Prologue
They say your life flashes before your eyes when you die; I guess you start with regrets before you get to the good stuff. I could see every mistake I made that had led me to this place, to the end of everything I knew and loved. I knew that my friends would die because I believed in foolish things like destiny and fate. They couldn't be more than 10 yards away, probably trying to save me. I wanted to tell them to leave me and save themselves, but all I could do was scream incoherently
The pain alone was enough to make me beg for death. I couldn't see or hear, like my eyes and ears had ripped out, but I could still feel what was happening to me. I could feel a spike rip through my chest and heart, but somehow it was still beating. Acid burned in my veins and I could taste the poison that filled my stomach. I continued to breathe even as the needles tore my lungs. I wanted it all to end, I didn't want to feel this, or think about what was being done to me.
The pain intensified now, I could almost feel my bones crumble to shards to rip through my flesh. I deserved this, for falling for such an obvious trap. How could I believe that I was worthy of being a vessel of salvation against evil? I had seen the signs of death and decay but my pride would never have let me turn back. Now I paying the price for coming here, to this last relic of a race long ago wiped from existence. I only prayed that my blood would satisfy the machines; that my comrades would be spared if I suffered for them.
But somehow I knew it wasn't satisfied with me alone...
Instinctively, I knew something was wrong. I could almost sense they were in trouble, that this was not a ruin but a trap set up by our enemies. A trap I had set in motion. There was no great path laid out before me, it was only the bait to lure in the foolish. Now they would pay for my sins with their lives.
I thought of my commander, who trusted me with the lives of his crew. John Shepard, the spacer who became the Hero of Elysium, who saved the council from Saren and Sovereign. The man who survived death itself to destroy the Collector's base. The greatest threat to the Reapers, brought down by a weak man's ambitions. I knew that he would forgive me for this, that he'd never curse my name for damning him and the galaxy for my foolishness. The shame ate away at me more than this machine that was dissecting me ever could. I had helped kill the only hope of all sentient life, and I knew he would still try and save me.
But mostly, I thought of her...and I knew my greatest regret
You never realize what you have until it's gone, and it was especially true now. I knew she meant more to me than anything else. More than the mission, more than my own life. I would suffer this agony to save her, but I wanted to die because I was killing her too.
I wish I had known this sooner, that I could have had this epiphany before I was nothing more but a blob of burned out pain receptors. Would she have felt the same way as I did? Could she have loved me as much as I realized I loved her?
I could almost imagine what would have been if I had never come here, if I hadn't become the harbinger of the apocalypse. I could almost see us being together, loving one another. Comforted by the thought of being able to hold and comfort her. If I could just die to spare her life, I would gladly end it all.
The regrets seemed to fade as I thought of my friends, my family. Now I could see my life flash before my unseeing eyes. Not the life I left behind but one I had lived so briefly. That was when I knew that this was the end. Even before the pain left my body and my heart started to slow, I knew it was over. My mind and body were relieved and accepting, but my soul clung to this existence. It refused to leave the broken shell, even as the darkness enveloped it.
Death waited patiently...