonating in their hand after catching it on reflex what was left of them and the soldiers next to them was little more than a group of scattered and charred remains while what was left of the Sniper was little more than a boot that was poking out from behind the thick metal shelving they had been using for cover.

"I see they at least know how to catch grenades properly.", I had commented to myself while glancing down the hallway noting the now reduced number of soldiers I tapped Harper's shoulder to get his attention again, "How far to Vault 1 anyway?"

Harper took a moment before answering, "We take a right down this hall continue down it for… three intersections, then we take a left at the fourth intersection, then the second large set of doors on the left, why?"

"Just wondering how much longer we have to run around up here. Well I'm tired of waiting for them to make a move; I am betting they are just here to buy them time to get to the Vault and to access the computer network to use a data-mine anyway." I said directly to Harper who was apparently very creative when it came to swearing when it became appropriate. "By the way Elaina," I was now looking at Elaina before I continued, "how good are you at using that Argus of yours?"

Elaina instead of immediately answering looked at me for a few seconds with that far-away look in her eyes before a slight smile formed on her face before she replied, "Now what would make you ask such a stupid question?", before she pulled her Argus off of her back letting it unfold and leaned to her right slightly in a manner that told me that she was a little too eager to use it.

"I am asking because there are only five soldiers left out there and we need to hurry through that intersection, that and I would rather not give Hecate any more of an advantage over this organization, so by all means shoot away." I said with a resigned manner which caused her to smile and saunter over to the doorway before leaning to fire.

The only sounds in the hallway were the Pwit-it-it of two Hecate Troopers' Avengers, and the Do-ew-ew-ew of Locust SMG's being fired in bursts by the Hecate Guardians answered by the Punt-Punt-Punt of a lone Predator handgun, the Crack-ack-ack of a single Argus rifle, and then there was the rapid triple burst Hirp-irp-irp of my Hornet submachinegun. Each burst from the Argus resulted in the sudden sounds of death coming from the last two Hecate Troopers, and the sounds of impacts on kinetic barriers when the rounds were directed at the Hecate Guardians, and then there were the results of the rounds Harper and I had fired at them. Each round Harper and I had fired had either bounced harmlessly off of the Omni-shields the Guardians were using or in the case of Harper's Predator had been fired at them to little effect before he picked up a fallen Avenger rifle from one of the Troopers I had moved into the med-bay, which he fired in burst before he realized the rounds were passing through the Omni-shield of his chosen target after a brief moment of concentrated fire causing the Omni-shield wielding Guardian, which prompted him to fire in much longer bursts than just a few rounds causing one of the last three Guardians to fall forward with a stomach turning splat as blood was slowly pooling around them, this in turn made the last remaining pair of Guardians begin to fall back with a very slow backpedal before I threw one of my two remaining grenades after being fed up with how little my Hornet was doing against the remaining enemies, which slid behind the farthest Guardian and detonated just behind them causing them to fall forward missing part of their lower right leg and most of their armor had faintly glowing shrapnel from the grenade, however the explosion was close enough for it to catch the Omni-shield of the other Guardian causing it to fail completely as he scrambled behind cover, which caused them to stumble backwards out from behind his cover due to the concussive force that hadn't been stopped by the Omni-shield which in turn caused all three of us to immediately aim for them and almost as one we fired leaving little more than yet another leaking corpse. I walked out from the med-bay with my Hornet raised and began to walk down the hall towards the security desk in the intersection just as Harper and Elaina had started to leave cover as well a faint flicker had caught my eye causing me to step backwards on instinct, narrowly avoiding something that had made a heavy Clanking sound when it hit the floor and left a visible cut mark in the metal plating.

I then watched the faint flicker reappear and a black-clad woman in what appeared to be a modified version of the N7 Shadow armor was slowly revealed as her cloak failed from the act of using her sword, in response I kicked her in the stomach sending her stumbling back causing her sword to come loose from its former resting place in the metal flooring, while buying myself the time to holster my Hornet once more and allowed me the time to draw the sword from my back and take a low guard position as Sharon had called it when she had taught me to fence. I knew it was a stupid thing to do using fencing techniques with a ninjato, I also knew that this ninjato was made from ultra-light materials and had a mono-molecular edge to it making it better suited for combat styles and maneuvers designed for lighter swords such as a sabre. I still knew that it was a mistake because of how the ninjato was designed, although the funny thing about the ninjato, however was even though it was designed for slashing and cutting it was still capable for stabbing if you were careful and the way this Shadow imitation was standing with her longsword after recovering from my kick, her sword didn't have a hilt per-say for some reason, her stance told me she was not the kind of person to just rush in blindly. Slowly she started to move to my right keeping myself between Harper and Elaina because they were armed for ranged combat at the moment.

I followed her with my eyes not moving a muscle just waiting for her next move, and she did something I didn't expect, she took a small step back and I suddenly heard her ask. "You are going to attack sometime soon I hope, I have an entire station full of people I have to get past."

I replied, "You mean you actually give them a fighting chance and not just murder them like your associates?" I had pointed with my right hand over to the left side of the hallway where the open lab door revealed the corpses of the scientists I had seen on the security console near Harper's office.

My comment failed to elicit a response from her other than something that sounded vaguely like, "I am not a murderer."

I just couldn't keep myself in check anymore and said only one last comment, "I think you are because you wouldn't be standing here if you actually meant that, MURDERER.", which prompted her to raise her sword and close in faster than I was expecting while letting out a feral, and incomprehensible howl.

Flicking her sword in a shallow arc she brought it swinging in from my left in a swing that would have taken my head off just above my shoulders, except I brought my sword up to catch it and I stepped under it while pushing upward and out to her left, away from her, which also opened her up for a strike of my own which unfortunately would not be stopped easily, or so I thought. I slashed my sword in a strike that would have cut her across her abdomen except she reacted by kicking me in the head, thanking whoever designed my armor's helmet because the helmet cushioned the blow enough so I only had a slight headache. Instead of movingto my left I allowed the force of the kick to push me back and I quickly turned my stumble backward into a quick retreat placing almost two meters between myself and my opponent who now had her left hand raised and I recognized the glow of a Phase Disruptor, when I realized what she had I in response raised my left hand activating my armor's Phase Disruptor as well noting the draw from a new indicator that appeared below the barrier strength indicator on my helmet's HUD, I smiled in response realizing I had a major advantage over my opponent compared to her own Phase Disruptor which would draw from her kinetic barrier, while mine apparently drew from a separate battery system at least temporarily. We stood like that for about a second before she did a flip placing herself further to my right and fired her Phase Disruptor mid-air which hit my right shoulder causing me to be violently spun slightly to my right which, unfortunately for her, allowed me to use the momentum to aim my Phase Disruptor at her, and I fired hitting her squarely in her chest causing her to stumble backwards and I charged forward with my ninjato performing a slash from my left shoulder to my right aiming for a slash across her shoulders. She had just recovered from the impact of the Phase Disruptor and brought her head up to look at me before she realized what I was doing and in response she had brought her sword up to block my slash, which was successful, but it did what I was hoping for, I brought up my left hand and fired my Phase Disruptor again outside of the protective bubble of her kinetic barrier, causing her barrier to fail and caused her to stumble back again but she bounced roughly off of the wall, I didn't charge in with my sword again however, I just aimed my Phase Disruptor again and fired punching a neat hole about an inch below where her heart should be. She stood there for a moment before she realized what had happened and began to fall to her right and tried to catch herself on the edge of the security desk but only succeeded in missing it by a few inches causing her to fall to the floor roughly.

She was lying on the floor trying to slow the blood loss from the hole in her chest with her hands which was working to an extent. I was standing there above her wondering what I should do when she tried reaching for her helmet with her right hand but was having difficulty with it so I moved her sword off down the hall and I moved my sword out to my right while it was still clutched in my hand with the tip resting gently on the metal flooring out of her reach and knelt down and with my left hand helped her remove it, under that helmet was the face of a woman who looked like she had been through Hell itself because of a haunted look in her brown eyes, her short brown hair was kept at maybe two inches long and she was breathing raggedly, and she had already coughed rather heavily causing blood to run from the hole in her chest a little faster, I realized I should do something to help but I couldn't bring myself to do anything so I placed my ninjato on the floor where she couldn't reach it and with my right hand picked her head up and raised her up and I asked her calmly, "So what did you mean when you said you weren't a murderer?"

'cough, cough' I meant, "I, didn't kill anyone who, had, been unarmed.", I was at least comforted that she hadn't done anything like what the Hecate Troopers had done to the scientists, supposedly.

"You know, I think I want to know your name."

"Why do, you 'wheeze', care?"

I reached for her right hand which was lying at her side and held it in mine trying to provide some comfort to her "I care because before today I have never killed anyone and now that this has happened I have killed seven people with an eighth, a young woman with brown hair and a pair of beautiful hazel eyes, lying here in my arms and myself wishing things hadn't turned out this way.", then realizing she couldn't see my face I let go of her hand and reached up to my helmet and removed it with a faint hissing sound, placing it on the floor to next to my sword I looked at her with saddened eyes, I saw her eyes widen in surprise when my hair had fallen from behind my neck where I had put it temporarily to keep it out of my way when I had put my armor on.

I then heard her ask, "Why is 'cough' your hair so long?"

"I grew it out as a favor for a friend of mine, maybe you have seen her, twenty-two years old, maybe 120 pounds, six feet tall, athletic, fairly quiet, fair complexion, green eyes, long brown hair, and answers to the name of Sharon or Sherry."

"I think I know who you are talking 'cough, cough' about 'cough, cough' she was taken back to one our ships before I arrived according to 'cough' our orders."

"I think I will ask you what your orders were later. Hey what's your name anyway?"

"Cora, my name is 'cough' Cora."

"Do you think you can hold on until we can get you some help?"

"I can try but why do 'cough, cough, cough' you want to help me? I am part of the organization that 'cough' killed those 'cough' people."

I saw her looking at the door to the lab where the dead scientists were, "Did you kill any of them Cora?"

"No. I hadn't 'cough' boarded this 'cough' station yet."

I could see the pained look in her eyes when she had said it as if she held herself responsible, "Then I see no reason why I should care about your past loyalties."

"But why?"

"I also want some information about where my friend is as well, so it makes sense for me to want you to live."

"That's 'cough' a bit shallow."

"No, it isn't shallow, it's just that I promised her just before your associates attacked that I would protect her and get her home safely."

"Get her 'cough, cough' home safely?", this Cora now had a very tired look on her face and I just saw Harper start to walk towards myself and Cora with the large boxy form of a medical kit from the med-bay but I could see the hesitation in his steps when Elaina took it from him carefully and did a slight jog which brought her to us faster than Harper was going to.

I was glad Elaina was willing to help but I could see some of that hesitation in her actions as well but it was more subdued. "Yes, we are both a very long way from home and I want both of us to get there alive and well.", I looked at Elaina briefly before I said, "Cora I am going to leave you here with this nice lady alright?", to which she just nodded slowly in a manner that reminded me of how Sharon acted when she was very tired, "Cora?"

"Hmm, what?"

"Stay awake please Cora, I know you must be tired but trust me it is worth the effort you put into staying awake.", she simply chuckled with a few bouts of light coughing while Elaina was attempting to treat her injuries.

Elaina had just finished applying medi-gel to slow the bleeding before she said, "I need to get her to a professional if you really want her alive."

I looked at Elaina for a moment before I said, "Alright Elaina.", then looking to Harper, "Do you know where the nearest doctor is supposed to be?",

"Assuming that she hasn't been killed yet there is another med-bay down the hallway near Vault 1, however I have to point out if we take her with us she may bleed out faster from being moved, and she will only slow us down."

Then Elaina looked like she was going to protest but instead she said, "As much as I want to disagree with him, he's right all we can do is leave her for whoever is coming here to help you," she paused before looking at Harper then seemed to have a thought before adding, "and him."

"Alright, Cora stay awake because help is coming.", "Sir," I said while looking at Harper before continuing, "how long until reinforcements get here?"

I watched as Harper raised his left arm and activated his Omni-tool and called Kai Leng. Apparently Kai Leng was doing well because the next thing I heard was "Mr. Stone, reinforcements are en-route and Kai Leng has been notified of her condition, also there are shuttles heading to the cargo loading bay on this level so we need to assume they have whatever they came here for."

"Cora, I have to go now, and I am sorry for ruining your armor."

My comment managed to get a soft chuckle from the woman I was holding in my arms however she said, "It's alright, I'll bill you later."

I sat there stunned for a moment before I replied, "Well if you're strong enough to laugh a little and joke around with me you can stay awake a bit longer can't you?"

"Only if I get to listen to a joke of yours later while I'm recovering.", I smiled a little at that comment.

"Alright I will tell you a joke while you're recovering; now I will see you later." I said quietly while I gently lowered her to the floor, getting a slight smile in response. I slowly stood and picked up my helmet and sword before I gestured to Elaina and Harper that it was time to go.

As I started walking down the hallway with Harper and Elaina following close behind I quietly asked Elaina, "You gave her something for the pain, didn't you?"

"Was it that obvious?" she had leaned in to whisper her reply.

"No, actually I just noticed when started acting a bit 'happier'. What did you give her anyway?"

"Morphine…"

I was absolutely shocked, and it showed when I asked, "You gave her morphine?"

"Technically yes, it's actually a chemical compound that has the same effects and basic makeup but it works just as well."

I looked at Elaina with narrowed eyes, "Don't ever give me a painkiller like that because if I am going to be that 'relaxed' about being injured it better be from a toe I hit on some furniture..."

We had been walking for almost a minute before we reached the fourth intersection making the turn to head to the Vault we were seen by a line of Troopers dug in behind a makeshift barricade of tables and a few crates, just now revealing themselves in order to fire. Harper was the first of us to react by diving back behind the corner we had jsut started to turn around, which was on our left, while Elaina pushed me to the right side of intersection before diving after me. I had landed roughly on my shoulder and I heard something pop as well as feeling a sharp pain in my shoulder. Of course what happened next was no picnic either, a certain black haired woman landed on top of my stomach just after I had just rolled over onto my back so I could use my left arm to pick myself up. Looking up I saw black hair and a pale face with green eyes and our eyes locked for a second before I said, "Nice throw, but the landing? I give it a gracious 5/10.", which earned a green colored eye-roll in response as well as a sharp jab in my right side from her left hand, which made me grunt in pain from its proximity to my now sore right shoulder.

Elaina didn't show much concern over it but I could tell she was a little worried, "Hey I didn't hit you that hard, are you hurt?"

I was still feeling pain from my shoulder, which was even worse as she got off of my stomach and had had taken a kneeling position just off to my right, "Yeah, my right shoulder."

Elaina brought up her right hand and activated her Omni-tool and scanned my shoulder quickly before saying, "Take a deep breath and count to three."

"What? Why do I-ow!" was all I could say before she grabbed my right shoulder and arm and twisted and pushed inwards, which allowed me to hear a very wet snap-pop and I gently rolled my shoulder expecting a lot of pain but instead I only felt an intense discomfort like someone had beaten my shoulder repeatedly and then I felt the burning sensation, granted my shoulder felt better compared to what it had been before Elaina had put it back in but it still hurt like hell, "Let me guess I dislocated my shoulder." I said while grinding my teeth in pain.

"Yes you did. Have you done it before?" she asked with some concern.

"No, and I have the feeling I may be doing it again sooner than I like."

"At least you're smart enough to know it is bound to happen." she said with a slightly crooked grin.

"Not funny." was all I managed to say in reply to her joke.

"HEY, if you two are done I think we have a station to clear!", that comment could only have come from one person here.

"Sir, Yes, SIR!" I had said in reply with a mock salute with my uninjured left arm and a completely straight face which compared with my shoulder length hair the reply had completely failed to make a serious impression.

There were at least ten Hecate Troopers holding the barricade blocking the hallway, to me it would have been a simple obstacle if I was playing Mass Effect 3, I would toss in a grenade or a singularity and clear it with a biotic combo, or more likely a tech explosion using incendiary rounds in my main weapon and use an Overload or Warp with the Turian Sentinel I usually used. In this case however I had non-canon equipment on my person, an Omni-tool with Overload, Cloak, a Phase Disruptor using my armor's kinetic barrier systems, and an Omni-blade combat app, that was not including my Hornet SMG, a single fragmentation grenade, and the ninjato so my options were a bit more realistic as far as what I was limited to. I also knew that if I messed up a little medi-gel wasn't going to cure a ruptured organ, broken bones, or a near death experience from being shot, nor was there any chance of a do-over if I did die.

"So do you have any suggestions Sir?" I directed to Harper after I had gotten up and placed myself at the corner of the intersection, which would be on my right side if I was standing in the middle of the intersection looking toward the barricade.

"Just one, don't get shot Mister Stone."

"Ha, as if that was an option for me, I didn't exactly want to get killed from anything other than old age at this point." I thought to myself bitterly before replying to Harper's reply, "Alright then."

I primed my last grenade and threw it so it would bounce off of the wall to land behind the barricade but I was disappointed, when it bounced from where I wanted it to I had a brief flicker of excitement because I was hoping for one of the Troopers to catch it in their chest, but instead of landing where I wanted it to it landed on top of the barricade and rolled across the top of it stopping in the middle of it when I saw what the crate it had landed on had labeled on its bright white form, Danger Highly Flammable, Contents Under Pressure. Widening my eyes I yelled for Harper to stay behind cover, before swinging myself back behind the corner I was using for cover myself, just in time to listen to a thunderous bang from down the hallway and watched several small crates and parts of other things as well, fly into the door on the opposite side of the intersection we were in leaving metal embedded in it.

Harper of course was yelling something that sounded suspiciously like, "WHAT THE FUCK DO YOU THINK YOU ARE DOING?"

"Trying not to blow up the ENTIRE station, just the parts where Hecate soldiers are dug in." I supplied with a slight chuckle.

Harper gave me a death glare with his creepy cybernetic eyes in reply but I seriously didn't care because the hallway was still in one piece, albeit scorched and filled with debris, but more importantly it was enemy free.

"Come on it isn't like we have all day!" I said quickly while starting to leave my cover before I saw the supposed Adept run out of a room on the right side of the hallway and throw a swirling ball of blue-purple light, diving below it before it could hit me I yelled out, "Biotic!", and dived behind what was left of a large crate about a meter in front of me which was where it apparently landed after being thrown from the explosion, and the Adept took up a position on the left side of the hallway behind part of an archway extending from what looked like a very simply furnished lounge, judging from what little of the interior I could see, I then realized this was going to be one serious fight as the Adept threw a biotic Warp towards the corner Elaina was behind which caused the metal plates on my side of it to sizzle as if it was exposed to extreme heat and a lingering blue light stayed in place for several seconds.

Third Person POV/Narrator's POV

Kai Leng had just entered the intersection where The Illusive Man; no, Jack Harper was what Ian Stone had called him, had told him that there was a Hecate operative they were supposed to stabilize and place into custody, he had arrived with three full squads of Cerberus soldiers (24 Troopers, and a pair of Centurions for every eight Troopers acting as an officer and another as a sergeant) not including three Troopers with the red cross emblem of a field medic on the left side of their chest and both of their armored shoulder pauldrons.

All of the Cerberus soldiers had fanned out across the intersection and its security post to cover the hallway while looking for survivors of the initial attack, but his own attention was on the state of disarray the intersection was in. There were eight Hecate Troopers, five Guardians, and a boot in the intersection in and around the security desk and its surrounding architectural additions.

"What the Hell is a boot doing here?" Kai Leng had wondered only briefly before he realized something was still in the boot, "Oh, that's why…"

Then thinking it would be a good idea to hurry toward the Vault on this level he looked for the Hecate operative they were supposed to keep in stable condition for "informational purposes" as The Illusive Man/Jack Harper had ordered. He saw the prone form of someone wearing a heavily modified version of the armor issued to N7 Shadows who was lying on the floor with bandaging on their chest where some of the armor had been stripped away, moving over to the Hecate Shadow he kneeled with his sword firmly in his left hand away from her hands and out of easy reach as an additional precaution against a potential trap.

As he stepped closer to her she visibly moved her head slightly in order to watch him approach and he heard her say something that sounded like, "You're the help that that man with the long hair was talking about I hope?"

Kai Leng noted she had said it with a very jovial and somewhat slurred manner.

"The man with the long hair, do you mean a Caucasian man about six feet tall and seven, six' eight, long black hair, and a very deep bass voice?" Kai Leng asked the slumped figure.

Then the Hecate Shadow had asked in a slightly slurred voice, "Yes, is he a friend of yours?"

"Hardly, he only just arrived on this station today to meet with someone." Kai Leng replied after a moment of hesitation, mostly because the woman he was talking to was not only tired but obviously drugged making her barely understandable.

"Well I thought I would ask because he didn't seem like the kind of man to break a promise to a lady." she supplied almost absent-mindedly

"Is that so? Wha-" but before Kai Leng could finish his questioning he had redirected his attention to the sound of a massive explosion further down the hallway and saw a wall of flame impact the wall on his right which had the added effect of highlighting a figure against it.

Then almost instinctually Kai Leng addressed the Cerberus soldiers around him "Lieutenant Hanson you and your squad will stay here and make sure that medic is going to be safe while tending to her, the rest of you with me."

Kai Leng had broken into a run down the hallway with the remaining twenty soldiers following him about ten feet behind him, when he had reached the second intersection he watched as a blue-purple blur hit the wall on the right side of the last intersection which caused him to run faster than he had been. He was almost halfway through the third intersection which was almost ten meters wide, which allowed cargo to be moved between the labs and several cargo lifts and the main cargo dock for the level he was on, once he had crossed the intersection he could see two people firing down the hallway on the left side of the intersection slowing to a brisk walk he could see Harper firing an undoubtedly salvaged Avenger at an unseen enemy, and then there was the black haired woman that once Kai Leng saw he immediately thought, "She should be either dead or in a medical facility by now so how is she still alive?"

Upon reaching Harper he slowed to a walk and asked him, "Sir, what's the situation?"

"The situation is-", Harper's reply was interrupted by the sound of a Phase Disruptor firing twice followed by a scream of pain, which caused him to peer around the corner to see what had happened and instead of seeing Ian Stone wounded or dead he saw him standing over the Hecate Adept just as Ian un-holstered his Hornet and fired twice into the Hecate soldier causing their pained cries to cease as he removed his sword from the dead soldier's stomach, he then turned and walked back towards the intersection revealing a twenty-five year old man with shoulder length black hair, and grey eyes with a now haunted look to them as if this man was silently condemning himself for his actions.

"Sir have you noticed anything about Mister Stone while you have been with him?", Kai Leng asked Harper in a hushed tone.

Harper looked at Kai Leng with a look of serious concern, "Kai Leng, I have seen more professional soldiers come into this organization than you could possibly imagine, and I can tell you right now he is definitely not a professional."

Harper looked to Ian as he walked to the intersection and leaned his back against the corner that the Hecate defector Elaina had been using for cover and had slowly slid down to a sitting position and Elaina had cautiously moved over to Ian and seemed to talk to him in a soothing manner quietly before she looked to Harper and silently mouthed, "Talk to him."

That single action told Harper that Ian was not taking the situation well, "Mister Stone is not a professional but he knows how to perform dangerous tasks under pressure. That tells me that he has potential if someone was to train him and prepare him for almost anything that may occur, that and the information he has provided has proven to be authentic."

Kai Leng stood there for a moment evaluating what Harper had said and looked over to Ian who had just started talking to the black haired woman that was kneeling next to Ian as was leaning his back against the wall but he saw the worried look on her face, that told him she was worried about his well-being for some reason, and then there was Ian Stone, his expression was almost blank but his eyes had the haunted look he had seen on many soldiers when he had been with the Alliance Navy. It was the same look he had even had when he had killed for the first time.

"It was his first time killing anyone correct, sir?" Kai Leng asked Harper quietly.

Harper replied, "Supposedly yes, but that 'first time' was almost ten minutes ago when he killed two soldiers who had us pinned back in the med-bay near that security post." Harper had added a slight nod and a brief hand gesture indicating a location down the hall Kai Leng had just arrived from to his reply. "He also showed some signs of abstract thinking that allowed him to increase the effectiveness of his armor's Cloak system to a certain extent."

Kai Leng was now looking at Ian as he asked Harper, "Such as?"

"He had me shut-down the med-bay's lighting which forced the Hecate soldiers to retreat back into the hallway. I don't even know if he knew that they didn't have night combat mods for their armor or not, however it did show me he was willing to gamble under conditions that had the odds in his favor. That was not necessarily the best choice at the time, however it did allow him to take them down without injury."

Kai Leng was now looking back to Harper and looked as if he had a sudden thought and suggested, "Sir, maybe we should discuss this later considering that the enemy is almost certainly moving towards the cargo docks on this level by now."

Harper looked at Kai Leng as if he had just realized what he had said was the best course of action, "I'm just tired of all of these unknowns being dropped on us all of a sudden, before today I had never even heard of this Hecate organization and suddenly I have black armored troops sweeping through our most secure facility and also the best kept secret Cerberus has been able to produce." then suddenly as if he had just thought of something he had forgotten, " Do you know if they have gotten off the station with anything from the labs?"

"Other than some of the Biotics labs on level thirty-four, no, they have not sir."

"Good, let us make sure they don't get away with anything else from the labs then.", then with that last comment said he turned to Ian who was across the hall sitting where he had been, then he slowly walked to Ian before saying, "Mr. Stone, are you able to continue?", Harper had been expecting Ian to say no and remain sitting.

Instead Ian's head turned down the hallway toward the Vault and Harper heard him say, "I am ready to follow these Hecate bastards through the Terminus Systems if I have to, especially since I know what they will do to even unarmed civilians in their path," then he raised his eyes to Harper who felt a distinct feeling of almost remorse, not for himself or the people his organization had lost but for Ian Stone whose eyes held a deep and empty look to them but deep within he could see something else, hate, and determination. Before he could offer to help Ian up he was already standing by Hornet raised in his right hand and suddenly he heard the Vault door open and out stepped the Hecate soldier in armor similar to his organization's Dragoon forces and he watched as the soldier spoke with an eletronically distorted voice:

"So this is the group of Cerberus dogs that has caused so much of a problem for my men," then the Hecate Dragoon looked around at the group in the intersection before continuing, "I am not impressed, and then there is you.", they looked directly at Elaina before continuing, "you're still alive, I should have known a recruit for the Warlord initiative would be harder to kill than a regular human."

Elaina brought her Argus up to her shoulder while she said, "I was a 'regular' human until those BUTCHERS were authorized to 'improve' us you arrogant bastard!".

While the exchange between Elaina and the Hecate 'Dragoon' was playing out Harper and Kai Leng, as well as the Cerberus soldiers who had just arrived at the intersection, watched in silence behind cover before the exchange was finally broken by Ian.

"Oi Fishbowl!" which caused both Elaina and the 'Dragoon' to suddenly direct their attention to Ian, "Didn't your mother teach you any manners or at least tell you how to talk to a lady?"

"Shouldn't you be looking for your missing girlfriend or is that promise too much for you to keep?" was all the Hecate 'Dragoon' said in reply with the same cold manner of the other Hecate soldiers.

Ian suddenly tensed up, before he relaxed as he felt it, a faint and completely foreign presence lurking at the edge of his thoughts.

Then thinking to himself, "That can't be possible, however… if it is…," Ian looked directly at the now silent Hecate Dragoon before he let an almost feral grin crawl its way onto his features before he thought of every scene featuring an actual Reaper from the Mass Effect series that he could think of and pictured them all in his mind speaking, "I am the vanguard of your destruction." and then his grin grew even more when he saw the 'Dragoon' tense up and placed his left hand on his head as if it was in pain before Ian said, "So you're some kind of mind reader huh? You know, that is a talent that has all kinds of problems such as the inability to filter out what you see if you don't have the experience to do so."

Then his grin faded completely as he pictured one more thing, a cartoon of a Dragoon in all black being flattened by a giant boot with a Cerberus emblem on the side, and the resounding crunch of bones shattering and a very wet smacking sound that sounded more like a massive thunderclap happening inches from his ear, all of which made the Hecate 'Dragoon' take a sudden step back holding his head from the mental image, and accompanying phantom sounds in agony before he looked up to see the barrel of a Hornet SMG tap against his helmet's visor he blinked in response as his mind was trying to comprehend what was happening and the sudden flash from the barrel was the last thing he saw.

Ian's POV

"Well that was brutal but at least I don't have him poking around in my mind anymore. Personally I am surprised that actually worked, I wonder if the boot was a bit much however.", Ian thought as the body of the Hecate 'Dragoon' hit the floor.

"So are we going to stop them from getting off of this station or what?" I asked to anyone who was listening before I started to continue towards the edge of the open Vault door.

Looking inside I saw a lot of Prothean artifacts, a few more objects that were made of the same grey and yellow materials as the Monolith and 'The Key', however there were a few items I didn't recognize. Chunks of scrap metal, there were more than a few crates lying around with labels filled with seemingly endless combinations of letters and numbers, tables with parts of large machines scattered across their surface, and in one corner a large crate stood out which simply stated, Artifact X-00-01 which seemed to draw my attention to it as if it was consciously doing so.

"What is in there?", I asked Harper who replied with a shrug before saying, "We don't know, I had purchased it off of a private collector who had hosted an auction in order to pay off a debt she owed the government of Illium in back-taxes, and I was lucky enough to convince her to allow me the chance to buy several items before the auction's date was set."

"You are one smooth businessman I will give you that much." I replied with a deadpan look. I then looked around the Vault for anything that seemed out of place or was possibly missing pausing for a moment when I saw a table that had an empty display stand.

I was about to point it out when I heard Harper's Omni-tool activate and I heard a brief conversation take place which indicated that the Hecate forces were falling back to the cargo dock one corridor over and that the forces heading there to cut them off were bogged down at the docking bays main entrance. We had all ran over there as quickly as possible and I had gotten shot in my left shoulder by what had sounded like a pistol of some kind, spinning me around causing me to catch myself on Elaina's shoulder taking her to the ground with me, causing the both of us to just barely miss being cut-down by a Revenant wielding Hecate Trooper, although the Cerberus Trooper behind us was not so fortunate.

"Elaina are you alright?"

"I should be asking you that you bloody idiot," she said as she brought out a small orange colored capsule from her armor's combat belt and broke it in one hand as she dug into my shoulder carefully and finally, after a considerable amount of pain at my expense, pulled a small sliver out of my shoulder causing me to grunt in pain before she applied the capsule's contents to my shoulder, which caused my shoulder to become numb after a few agonizing seconds.

"I told you Medi-gel does wonders."

"Okay, okay, you were right about Medi-gel, no need to get all excited about it Elaina.", I looked at Elaina who was kneeling over me, "Wait, why is she kneeling over me?", I then realized I had been placed flat on my back from what was previously a sitting position by her so she could apply the Medi-gel where I was out of harm's way.

"Elaina, how much blood did I lose?" I asked with a slightly tired slur.

"Uh…" she looked at my shoulder with wide eyes, "not much, why?"

"You are a terrible liar…", I was having a little difficulty staying awake right now, I tried clearing my head by slowly shaking my head because I wanted to stay awake but I found it difficult to do so, as my head slowly fell into the slowly enclosing darkness at the edge of my vision when I heard Elaina say:

"Just remember I owe you, I won't let anything happen to you Ian, I won't let anything happen to you.", and the last part of that sentence echoed over and over as I lost consciousness.

Ian's POV, June 1st, 2180

I jolted awake clutching my left shoulder where I had a faint scar from the surgery to repair the torn muscles and place flash-cloned bone, and cartilage where the damage was too extensive for normal surgery. I looked around expecting to find myself in that cargo loading bay however I was only seeing a familiar dark room lit by a deep red-orange light from outside a window, a metal desk in front of me, and on it my personal office computer, a half-emptied glass of a dark amber liquid from a nearly empty bottle of bourbon circa 2178 sat beside an active data-pad and a small stack of data-pads sat on the far corner in a bin labeled outgoing, and an empty bin that stated ingoing sat empty and unused. I realized then I had just relived an old and terrible memory.

I sat up in my chair stretching my limbs and I said to myself, "God I haven't thought about how I got here in a while, even if it was a nightmare."

I looked over to a palm-sized grey object sitting nearby with glowing yellow lines tracing patterns of amber light across its surface, placing my hand on it gently I ran my hand over its smooth surface expecting a slight pressure as the being called Oracle, on the other end of it, would attempt to connect to me after almost a year of silence but there was absolutely nothing.

I slowly stood up and opened up my Omni-tool, which I hadn't used the glove version for almost a year after receiving the surgery to receive a model that was implanted beneath the skin. This particular model was designed to be almost undetectable by most sensors and had been designed and produced by Cerberus for its operatives.

I checked for messages on my Omni-tool but instead of being flooded with messages like I was expecting my inbox to be, I only found the messages I had saved from the day prior, so I checked the time quickly and I groaned when I saw it, it was four in the morning which meant I had just under two hours before I was supposed to be getting ready for close quarters combat training with Kai Leng, followed by almost an hour down at the firing range learning how to properly use a sniper rifle with Elaina, and then my personal favorite Combat Application training with Eric, a combat engineer from the garrison onboard Cronos Station.

In simple terms meant I had to be in my quarters in ten minutes to get a shower and a meal in about twenty minutes before I took my jog around the track area, the thought of how much of a hurry I needed to be in made my head hurt. Sighing to myself I decided I might as well get started so I carefully poured what was left of my Bourbon into the bottle before putting both the bottle and the glass carefully into the bottom drawer of my desk and grabbed the M-11 Suppressor from the top drawer and placed it on my uniform's right magnetic strip, while I may not have been the kind of person to modify clothing without good reason I didn't waste any time having a uniform tailored to my build, and had a few modifications put in place such as a limited kinetic barrier system, and magnetic strips for a shotgun in the small of my back, an assault rifle/sniper rifle on my right shoulder and another one on my right thigh for pistols or submachineguns, my only problem with the uniform in question was that it was dry-clean only. My Omni-tool also had a wide selection of combat applications ranging from a simple Incinerate, to an Omni-blade melee application in case I decided to get REALLY creative.

Before I left the office I turned to look out the massive curved window to gaze at the star Anadius in its crimson glory, basking in its warm glow thinking of Sharon and how I failed her that day. I still hadn't found even a trace of her whereabouts even with the massive resources Cerberus had at its disposal, and the only time I had found anything even relating to her was when I had traveled to a Hecate facility dug into an ice covered moon in orbit of a gas giant out in the Attican Traverse and found a prison cell that hadn't been used in almost three months, according to the logs found in the facility's computer cores, and in the prison cell I had found Sharon's leather N7 jacket and her Tarot Cards, it had been the only time I had found any trace of her since that day.

Banishing the thoughts threatening to drag me down into the darkness of my mind once more I turned towards the door which once I had gotten within a meter of it had opened to reveal a sight which I had become accustomed to since I had joined Cerberus, the hallway outside Harper's office, which I also shared since I had joined the organization. Harper was rather generous when he accepted my request to join Cerberus including my request for director level access privileges, which unfortunately was severely limited when it came to accessing the Vaults, only Vault 1 and 37 were open to me without his express permission, I was also allowed full access to any research files, or any other reports I requested.

This didn't nearly interest me as much as what was in Vault 37, a Prothean device that Miranda had reverse engineered to recreate a device the Protheans which they had hoped would be a viable alternative to using the Mass Relays for Faster Than Light Travel by creating and manipulating spatial rifts to essentially tunnel into a realm where travel was measured in 'relative time' compared to distance, I couldn't even begin to understand the physics or even some of the theories involved but Miranda was kind enough to put it in "English". As she had explained it, the FTL system that the Protheans had managed to develop, but had failed to produce, created a passage through a dimension similar to Subspace, which was entirely theoretical according to every scientist from the Alliance to the Salarian Union, through which a ship equipped with a Prothean "Null Space Drive (or N-Space Drive) could make a trip across the galaxy without using the Relay network, which could take up to several months even when using a ship's Eezo core at maximum capacity to power the Mass Effect Field to stable levels well past the normal safe limits in order to make a single run from Earth in the Local Cluster to Omega in just under a month and a half instead of maybe two to three or more depending upon the ship's drive system and turn it into a trip that could take maybe a week or less depending on the mass of the vessel which was still a deciding factor in travel speed, especially since the higher a ship's mass the longer it took to have it change its speed by either accelerating or decelerating.

Then of course there was the equipment I was allowed to requisition from almost every station under our control as well as an operational awareness of what operatives were working where and when within the Alliance as well as Council Space which surprisingly we had managed to get a rather large number of non-human operatives once I had pushed Harper to begin recruiting aliens actively and changed the purpose and policy of Cerberus itself even though it was an uphill battle that had taken almost until December of 2179 to achieve that goal even after I had convinced Harper that in order for us to have a fighting chance against the Reapers we needed to change how Cerberus worked and everything it had stood for just so we could gain support from the Council let alone the Systems Alliance, and that what it stood for before I had arrived and how this organization operated was wrong.

The aliens we had recruited were kept away from any operations that Cerberus had in progress, or at least any of the operations that its Alliance handlers actually kept tabs on. All of this eventually brought myself as well as Harper to our biggest problem; how do we work around the Alliance without getting shutdown, or worse, until 2183 when Cerberus actually left the control of the Alliance? This was our biggest concern because I had to share a certain amount of information with him in order to make sure we were both on the same page, most notably my knowledge of exactly what the Reapers were, and a few things we needed to worry about immediately such as avoiding unnecessary attention from a certain Alliance official in 2183, after that was brought up the Cerberus cell and the personnel responsible for Akuze were now a group of unfortunate victims of a massive Thresher Maw attack when one of their experiments suspicously "failed". There was one condition to my position at Cerberus other than the information I had to reveal to him; he had me training alongside Kai Leng and many other operatives including the now recruited Elaina when I was off duty in order to make me into an effective field asset in the event I was needed for such a task.

I was almost to the elevator when I heard a flanging voice call out, "Hold that elevator!"

As the door was about to close an almost breathless male, grey-skinned, and bare-faced Turian (I had found out that bare-faced Turians were far from being untrustworthy as several just refused to wear the facial markings believing that they were just a status symbol and nothing more, and that there were more than a few Turians who did not wear them because they were born on ships, or stations without actual Turian neighborhoods and believed that their distinguishing markings were their pride, skill, and their well-known Turian discipline were all that they needed to identify themselves to their community), in a white lab coat had reached the elevator just in time to cause the door's sensors to stop the elevator doors and allow him, and myself since I had arrived there at the same time he did, access to the elevator which was currently holding a pair of human Troopers and a single Asari wearing the standard crewman uniform.

I heard the Turian say, "Director Stone, I haven't seen you up here this early before. Where were you headed?"

I turned to sneak a quick look at his name tag, Dr. Carek Biotic Research Division it had said which made me think briefly, "Dr. Carek? I think his name has crossed my desk before… ah… that's right he had a proposal for modifying the Dragoon armor's Biotic Amp system for use on the Valkyrie Mech chassis."

I replied, "I am heading down to Deck 24 Dr. Carek."

"Alright," he said while hitting the control combinations for Deck 24 before he continued, "by the way sir, I thought you were off duty by now."

As he had been asking that question I could see the Asari, a Yeoman called Oleena if I wasn't mistaken however I couldn't remember her last name offhand, give Dr. Carek a look that screamed "He's Director Stone, I think you could probably think of a better question than that!"

I decided to answer his request in the most honest way possible, "Honestly I am off duty, I unfortunately made the mistake to stay up following up on a lead instead of sleeping.", my reply instead of drawing a shocked gasp like I had expected to come out of Yeoman Oleena from the fact I even replied or Dr. Carek who I had expected to launch even more questions at me.

My reply had actually managed to get a slight chuckle from the two Troopers in the back of the elevator and one of them started in on the conversation, "I know the feeling sir, I had just gotten back from one of those anti-piracy raids out in the Traverse and decided some decent sleep was better than getting out of my armor."

I mentally winced at the thought because Kai Leng had me run in a full suit of the armor the Trooper was wearing, it was officially designated as Frontline Combat Armor Model 3-A but it was more commonly known as the 'Red-eyes Frontline armor', designed for comfort and flexibility in the field of battle, it was well thought of up until it came time to sit or remain in a prone position for long periods of time. In the case of lying down on your back in the armor the only problem was you could literally feel every edge on each of the armor plates through the ceramic composite nano-weave in the armor, and with sitting it was only comfortable if you kept sitting in a completely upright position otherwise you could run the risk of causing some of the armor plating in the lower back to lock-up. Suffice it to say the Frontline Combat Armor Model 3-B was rapidly replacing the 3-A whenever it became available in mass quantities from our manufacturing facilities at my express orders, although Petrovsky was adamant in his support of the 3-A. I made the point to him by making him wear the full suit of the 3-A under the same conditions his men did, it was more than enough to turn his opinion around.

I was about to say something else to Dr. Carek when I heard Yeoman Oleena say something I hadn't heard completely so I had turned my head slightly to look at her and I asked her politely, "Ms… T'Kari was it?" judging from the nod and the shy, 'Yes Sir.' I had heard my memory was still fairly good as far as names went, I had always been terrible with remembering them before now, "Would you mind repeating what you had just now?"

"I was just wondering if you have heard about the Memorial Services on Monday, sir."

"Yes I have, the Memorial is going to be taking place from 9 AM to 11 AM, it will also commemorate the opening of the Memorial Lounge on Deck 30, and the reopening of Remembrance Hall on Deck 14. Is there anything else you would like to know?"

"There is one thing actually, I had heard that… you had lost someone too and I was wondering if you were going to be joining us during the Memorial."

I stood silent for a moment before I replied, "I believe my friend may still be alive, however," I looked back to Oleena, "I would be honored to be joining you and your friends for the Services." I could see a faint smile forming on 'her' face and the faint nod she gave me.

"Then my friends and I will be looking forward to meeting you down in Remembrance Hall at 10 AM then?" she asked.

"I'll be there Ms. T'Kari."

"Please call me Oleena or Leena everyone else does."

I smiled a little in response especially since I preferred to use nicknames in the case of aliens, unless their given name was easy to pronounce, "Alright, Leena it is so just call me Ian all of my friends do," which she nodded in reply with a slight smile. Then I directed my attention back to Dr. Carek "Also it is a pleasure meeting you in person Dr. Carek; I believe you had submitted a report on modifying the Valkyrie Mechs correct?"

"Ah, I see it did get to your desk then." he said absently as he watched the screen indicating the floor the elevator was at.

I had been putting a lot of thought into his proposal however I had been far too busy managing the development of the new reconnaissance frigate that I had requested our shipwrights to design, "It did and I apologize for not getting back to you until now, and not through the normal channels, however I have been putting a lot of thought into your proposal and I feel I have to reject it," I saw his expression start to fade a bit but I continued, "the reason why I have chosen to do so is more of a question of whether or not the development of a new Mech designed specifically for the use of Biotic Amps, and Tech Amps as well, wouldn't be more productive."

I could see his expression change from one of disappointment to one of surprise, "Are you sure sir? The Valkyrie Mech was a massive project that we would need to recreate."

I looked at Dr. Carek again and said, "I realize you wanted to modify the existing Valkyrie chassis, however the design of the Valkyrie was heavily based around the Eezo cores installed in the main body as well as the thrusters, so in order to install the Biotic Amps you have proposed you need to ensure the stability of the power systems as well, so the best suggestion I can give is to work on designing a less complex version of the Valkyrie made expressly for ground operations first. I can ensure that the resources are there for you to redesign it properly, however I want to make sure the Amps will work as you have promised, and considering how powerful the Amps you have suggested could be when they are installed as shown in your proposal…", I turned to properly face him, "the results of a properly trained pilot using the…," I then realized he hadn't named the Mech in question so I decided to drop the line of conversation for now in favor of a new topic, "Out of curiosity have you decided on a name for this Project?"

"Actually I hadn't thought of it much."

I was surprised he didn't have a name selected but I continued with my original topic but I decided to avoid the lack of a name now, "The results of a properly trained pilot using the original Valkyrie would be remarkable while even an untrained biotic using this new mech model you have proposed is potentially a walking fire support team so as far as I am concerned, we lost a lot of people last year and I don't want to lose anymore."

"Will I have the choice of who is on my research staff?"

I had to applaud him inwardly on the brazen request since he was normally a rather quiet individual from what I could gather from his mannerisms, however I have a feeling I know who he is going to request for his team, "I already have a good idea about what you will be looking for in your research staff so I would like to suggest Dr. Olson from the original Valkyrie Project as well as Doctors, Bryton and Colson from Project Phoenix, I will forward the necessary files to you as soon as possible.", I quickly opened my Omni-tool and made notes on who I had to contact and what files I needed to forward to Dr. Carek.

The conversations that followed had changed to a far more relaxed and non-business related topics until the elevator had stopped on my floor where Dr. Carek and Yeoman Oleena had also stepped off with Oleena walking off into the lounge, and Dr. Carek heading off in the direction of the Biotic Research labs on this floor, I on the other hand headed off for the dark side of the station where my quarters were located.

I was almost two meters away from the doorway that led into my quarters when I heard a familiar voice call out, "Hey Ian!"

I immediately thought, "Oh no, not when I am dressed in the clothes I had on yesterday…" placing a smile on my face for the sake of Elaina who was running down the hall towards me I said a greeting in return.

"Hey Elaina, I didn't expect you to be up this early."

"Neither did I, nor did I expect you to fall asleep in your office again either."

I sighed audibly, "I didn't plan on it Elaina, I also didn't plan on the amount of paperwork this job would have for following up on a lead either." after I had commented on the amount of paperwork involved in this job Elaina had stopped running and was now breathing heavily from her run around the station.

"So Elaina, how many times did you run around this deck today?"

"Twice, why?"

I was honestly going to be surprised about that no matter how many times I hear it, because it essentially was about three hundred meters short of a 20 mile run if you managed to keep to the outer hallways both times around, "I'm just worried Elaina, after all you are only human, no matter what Hecate did to you in the Warlord Project."

I mentally shuddered as I had thought about it briefly, "The Warlord Project, one of Hecate's first super-soldier projects, it focused on the extensive use of advanced cybernetics being used to augment physical endurance as well as wholesale genetic modifications to the point Elaina, and two other former members of Hecate we had literally rescued from one of their 'Augmentive Surgery Sessions', in other words I truly pitied any and all Operatives from Hecate who had been subjected to these experiments not only because of the nature of the surgery so much as just how much damage they did to each subject's humanity. In the case of Elaina she was subjected to surgeries and procedures designed to increase human regeneration in order to imitate a Krogan's regenerative abilities and endurance, the cost however was the inability to feel pain from external injuries such as gunshots, cracked bones, or even dislocated bones or joints, and unfortunately for several others who underwent the procedure she knew malignant tumors were also another side affect many others had received."

She looked at me with something akin to a look of appreciation before she said, "Thank you for saying that Ian. I know I'm still human, but it's just so hard for me to get a tough workout you know." her expression broke into a bit of a smile and I couldn't help but chuckle a little at her reply.

"I know Elaina just don't push yourself."

"I won't, see you later down at the firing range Ian."

"See you later Elaina." I called out to the now running figure as I opened the door to my quarters when I remembered something, Sasha didn't get her steak for breakfast.

"Oh shit!", I had said in alarm as a grey colored, with dark red-brown stripes, 130 pound varren jumped me and laid me out flatter than a Krogan could have at this point.

"Sasha get off I can't breathe…"

"Rrrl?" Sasha did a little whine while cocking her head off to her right and started to lick my face.

"Oh, gah! Sasha come on get off!", I tried pushing her off before all of a sudden I heard a deep bellowing laugh off to my right, "Oh great now who is it that I have to worry about ?" I thought.

I looked off to my right and saw the only Krogan in Cerberus, "Urdnot Graul, what's so funny?"

"HA-HA-HA, Nothing other than how that varren is acting, forget to feed her?"

"More like I fell asleep in my office and I haven't gotten the chance to.", I figured it was probably worse than just forgetting to feed her.

"Sasha, get off now!" I added with a little bit of a hushed whisper,"Or you won't be getting the steak, just the ration packs."

I gently nudged her off to the side as she finally let me get up only for me to hear a low yet almost amused, "Rarl…" and clawed feet walk behind me as the door to my quarters closed and I walked into the small kitchen I had on the right side of my quarters. Moving for the fridge I heard the same clawed feet move around in their usual excited manner as I grabbed out the plate with the steak I had taken out of the freezer last night and flipped the plate over dropping the steak in Sasha's bowl on the floor, and I watched as she almost devoured it in maybe half a minute almost savoring every bite, and when she was finished I pulled out a small box of treats that made her fish-like eyes widen slightly and I heard an excited "Wark! Wa-wark!" from Sasha as I grabbed out one of the biscuits she seemed to love eating, it was technically an emergency ration for a Krogan packed with proteins, and various vitamin supplements, amongst other dietary needs.

I said, "Sit," and surprisingly enough the giant dog/lizard sat down with a giant… grin… on her face and was following my hand's every movement before the biscuit was airborne, followed thereafter by a second one, both of which she caught and tossed into her bowl.

"That is one thing I love about you Sasha." I said as I put the box back into the cupboard before patting her on her side before I scratched between her shoulder blades lightly, causing the meter and a half long varren to lean into my right leg with a satisfied, "Gorrlll….."

"Unlike most varren you don't make a mess when you eat." I said as I started to walk towards my bathroom which I heard a loud crunch, smack, smack, and the sound of a long serpentine tongue lick up the scraps of a once fine, one pound beef steak.

I went into my bathroom and took my shower as quickly as possible, and when I walked out in my bathrobe I saw Sasha curled up on my sofa, and I shook my head slightly at how she was curled up on it with her head hanging off of the front with her lower jaw hanging open slightly, licking her lips every so often as if she was trying to find leftovers from her steak as I walked into my bedroom, I grabbed my gym bag, threw on my exercise gear, and grabbed the black business suit I had hanging on a rack in my closet and placed the suit I had previously worn on the side of my bed so I could grab it later to take down to the laundry room for my dry-cleaning later in that day.

It was nearly twenty minutes since I had first arrived back in my quarters when I had locked the door to my quarters on my way to the gym down on Deck 25, or to be more accurate my own personal Hell for the next two and a half hours because I would be spending a half hour running through weights, a quick jog around the station which would be about another half hour just running around it once assuming foot traffic would be accommodating, and finally the following hour and a half would be Kai Leng kicking my ass up and down the sparring ring in the gym. My weight lifting was uneventful to say the least other than the occasional glances I garnered from people including Leena.

She gave a casual "Hello sir, I mean Ian."

"Nice to see you too Leena." I said in reply, and before I knew it she had already left the gym with a small group consisting of a lone male Turian, a single Salarian which I recognized from our Intelligence division, and a pair of humans, a man and a woman, and yet another Asari I didn't recognize. It had been almost five minutes since I had finished up with my weight lifting and readied myself for my run around the station, when I had just left the locker room I readied myself by doing a few more stretches and placed a pair of ear-buds in my ears so I could listen to music while I ran, before I could turn my Omni-tool's music player on I heard a high pitched voice call out my name.

"Director Stone, I was hoping to catch you before your run."

I turned to see a brown colored Salarian with light tan speckling on their skin around their eyes and their 'horn-like' protrusions, wearing a typically styled Salarian lab coat which was normally issued within the Salarian Special Tasks Group, which reminded me of where I had actually recruited him as well as who he was. "Ah, Dr. Ulan, what brings you down here?"

"Ah you stopped, most excellent, I would wish to discuss budget concerns regarding the new stealth systems for the Fury Project."

I stood there for a moment wondering just how over-budget the Fury Project was going to be by the end of the month, which was the only reason I could think of that he would bother discussing anything like this without it being brought up in the office I shared with Harper.

"Do you think you can discuss this while running?" I asked indicating the hallway with a thumb pointing down the hall, to which Dr. Ulan twitched his upper lip slightly, before taking his lab coat off and folding it over his right arm and tied it quickly into something resembling a duffel bag and tossed it over his right shoulder, before he finally said, "Learned many things in STG, this however is one of the least science oriented life lessons."

I just grinned in reply before asking, "Well shall we?", and Dr. Ulan nodded.

It was about a minute into my run when Dr. Ulan started to explain what was wrong with the budget for the Project. I was surprised when he said it was not actually an issue with the budget but more of a problem with the cost to retrofit the Hecate frigate Petrovsky's troops had managed to secure during the attack on this station last year, "Your request to modify the Hecate frigate is going to be higher in cost than expected, by nearly thirty percent, which will just include the actual systems being modified or replaced, and then there are the systems their organization originally installed."

"What about them?" I asked, allowing curiosity to slip into my voice.

"The Thrust Channels, and their Omni-directional mass effect drives appear to be unable to be removed from their current hard points without losing their functionality."

With a slight drop in my shoulders I asked, "You mean that several of the frigate's specialized equipment have been directly tied into the ship's systems in such a way that they cannot be removed at all?"

"Yes, that is the problem, however on my own initiative, I have made several attempts to copy the systems in their current state which appear to be accurate and function properly in all simulations," which he paused for a moment allowing me to go over the information and my pace slowed slightly before he continued, "I have discovered several redundant memory cores in the aft hull beneath the ship's Blue Box they had installed inside of a compartment shielded from sensors."

I stopped my run and placed my hands on my knees to catch my breath while I looked at him."You mean to tell me Dr. Ulan, that they had hidden memory cores on that ship? Have you turned them over to Intel?", I asked with a hint of urgency in my voice.

"No, I have turned them over to our computer sciences division."

My eyebrows shot up and I straightened myself to my full height before replying, "You mean to tell me you handed them over to our computer sciences division without any idea about what was in them?!"

"No, I had an idea as to what was in them, I however was hoping they could find a way around the firewalls they had in place in some of the more isolated, and heavily protected data files, the contents for most of the internal storage, however were navigational charts,"

I was absolutely confused now, "Navigational charts? For what exactly?"

"Mostly galactic maps, basic navigational data, and a backup black box, however there were several areas that were accessed repeatedly, such as the Arquilan Cascade, the Arquilan Rift, and the Arquilan Void which drew my team's interest."

"Aren't those areas just inside the borders of Hierarchy space and wasn't that where they had a temporary staging ground during the First Contact War?" I asked with more even more curiosity slipping into my voice than I had intended, however it didn't seem to affect him in any way.

"Very good, have you been studying military history?"

"No, I only studied major conflicts their locations, and the mistakes that lead to those conflicts. What I don't understand is why they would have maps for the Arquilan cluster, it is so out of the way it is almost completely unexplored, and not just from its isolated location but isn't there supposed to be navigational hazards out there that actually have the area declared off limits to non-military ships?"

"Yes, anomalous sensor readings, rogue asteroids and other stellar bodies, the STG had numerous reports of missing spacecraft sent out over the years, anywhere up to five or more missing in one month in some cases, most of them were sent by private corporations under contract for exploring the cluster. I am also aware of a Hierarchy naval expedition sent out to explore the Arquilan Cluster, none of the nine Hierarchy ships were ever seen again including three cruisers sent in after a Black Talon operated frigate fleet, it is unknown if the pirates were ever seen again either."

I waited a moment going over the information he had given me once more before continuing, "How complete were the charts?"

"According to the size of the data packets in the cores, they were very well documented as far as my team could tell."

I opened my Omni-tool so I could call up Harper, and sent messages to Kai Leng and Elaina telling them I would be running late with my training sessions.

"Sir, I apologize for the interruption, I realize you just got into the office by now however I am calling to notify you of a possible lead on Hecate's operations in Council Space." I quietly motioned to Dr. Ulan to follow me as I waited for Harper to reply, and I turned back towards the gym, and by extension my locker where my suit, and personal items were currently residing.

I heard Harper reply over my Omni-tool, "A possible lead? How solid is this lead?"

"The lead is several backup memory cores found on the Hecate frigate The Revenant, however the memory cores are currently being examined in our computer science labs for any hidden data packets or other 'surprises'."

"Keep me informed. Who brought this to your attention Mr. Stone?"

"Doctor Ulan, a scientist on my pet project."

"He found the data cores then?"

"Correct sir."

"Alright, I will expect a report in eight hours Mr. Stone. Where is this lead pointing us exactly?"

"You are going to hate it honestly, the Arquilan Cluster."

There was silence on the other end of the call for about six seconds before I heard, "That is an extremely isolated and dangerous part of space Mr. Stone, do you have a suggestion on where to look?"

"None yet I was going to wait with following it until the cores have been analyzed further."

"Is there anything else you wish to tell me Mr. Stone?"

"Well…," I looked over to my locker for a moment before replying, "I would like you to dig a little deeper into NexGen again, especially their branch on Illium, and their research facility on Noveria."

I waited for a moment before I heard a sigh on the other side of the line before I heard Harper reply, "Very well, I still say that they may not be involved in Hecate or its operations directly. If they are however I expect you to handle their Illium branch... properly Mr. Stone."

I was certain NexGen was involved somehow because of their extensive research into an improved Medi-gel that could possibly topple the Sirta Foundation as the number one medical producer, and in this case probably make a huge profit out of it as well. I was also suspicious of their lack of new products focused on the market for alien species since it was up until a year ago solely focused on human centric products even though it had been founded in 2173 and continued to grow almost unchecked for nearly three years before the market competition was finally catching up. "Understood sir, I will be in the office by eight to give you a full brief before I call a meeting, unless something comes up anyway."

"Don't worry about it Mr. Stone, just make sure you have a clear head when that information comes through."

I couldn't help but laugh at that request before I replied, "Don't worry about it sir, I will make sure I will make sure I have a clear head, you just make sure that little import from our agricultural supplier, Sasha really enjoyed that steak I ordered."

I heard a nervous chuckle from the other side of the line, "You are absolutely crazy to have a varren you know."

"I prefer the term strange, not crazy, sir.", now I heard actual laughter, "What the Hell got him in such a good mood?" I wondered.

"What has you in such a good mood today sir?"

"I just heard back from one of my sources in the Alliance Navy about your person of interest." Harper said very calmly and without any kind of change in his voice.

I paused for a moment "So you heard about the Commander then?" I asked with audible excitement, and Dr. Ulan was looking at me strangely due to what amounted as an emotional outburst for me.

"Yes I have, Lieutenant Commander Jane Shepherd, she is currently on the track to promotion within the next year and a half if she continues with her current level of performance. She is currently trained to fight under the class designation of Sentinel as the Alliance military calls it, she is currently fitted with an L3 Biotic Amp according to her medical file, an impressive number of successful missions, she has been given quite the number of names by her fellow Alliance marines, The Iron Lady being the most famous of due to her exemplary performance on Elysium. Her level of training from the N7 program is beyond my expectations; about the only people with similar training that I know of Mr. Stone is Kai Leng, who as you know was an N7 graduate, and Elaina but that is due to Hecate's training regime as well as her various 'enhancements'. I could continue with this list but I am going to send you her file instead." I heard an audible pause for maybe a few seconds before he continued, "Oh yes and by the way, according to my contact in the Alliance she is being looked at for the Citadel Council's approval for the Spectres, however the final decision should be made sometime in the latter half of 2182 with submission and acceptance around December of 2182, or early in 2183 which I believe you told me should be on schedule."

I smiled slightly before replying, "That should be on schedule with what I know of." but not before I cursed politicians silently, I then paused for a moment as something in my mind stood out about a conversation Harper and I had about a week ago, "Out of curiosity have you heard anymore rumors come out of Batarian space lately?"

"No, just a few scattered reports about damaged ships and wreckage being salvaged by the various pirate groups in the Terminus Systems, why?"

"I have suspicions about what may be going on out there, but I need confirmation; see if you can get Aria to throw us a bone here, I hear she still has a soft spot for credits these days."

I could hear Harper reply with obvious amusement in his voice "You want me to call Aria? You do remember that she was more than just upset over what Kai Leng did to some of her contacts when you met him don't you?"

I then remembered the file I had read on Kai Leng's last mission to Omega, the single event that resulted in the fateful events of July 5, 2179 and all because of a bunch of idiotic fools who wouldn't hand over the lab equipment Cerberus wanted. "Honestly I am hoping enough credits will be there to make her memory… a little less sharp than it should be. Otherwise I can always go there in person and try to negotiate on my own behalf."

There was once again silence on the line as I told Harper I was going to be busy for a few minutes. I took the time to take a quick shower in one of the private stalls in the men's shower room that was graciously included in the gym's floor plan and I quickly got changed in my suit finishing up my wardrobe with my red cravat, the one piece of my wardrobe that I probably will never change because of that one horrible day.

"Are you still alive over there sir? I hope I haven't given you a heart attack from my request."

"No, I was just considering your proposal."

"Proposal, what does he mean by tha-..? Oh… never-mind he just accepted my offer to talk to the Pirate Queen of Omega. Damn." I thought grimly, "Alright, when do I leave?"

"As soon as possible, and considering that your project's first success will be leaving dry-dock at our Icarus Facility I would suggest catching a ship out there and taking the prototype out for a proper shakedown."

I stood there mentally going over the list of items on that ship in question, The Fury named after the Furies in Greek mythology, "Our version of the IES Stealth System, the Reduced Emissions Dispersal System for the engines reverse engineered from the Hecate frigate we had captured (the REDS is a complex system of vents, engine baffles, sensor absorbent materials and heat masking compounds designed to allow for limited stealth without the use of the IES Stealth System), our version of the Tantalus core, our in-house equivalent to Silaris Armor, oh yes, and the best part was the success of the Fire-lance Project; the first recorded laser capable of engaging ships at over a thousand kilometers without destroying itself or being rendered inoperable from damage caused by overheating, of course there was the added benefit the creation of Pulsed laser Batteries had, an advanced GARDIAN system capable of being fired in rapid barrages of a laser being shunted at set intervals to create a 'pulsed laser' capable of turning a frigate at 500 kilometers into a floating wreck, with only a single emitter capable of firing five beams in just under a second by itself, was the ultimate byproduct of the Fire-lance Project, then there were the added benefits from research into new forms of heat sink design, and new materials used to create advanced heat sinks for the project itself which could easily be modified to work for Mass Accelerator weapons ranging from spinal mounted cannons to rifles increasing the heat dispersion rate to just under 10 seconds instead of almost a full minute in the case of older models of the GARDIAN laser."

I said to Harper over my Omni-tool with a wolfish grin, "I have been waiting to get the chance to be the first ranking Cerberus official on one of the Fury class ships for over four months. Is the crew already prepped?"

"Yes the crew is ready, as is our 'special crewmember'."

I understood exactly what he meant by that, "So the Tactical Intelligence Matrix is installed already?", I then realized just what I was going to be calling that AI, "Well damn-it-all, I am going to be stuck on a ship with yet ANOTHER T.I.M.."

"Yes, against my better judgement however your description of how to treat an AI was intriguing so yes, however it is still shackled for now. I will not run the risk of letting it loose without making sure of its loyalty."

"I would like to point out that they act like rational beings but solely on logic up to a point, once they begin to 'mature' and incorporate emotional responses they will act the same as any organic being with the exception of not allowing that emotion to get in the way, in most cases that is."

"The minority of cases is what I am afraid of Mr. Stone. Regardless, get out to Omega and get that information if you have suspicions and consider it your first field assignment. I am also assigning Kai Leng to assist you due to his past experiences with Omega's political landscape and its population."

During this overly long conversation I had made my way down to the Computer Sciences Division with Dr. Ulan in-toe. I eventually made my way to a mess hall nearby and disconnected Harper after a brief conversation about Operative Rasa, grabbing a biscuit with a folded omelet on it for a bite on the go along with my usual cup of tea in a recyclable pressed foam cup, which apparently had caught the attention of Dr. Ulan who had asked what I was drinking, his face was filled with curiosity when I said, "A tea I have developed a habit of drinking while I was in England, the blend is called Earl Grey. It has been around for a long time if I recall correctly."

"Interesting, may have to try it later."

The Computer Sciences lab was literally filled with Salarian researchers who had extensive background checks run on them to make sure we weren't picking up spies from the STG by accident, and the number of human and Asari were surprisingly small however most of the humans, and Asari in this room had either an innate talent with computer programming and computer design, and the other thing the majority of them had was what they lacked in talent they made up for in determination and an intellect capable of making even some Salarians jealous. I made my way over to Dr. Ivana Hendrickson, a twenty year old graduate of the Grissom Academy's Ascension Program, and most importantly, resident genius and best decryption expert seconded only to our Intelligence Division's best and brightest.

"Dr. Hendrickson I hear you have a set of computer cores you have been examining from a certain ship in our custody?"

The very slim, blonde woman in a lab coat turned to face me revealing a face with freckles, steel grey eyes, a face usually frozen in a perpetual smile at even the smallest hint of a joke, and a visor I didn't recognize was perched over her right eye which appeared to be designed for displaying technical data in a dull orange format instead of the usual blue or purple of most visors.

"Yes, I have and I was a little surprised to find docking protocols, Hecate ID codes which have obviously been changed by now, flight recordings ranging from internal sensors, to external sensor data, a massive collection of surveillance data from almost a year ago dating about a week before the attack on this station, and," she paused briefly bringing up a file on a holographic suite in a corner of the room which was based off of the standard FTL comm system the Alliance used, showing a single text file of what appeared to be a set of predesignated orders with a time-lock according to the header on the filename. "a list of mission directives, preset objectives, navigational data, and communication records unfortunately in text only."

I was surprised at the sheer amount of data that she had been able to recover but this… it wasn't just a simple list of objectives this was a tactical analysis of Cronos Station's defense network, Cerberus patrol routes for almost all of the ships on duty during July of last year, the list just went on and on even detailing structural weaknesses in Cronos Station's outer defensive armor, this information could only have come from someone on the inside of Cerberus' command infrastructure.

"Good work Ms. Hendrickson, let me know if you find anything else." I stated before I brought my Omni-tool online to call Harper to let him know what she had found in the memory cores.

However before I could finish preparing to call Harper I heard her say, "Actually there is something else."

Her sudden reply had caught me off-guard making me turn slowly to face her before asking, "What is it Ms. Hendrickson?"

She said only one thing, "This."

She brought up a map detailing a region of space I had taken a quick look at on the way to the computer sciences division so I could become more acquainted with the layout of explored space in order to prepare for the eventual Reaper invasion, "The Arquilan Rift?"

"Yes and," she quickly input something on her data-pad and a series of red dots had been laid out over several areas in an unmapped section of the Arquilan Rift one of four major regions in the star cluster in question, "this is where the ship that these data cores were taken from had been sent out on patrol on several separate occasions. These coordinates are the locations where several ships had disappeared," I watched as several blue dots had been placed in the same areas as the original coordinates, "and these coordinates are where this ship has supposedly docked with either a ship or a station of some kind."

I watched as green dots were interposed over three separate locations where the largest concentrations of missing ships were placed as well as where the ship's patrol routes had originated from, and then it hit me. "You mean you found that ship's port of origin?"

"I believe I may have found a Hecate operated base, yes. If you meant if I had found their original launch point, I am afraid that data has been erased and overwritten at least eight times, so it is almost impossible to recover, however I can assign a team to look into it if you want Director."

I stood for a moment thinking it over before I said, "Save this data and send a copy to our intelligence division for verification, I want you and whomever you had assist you present in Briefing Room 12 in three hours Doctor." then I walked towards the door to the lab opening my Omni-tool to call Harper once again.

"Sir, you better clear your schedule three hours from now that lead may be a hot one, also I want you to contact Petrovsky and notify him of a potential target, I will contact Commodore Valurik and see if he knows anything about the Arquilan Cascade, and I want Briefing Room 12 prepped for an emergency briefing in exactly three hours."

"So I take it that Hecate has connections to the missing ships in the Arquilan Cluster?"

I moved to avoid running into an Asari who was biotically lifting a wall panel back into place with a Turian technician finishing up with placing their tools back into their toolbox and closed a fabrication app on their Omni-tool before securing the panel back into place. "Yes, apparently that frigate Petrovsky captured during the attack possibly had been part of a patrol group that had either destroyed or captured those missing ships. On a side note I want you to look at a data package I had Dr. Ivana Hendrickson send to our intelligence division.", I moved towards the elevator which I could take all the way up to Harper's office on Deck 12 all the while running through a list of readily available ships, personnel, and combat equipment that could be readied at a moment's notice.

The walk to the elevator took me about thirty seconds from where I had been while I was avoiding the people in the hallway, when I was finally able to reach Commodore Valurik I was greeted with the flanging voice of a retired Turian veteran of the First Contact War who I had personally recruited to fill a gap in the Cerberus fleet's naval command structure. His first assignment however was overseeing the refit of his command ship the Excalibur, following in the footsteps of Harper's affection for using names found in the lore and history of ancient human cultures such as the Greeks and Romans, I decided to use the subjects of old human lore, such as the Arthurian legends (aka King Arthur) to use for the names of Cerberus operated dreadnoughts that were purchased from the governments of the Council races, such was the case of the Turian dreadnought we had purchased during November of last year. The refits the Excalibur had been receiving were mostly structural and then there were the major overhauls. The spinal guns were removed and replaced in favor of replacing them with reinforced hull superstructure, a large hangar bay capable of holding eight fighter squadrons (five fighters each), a full complement of twenty Cerberus modified Kodiak shuttles (which were based off of the Hecate models we had salvaged from the attack on Chronos) that had been designed for stealth operations with the use of baffled engines and a hull coating based off of the Hecate Frigate as well. Then there were the "big guns" we used to replace the original spinal guns with spinal guns based off of designs we had "acquired" from the Asari Republic's original designs for the Destiny Ascension's main gun which we had modified even further from the current version that was installed on the famous Asari flagship, which of course led to a few heat issues however we managed to work around that by installing a specialized cooling system derived directly from the Fire-Lance Project and the actual results of the guns in question have on targets of similar design and protection to the Destiny Ascension was comparable to firing an old .454 caliber Elephant gun to open up an aluminum can, except this Elephant gun was actually a pair of mass accelerator cannons modified to fire a pair of rounds the size of a Volkswagen Beetle at forty percent of the speed of light, which didn't leave much left once the rounds hit. The hull was fitted with our version of Silaris Armor, Pulsed laser batteries were installed and linked directly into the GARDIAN system, and the biggest differences between the Excalibur and another Turian dreadnought, not only did it have a primary kinetic barrier system, but also secondary and tertiary barrier systems as well as the reactor output to power them, and a pair of dreadnought Titan model FTL drive cores which enabled the Excalibur to move at an average flanking speed on par with a standard Geneva class Alliance cruiser. Long story short Valurik's personal command ship was unofficially the only ship with the firepower and technological backing to stand up to almost any ship in the galaxy, at least until Sovereign shows up.

My short trip in the elevator was filled by a conversation with Valurik about his knowledge of the Arquilan Cluster which was, surprisingly, accurate enough to validate some of the data recovered from the memory cores to indicate an old Turian Naval facility which was built as a resupply facility but was abandoned after several convoys were supposedly lost due to the Cluster's own hazards. He also confirmed several issues that may arise inside the cluster, especially when ships enter a region which was simply known as the Arquilan Void, a relatively small nebula that covers an entire planetary system in the Arquilan Cluster, it wasn't unknown for ships to get lost there, and there were reports of a single habitable system that contained planets capable of supporting both Levo-amino and Dextro-amino life, the odds of a system containing planets of Garden world capacity such as the planets in the report filed by the Hierarchy however were statistically impossible but there they were two Levo-amino based planets, and one Dextro-amino based world, and another planet with a Levo-amino ecosystem that was essentially twice the size of the Earth, with almost forty percent of its landmass being considered a tundra, then another twenty percent was essentially desert, ten percent was a massive jungle region covering a large chain of islands the size of New Zealand and a small continent approximately the size of Australia's northern coast. It was also the only planet in the entire region that had acceptable oxygen to nitrogen ratios that would allow easy colonization, the only problem with the planet itself was it was only discovered a few years prior to the First Contact War and was immediately slated for further exploration by the Turian Hierarchy after they had discovered signs of previously unknown ruins in a major desert region. There had been a single fleet dispatched to examine the site, but when they arrived there had not been a single building found at the site, there were signs of intelligent life however. A nomadic society of bipedal insectoids with some reptilian traits such as serpentine eyes, and the traits they had similar to an insect were a dense exoskeleton, a set of small but flexible mandibles that appeared to be able to be used to affect their normal speech (or as it was determined by an autopsy performed on the corpse of one of their species that had apparently died from unknown means almost two days prior to its discovery, each mandible was dense enough to actually cut quarter inch steel under what would have been considered a hard bite based off of an examination of the "jaw structure"), and surprisingly enough an ultra-dense muscle structure, the distinguishing trait of this species however was a full skeletal system in direct contrast to their insectoid traits. Their society apparently had an innate distrust of the unknown however as they shied away from any form of contact at the first sign of the Turian expedition by disappearing into the desert with no trace left of their passing, and even with the aid of aerospace fighters they were unable to track even an entire caravan. All in all the planet known as Kasek's Haven in reference to the captain of a Turian frigate that had run low on their supply of fresh water after their water recycling system had been taken offline after a maintenance check discovered a massive colony of microbes that had failed to be killed, leading to the discovery that the filtration system had a flaw in several of the main filters which could take up to several days to replace all of them, which amounted to three days, three days that the crew could not afford to go without water.

The conversation with Commodore Valurik continued for several minutes even going on to include a pair of old repair docks that had been abandoned, also due to the many navigational hazards of the Arquilan Cascade, which was by far the most dangerous region, it was a several planetary systems closely spaced so you could easily travel from one system to another in about four or five hours in FTL even with the slowest freighter available it would take about ten hours at most to travel between the outermost systems nonstop. The major hazards of this particular area were threefold, asteroid fields supposedly sitting completely untouched by any form of civilization (disregarding the occasional pirate ship or "phantom contact" which had led to several instances of panic amongst civilian explorers), several forms of defensive emplacements from the Turian forces stationed in the region including unmanned defenses such as mines, and even a few VI controlled GARDIAN batteries (all of which were supposedly disarmed, however with reported pirate activity in the Arquilan Cluster they are to be considered a hazard even when "destroyed"), and finally there was yet another massive nebula that stretched from the "Southern edge" of the Arquilan Void to the system known as Arquil where the Mass Relays for the entire region were located. The nebula itself was known for its fair share of missing ships, however the things that labeled it as dangerous were, the lack of operational NAV buoys, no FTL communication beyond whatever systems a ship was equipped with, massive electrical disturbances such as "lightning" which in reality were plasma discharges caused from reactions in pockets of unstable gases of unknown origin and composition, sensors were to be considered unreliable at best due to not only the plasma discharges but also a natural "storm" of similar activity known as The Maelstrom of Guriya which was named for the wreckage of a civilian owned Asari cruiser that was refitted as an exploration ship that was declared lost with all hands, including a sizeable Salarian complement of one hundred scientists and engineers listed amongst the crew, almost eight years after the War. It was considered to be foolish to head into the area without anything less than a full fleet with the intention of establishing lines of supply, and communication for the eventual rush of colonists to the area in the event that such things could be established and the region mapped thoroughly.

I hurriedly walked to the briefing room collecting a small entourage consisting of Dr. Hendrickson, Dr. Ulan, several other humans in uniform (four in total) with the rank of Lieutenant and one Captain and insignias indicating they were from Cerberus' main ground assault forces, and finally a female Turian, in a uniform used by Cerberus' naval branch, that I didn't recognize at least until I saw the name on their uniform, "Captain Eronia it is a pleasure to meet you in person, I trust that the Fury hasn't given you much trouble during testing?"

Captain Eronia turned to look at me with a stoic expression with grey eyes that looked tired, a pair of faint scars from shrapnel crossed her face from her left brow-plate to the bottom of her jaw's right side, and the same blue facial markings as Garrus Vakarian, indicating she was from Palaven itself.

"Director.", she nodded in a slow and deliberate manner, the fatigue she was suffering from was due to the over dedicated professionalism she had acquired in the Turian navy, having served up until the loss of her frigate after a pirate raid on a facility owned and operated by the manufacturing firm called Elanus Risk Control, even though she successfully repelled the pirate group her ship was destroyed after it had sustained catastrophic damage to its engines and reactor forcing the crew to abandon the frigate. Harper, Valurik, and I had read the after action report she had submitted to the Turian navy and I felt there was nothing she could have done differently, although Valurik thought there were a few events that could have been avoided even though they would not have affected the outcome in the slightest. As was expected the Turian navy was less than pleased with the loss of her frigate and had ordered a full inquiry which led her to an early retirement and honorable discharge with the provision that she would never join the navy again except in times of war, however if I had not pulled a few strings through our agents in the Hierarchy the inquiry probably would have resulted in several charges of dereliction of duty from one of the more… over-zealous admirals on the board of inquiry appointed to the investigation. It had taken awhile to locate her after her retirement in order for us to offer her a position, which she initially refused however we had left her the means to contact us via a one use extranet address that would allow her to contact an operative of ours on Palaven. She had waited almost a month before she had contacted us and after a short discussion regarding what we expect from our personnel and a quick overview of her assignment she was promptly brought to Minuteman Station, after a full-body scan to prevent listening devices from making their way into our organization or more importantly onto a ship equipped with an FTL comm that she would be receiving her orders, for her initial assignment as captain of a patrol vessel in the Terminus Systems tasked with mainly stopping Batarian backed slavers and pirates from raiding both Council controlled space, and the nearby Systems Alliance held regions in the Attican Traverse. I had also not met her personally during her employment with Cerberus, until today that is.

I returned the nod with one of my own before asking, "Captain, what do you think of your new assignment?"

Captain Eronia straightened herself and the fatigued look she was sporting seemed to evaporate instantly before she replied, "The Fury is far more challenging to command than my previous ship however it is a welcome challenge."

I furrowed my eyebrows in response to her statement, "What do you mean by that exactly captain?"

She gave a tired but amused sigh before she said, "Well it is designed with stealth in mind, however its armaments are akin to what you would expect in an Salarian STG lab and not actually a fully functional warship that is, well," she turned to look out the window to observe the nearby docking arm that was attached to a 200 meter long frigate that resembled a miniaturized version of a Class II cruiser (which as it turns out was the type of cruiser Aria had "acquired" in Mass Effect 3's Omega DLC) that instead of featuring a spinal mass accelerator cannon it held an eight meter wide lens made from an artificial compound similar to the synthetic sapphire found in the Atlas Mech's armored canopy, "exceptionally over-done."

I looked at Captain Eronia with nothing but pure amusement beginning to make its way into my voice, "Overdone? I have never thought of it like that Captain, I merely wanted a frigate," indicating the Fury with my right thumb being jabbed in its direction over the same shoulder, "that could fight its way out of Hell itself if it was caught finding out what kind of after-shave the Devil wore."

"That was what I was afraid of Director."

I couldn't help but laugh at that one before I finally said, "Come on, the briefing is starting soon."

Third Person/Narrator's POV

As Ian, and the various personnel behind him filtered into the large, and dark room motion sensors detected their arrival and lights began to flicker to life as Haptic Interfaces lining a massive rectangular table made from a white backed pane of half-inch thick glass with a very familiar yellow symbol floating above the center beneath a meter wide circular holographic projector. Office chairs fit for the wealthiest of industrialists lined the sides of the eight meter long, three meter wide table until they were moved by a crowd of almost twenty people from the major races of the galaxy, nine Humans, six Asari, four Turians, and one Salarian. The lone Salarian Dr. Ulan sat next to Dr. Ivana Hendrickson discussing the contents of a pair of data-pads, Harper sat at the far end of the table with Kai Leng standing about a foot behind his right shoulder eyeing the occupants of one of the most secure rooms on Cronos Station, and at the opposite end Ian opens his Omni-tool and begins the briefing that will decide the fates of not only Cerberus and the galaxy, but also the fate of a new face just awakening to this new world.