Lazarus Rising

by KaiserKou

Like Lazarus of myth Commander Shepard is raised from the dead - only to find all his resources stripped from him and the galaxy on the brink of ultimate destruction. Can he trust those around him in the coming fight? Can he fight for the lost? They say it's a suicide mission. He intends to prove them wrong.

1. Lazarus Rising

Well, response to The First Kiss was overwhelmingly positive (:-D) so here we go: full novelisation of Mass Effect 2 &3 with flashbacks to Mass Effect (OG). We begin at the beginning of Mass Effect 2.

I hope you like it.

The theme song for this chapter is, unfortunately, not in English. The theme song is När Vindarna Viskar mitt Namn (When Spirits are Calling my Name), by Roger Pontare. There's an English version but… it's crap.

Let's begin! But first, let's do something I've never done before: begin with a bible quote.

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Chapter 1: Lazarus Rising

---

Then they took away the stone from the place where the dead was laid. And the Lord lifted up his eyes, and said, Father, I thank thee that thou hast heard me. And I knew that thou hearest me always: but because of the people which stand by I said it, that they may believe that thou hast sent me.

And when he thus had spoken, he cried with a loud voice, Lazarus, come forth!

And he that was dead came forth, bound hand and foot with graveclothes: and his face was bound about with a shroud.

---

"Is that him?" Cell Director Miranda Lawson asked roughly as the steel crate with her mission objective inside of it was carried off the MSV Haros into shuttle bay 3 of Minuteman Station, a research facility headed by Cerberus hidden away in the far reaches of the Horsehead Nebula.

Around her were guards – Cerberus troops in ebony white armour and black, face-obscuring visors toting heavy assault rifles – and researchers and work-staff both, the entirety of the Lazarus Cell present for the true commencement of their mission. They almost looked military where they stood in ordered lines, in uniform and armour, her head of security in a black and white worksuit that accentuated his muscular and trim figure where he stood beside her. But none of them were military. None of them were even sanctioned under the Systems Alliance government. Most of the guards were convicts or dishonourably discharged renegades, all of the scientists were left off members of their faculties kicked out or disbarred. To a one the lot of them were criminals. But that didn't matter to Miranda, nor to her superiors.

Because they were Cerberus.

Some called them terrorists, remembering bombings and assassinations and sabotage performed at their hand against people hindering the "Human agenda" all over the galaxy. Their goal was singular, their ambition complete, their resolve unwavering:

The advancement of mankind in the galaxy, no matter the cost or the actions needed to be undertaken. All means were acceptable in the pursuit of their glory. And the greater the mountain of alien bones they had to climb over to reach their rightful place in the universe, the better. They would do anything for the cause.

Even bring back the dead.

"Looks like it" Jacob Taylor, former Alliance marine and Corsair and her current head of security and chief enforcer, answered her rough question as the four Cerberus operatives disguised as common freighter personal descended the ramp from the MSV Haros's rear quarters and bringing the metal container with them. It was a coffin, in more sense than one, and it certainly looked it, all steely sleek and long and broad to contain the corpse of a warrior locked in cryogenic stasis as not to deteriorate any more than it already had. Slowly the men carrying it brought it would onto the floor of the loading bay and set it down with an echoing thud before their boss.

Miranda Lawson was a beautiful woman, and she knew it. She knew quite a lot of things, for behind the façade of her near-angelic appearance lay a shrewd and calculating mind ruled by a conscience long since made icy cold and uncaring to the point of cruelty. Those who didn't know her presumed her nothing but surface with a slender but almost impossibly curvaceous body, long shining raven hair and bright blue eyes that promised sin and pleasure to those foolish enough to imagine things that were not there. But the men that had carried the body with them knew her, and so averted their eyes and scurried away like rats when she approached with sure steps, the heels of her full body cat suit clicking against the floor of the shuttle bay. They were scared, and rightly so.

Miranda Lawson was a beautiful woman. Beautiful, but terrifying, and deadlier than a Krogan on stimpacks. She punched a code into the pad on the side of the coffin after having it read her fingerprint, a four digit code: 1143. And with a hiss of equalising atmospheric pressure the metal lid of the coffin slid off to show a cryostasis pod with a polished glass surface covered by a thick white fabric.

"We finally got him away from the Shadow Broker, ma'am" one of the operatives that had captained the MSV Haros spoke with a tremble in his voice as she reached down and began to peel the shroud away from the surface of the stasis pod. "A Squidhead bitch- I mean an Asari helped us recover it. I hope it is to your specifications, ma'am". Of course he was a xenophobe, Miranda reflected as she uncovered the surface of the stasis pod to look upon the man within. Most people who joined Cerberus of their free will were. Only a select few, like herself, believed in the cause out of more altruistic reasons. Though her reasons for being in Cerberus were quite selfish in other respects, were they not?

She pulled the last edge of the white fabric away from the face of the glass pod to see… a man. Given how much she had heard, how much she had been impressed to believe, how much she had been working towards seeing this project through, it was actually a little disappointing. But then again, what had she been expecting? Burning eyes or eagle wings or a golden halo like the saints of the craven days of yore? Foolish notions, surely – yet he was far too normal for the legend he had built.

Within the pod lay the body of a man, dead for months now but preserved out of the hope for something greater. He was handsome enough, she supposed, in a military sort of way: his hair had been shaved close to his scalp, as had the follicle hair on his cheeks and chin, hair dark brown but not quite black. His face was rough, skin sunken in death lined in the weariness one often finds in soldiers thrown into wars they never had an inclination to fight but who had decided to keep on marching regardless, his facial structure symmetrical in the extreme with a nose that kept on the heavy prominence of his brow in an unbroken line, and his jawline razor sharp. His eyes, eyes she knew were an odd shade of deep green, were deeply set and even in death she could tell that they were used to staring down danger. Still he was just a man, a dead man – but she seemed to be the only one to see that.

She knew what he had done, of course. He had saved the Citadel, the cornerstone of galactic governance, and the Council of representatives from its most esteemed alien races, from an ancient evil come anew to purge the galaxy of all sentient life. He had defeated that living ship, Sovereign, the vanguard of their destruction and obliteration, at the cost of almost an entire human navy and hundreds of lives. And his former deeds were not so small either: the first human Spectre, the saviour of Elysium and a veteran of the Skyllian Blitz and the bloody retribution that followed, a leader of a diverse team of soldiers both human and alien that had travelled the galaxy hunting a rouge Spectre of his own order. He was a powerful Biotic, a leader by nature, a hero born… or that was what everyone kept telling Miranda.

But she knew that the actions of people should more be laid at the feet of their makers and their consequences rather than the people in question themselves. Most people served little function but as tools for others. She didn't care much for his legend. It was no doubt one part fabrication to two parts embellishment.

It just so happened to be that her superior, the Illusive Man, believed that he was the tool they needed to fight the ancient evil that was coming. Sovereign was a Reaper, a living ship capable of unimaginable destruction, and it was but one of many. More were coming, and he was the one they needed to save them.

Or so she was told.

"Bring him to the operations room" she ordered, and the people around her scurried to obey. "I want him scanned and prepped for examination within fifteen minutes. We've wasted too much time already".

"You heard the director!" Jacob barked needlessly as the workforce, escorted by guards ordered to shoot at even the most minor suspicions of treachery, hurried to obey her directives. "Move it, people".

And aside, more to herself than others, she spoke dourly as they took the coffin and the corpse away deeper into the station. "Bringing you back from the dead will be difficult, Commander Shepard. I hope you aren't wasting my time".

---

He was dead. He knew it.

There was nothing but darkness around John Shepard for… well, there was no time, was there? Last thing he remembered was being flung out of the burning ruins of his ship in a fierce explosion, his body spiralling away into the vacuum of space towards some nameless shell of a planet in the far and looming distance. Too late he had realised that a piece of shrapnel had gone through his protective barriers and pierced his armour by the neck, depressurising it quickly as he drifted away into the nothingness. He struggled at first, but it was useless. You can't fight a lack of oxygen, and you can't fight the absolute zero temperature of space, and in the end…

Darkness claimed him. There was no sense of time or consciousness or thought. Just nothing… but somehow he suddenly became aware of that emptiness. Was his brain booting up, or…? Well, he sure was no scientist or doctor, though he had training in battle field medicine and damage control of many kinds, so he had no idea what was happening. Was he… was he dead? He thought he was. After all that had happened he surely was. Was he going to hell? He was dead, but he was obviously still thinking, so maybe there was an afterlife after all. Was the emptiness, the loneliness… was that hell?

Then there was pain. A pain was blooming in back of his neck and began to spread throughout his body, and slowly but surely a low hum grew in his ears. Other sounds – shuffling feet, hurried but intangible voices, echoes of a sterile room, the bleeping of machines as they struggled to do… something. Damn it, his neck was hurting, and his face began to feel like it had been sand-blasted right off, rugged and worn and stinging. As the noise around him grew even more chaotic, more frantic, he struggled to open his eyes.

"There, on the monitor" a calm voice, a woman's voice, a strangely Australian voice, spoke through the chaos and the pain, indicating something distant with hurried disinterest. "Something is wrong". Shepard struggled to open his eyes and saw a grey bulkhead lined with piping, marked with Latin letters and numbers in tiny and red. A human Systems Alliance space station?

"He's reacting to outside stimuli" a significantly more distressed voice spoke, reading off data from a monitor in the way that panicked scientists often do, a male and ineffectual and weasel-y voice. "Showing an awareness of his surroundings". Shepard trailed his eyes around him, saw a robotic arm adapted for surgery and hazy white lights and disused shapes moving around him, every noise echoing brutally through his head. "Oh my God, Miranda – I think he's waking up!"

"Damn it, Wilson! He's not ready yet" that Australian woman spoke in the tone of a clerk who was about to have his last nine hours of work eradicated by a passing dickhead – extreme annoyance and frustration at her fortunes. "Give him the sedative!" And then she came into sight, leaning over him.

Ash?

No, it wasn't Ashely Williams, his Ash. He thought it was at first, his vision hazy and blurred and her dark hair seeming brown at first, but no, it was raven, jet black with the lustre of silk in sunshine, and her skin was not olive dark but pale, snowy white, eyes piercing blue and calculating as she stared down at him. She was wearing some sort of tight uniform, white and skin-tight, and the black symbol upon her collar, a jagged ring supported by gold chevrons, was familiar, somehow. It was bad, that symbol, but as a button was pushed and the pain went away he couldn't quite place it as drugs flooded his system.

He reached for her, wondering where he was, wondering what the hell was going on and where his ship and his people were, but she caught his ineffectual flailing with nary a look and gazed into his eyes. "Shepard – don't try to move" she urged softly as she forced his arm down to his chest. "Just lie still. Try to stay calm".

"Heartrate still climbing" that weasel spoke as his pain went away and things got… stranger, more… fluffy if that made any sense. "Brain activity is off the charts, biotic implants lighting up like a goddamn Christmas tree!" Another series of bleeps seemed to push everyone into a panic – everyone but that woman with the black hair and the icy blue eyes. "Stats pushing into the red zone! It's not working!"

She let go off his arm and disappeared from his sight. "Another dose" she ordered, his words razor sharp against the darkness that was closing in on Shepard. "Now!"

"Heart-rate dropping, stats falling back into the normal range" that man spoke distantly. "That was close. Too close. We almost lost him".

"I told you your estimates were off" that woman spoke again, voice echoing through the black. "Run the numbers again".

And with her voice echoing in his ears Shepard tumbled down into the darkness of unconsciousness and the horrid corridors of memory.

"Shepard!" It was Ashley Williams, his Ash, who shouted in near-panic as she thundered down the halls of the SSV Normandy in full armour missing only her helmet, a few strands of her dark, dark hair loose from the customary bun she had put it up in as she went. He knew she was approaching, but he stood by his locker by the main battery as she hurried closer despite the explosions around them and calmly if forcefully snapped the helmet of his armour into place.

"Distress beacon is ready to launch" he informed her as he turned around, a little island of momentary peace around them in the chaos. She too put on her helmet then, showing only her eyes, dark and utterly lovely, through her transparent visor.

"Will the Alliance get her in time?" She was forcing herself to adopt a military fashion then, all brusque and business, but he knew her. She was an amazing woman beneath the G.I Jane exterior, layered and complicated, and right now he could tell that she was scared. He needed to assure her. And, in a way, he needed to assure himself.

An explosion rocked the ship that made them stumble towards each other, and with nary a look he held her before he glanced over his shoulder and saw that the communicator in the main battery had shortened out. "The Alliance won't abandon us" he told her as he gauged the situation and found fires erupting around them, going for an extinguisher that stood by the lockers for emergencies like these. "We just need to hold on. Get everyone to the escape pods".

He tossed the extinguisher to her and braced against a locker as the ship rocked again. "Joker's still in the cockpit – he won't abandon ship!" she replied as she too went about putting out fires in the battery. "I'm not leaving either!" Her voice, the hasty look over her shoulder; absolute loyalty… just like Kaidan, like Jenkins. He would not see her die like he had.

"I need you to get the crew on the evac shuttles" he went to her and jerked her arm to make her pay full attention to him. "I'll take care of Joker".

"Commander-" she protested as he made his way away from her towards the upper parts of the ship.

"Ash" he looked to her, eyes piercing and flinty beneath his helmet's visor. "Go. Now".

Reluctantly she nodded. "Aye aye, Skipper" she confirmed and darted away. Once she was out of sight down a hallway he stumbled about the battery, bracing himself against an overhang before he found the button that sounded the ship-wide evacuation alarm. It was time to abandon ship. With fires everywhere like that… the ship was done for. The Normandy, his Normandy, was going down – and there was nothing he could do to save her now. As the sound of evac shuttles launching came from deeper within the ship he bared his teeth and struck the nearest bulkhead in frustration. No, now was not the time for inaction. The captains of old Earth had gone down with their ships, but he was no captain. Not yet.

He was Commander Shepard, and this ship was his ship. The crew was his crew, his people. And he'd be damned if he was just going to stand by and let his people be laid low.

"Mayday, mayday! This is the SSV Normandy!" Jeff Moraeu, Joker, the best damn pilot in the galaxy, spoke over the loudspeakers, his words no doubt plugged into the intercom instead of the emergency transmission. "Sustaining heavy fire!" As Joker spoke Shepard rushed down the hallway from the battery and into the mess area, passing debris and the burning table at which they had used to have their meals, around the elevator to the cargo bay and the evac area and up the stairs towards the main deck and the CIC. A mass effect field barred his way, a field at which he activated his own Biotics and shouldered through in a haze of burning blue dark energy –

Only to be struck still by the sight before him. The main deck of the Normandy had been blasted apart, chairs and shattered bulkheads and the galaxy map's shards hovering in the air, and the hull of the ship was all but gone, showing empty space, a distant planet, and the glare of a merciless sun and the apathy of uncaring stars beyond. He walked through the destruction, making sure he moved slowly and with one foot to the floor at all times as to ustilise the ships own mass as a makeshift gravitational body. If he hurried now he might lift off and be thrown into the vacuum that was killing the rest of his ship. He set his sight on the far end of the destruction, the shields and barriers keeping the cockpit in the distance safe glowing faintly blue, and made his way there. He could cry for the Normandy later. Right now he needed to take care of Joker.

In the end he passed the shields and began to hurry to the pilot's side where he was sitting frantically pounding buttons and making ineffectual manoeuvres in the pilot's chair, a rebreather safety helmet over his head. "Come on, Joker! We have to get out of here!" Shepard shouted at him.

"No!" came the defiant cry back as Joker pulled up the control of the portside thrusters and saw that they were out of commission. "I won't abandon the Normandy! I can still save her!"

"The Normandy's lost" Shepard leant in over him and laid an arm around his brittle-bone disease struck shoulders. "Going down with the ship won't change that" he added and pointed to the destruction beyond the cockpit. Joker gave a look, and at the harrowing sight tears came into his eyes and he moved his hands way from the command console before him.

"Yeah, okay" he spoke then, defeated. "Help me up". But as they stood they looked out through the shattered hull and saw… a strange ship, unlike any Shepard had ever seen before, all rocky and ragged and the size of a very large cruiser, moving mercilessly towards them once again. "They're coming around for another attack!"

And true to his words that alien ship fired again, hungry golden beams of energy lancing through the ruins of the Normandy for the misericorde strike. Grabbing Joker's arm rightly Shepard pulled at his pilot, near-carrying the cripple towards the last evac shuttle on board. He could feel something break, but he knew Joker would survive it. He would make sure of it.

"Watch the arm!" Joker protested as Shepard opened the doors of the shuttle and pushed him on, helping him settle down on a seat, standing in the opening of the shuttle as another explosion thundered through his ship. This one was bad, the killing blow, as more explosions followed and tore the ship clean apart. As the ruins of the Normandy heaved Shepard, not strapped down or secured, was thrown clear out of the shuttle and slammed into a far wall as the internal pressure of the cockpit equalised, and Joker emitted a terrified cry of "Commander!"

No. Damn it, Joker couldn't reach the launching mechanism on his own, and the doors of the shuttle were still open but irrevocably unreachable for Shepard as he clung to the ruins of the cockpit with all the strength he could muster. He could perhaps charge at it with biotic strength – no, that demanded friction and a place to stand, and he had neither as he hung precariously from a small grip. What could he do? He looked around and saw the ejection button to launch the shuttle. If he pressed that, Joker would life. He himself would surely die, but his pilot, his people, would surely live.

His wry smile went unseen by Joker as the pilot beheld, horrified, his commander moving and slamming that button with extreme force. He screamed at him, begging him not to do this, as the doors slid shut before him and the shuttle launched, leaving only a single Spectre armoured in black amongst the burning ruins of the Normandy.

And then, Shepard, at last all alone and facing certain doom, was struck by one last explosive blast, shrapnel tearing through his armour as his already precarious grip was broken and he was thrown out into the void of space. He watched as the remnants of his ship, torn apart and mutilated, crashed by him towards the surface of that distant dark planet below, but then he felt the crack, heard the hiss as his armour broke, and struggled to lay his hands over the hole in his neck as the pressure within tried to equalise with the emptiness without.

He struggled for a while, but in the end…

He had died.

And then he woke up.

For a moment there was peace as he blearily opened his eyes, his neck stiff and unresponsive, his limbs heavy and cumbersome as his senses slowly returned to him. That ceiling above him… it was the same ceiling marked with human letters that he had dreamt of before. Or had he remembered it? Everything was so hazy. It felt like his head was full of cotton as he looked around but saw nothing but blurry shapes, the sounds in his ears garbled as if they had been filled with water. But one sense didn't betray him. The room smelled of metal, recycled air freshened by a slight hint of citrus no doubt added by the carbon dioxide filters, and a heavy stench of antisepctic. Was he in the med-bay aboard the Normandy?

No, Dr Chakwas had always preferred her medbay to smell more like cinnamon than citrus. Said it reminded her of her childhood in Buckinghamshire when she treated Joker-

Joker.

The Normandy.

No.

No.

No!

He blinked to clear the haze from his eyes and struggled to sit up, his body not moving as easily as it once had. He had to save his ship, save his crew – or had he already done that? His memory was all a jumble as a rocking sensation brought him further to an awakened state, but he was lying in a medical slab and not a cradle. So what was happening…?

The room was obviously part of some sort of medical facility, Medi-gel dispensers lining one far wall while simple surgery robots, no doubt run by sophisticated VI programs, littered the room, and a few tables cluttered with medical supplies filled the floorspace that wasn't occupied by his slab. A locker in the far corner, a little out of place and opened to show shelves cleared of everything but a single gun – didn't they know that Alliance regulations prohibited the storing of weapons in such a flimsy manner and that weapons lockers shouldn't be left opened and unsupervised? Was this even an Alliance ship? He could tell they were in space – the artificial gravity that wrenched his stomach in that particular way informed him of that, but maybe this was a space station? Yes, it seemed that way. This was too roomy for a med-bay on a ship where no space was wasted, and it didn't have any advanced scanners or immediate treatment facilities for acute burns, fractures and gunshot wounds. A dedicated surgery and recovery room? You didn't see such things other than at planet-side hospitals and space station medical facilities… unless it was an Asari ship. But the human lettering everywhere and the way it was adapted for the slightly larger human build meant that-

That rocking sensation came again. Something was exploding in the distance. The Normandy?! No, there were no explosions in space. You couldn't hear them, and he heard these. A voice crackled out of unseen communicators. "Commander, are you awake?" it seemed to ask, but it was hard to tell. "Shepard, do you hear me? Get out of that bed now! This facility is under attack!"

Attack…? Where… No, that voice was familiar. Female, soft, musically Australian, but the only Australian woman he knew was that idiot Hannigan he had served with in Hammer Squad back in the 103rd, and the voice over the speakers didn't have quite the same brain-dead edge to it. People spoke with an Austrailian accent on Trident too, but it didn't have quite the looping edge of the Trident tongue. No, she was Earthborn, just like him – and she was saying that the station was under attack.

He forced himself to sit up and swung his legs over the side of the slab, grunting and baring his teeth as he did so. Everything hurt, like that time he had been captured by Batarian pirates while on patrol when he had beaten and kicked and shot until only a four months of recovery on Elysium could heal him. He hoped it wouldn't have the same outcome as that time. That had ended with him defending Elysium on his own against the raider menace. He was not going through that again.

The medal ceremonies afterwards were nothing short of endless. Damn, how he hated to stand on military formality.

"Shepard" that voice spoke again as he tried to stand and failed. His legs wouldn't obey him. Nothing in his body seemed to work as it should. His jaw felt out of place and his lungs hurt with every breath. No. He stumbled to his feet, his knees trembling and almost buckling beneath his weight as if he had never stood before. He would not be beaten. "Your scars aren't healed, but I need you to get moving. The station is under attack".

Was it absurdly cold in there? He looked around and noticed that he wasn't wearing anything but a medical gown, a thin shift that did nothing to hide the fact that his muscles, once hard and springy and beholden of graceful strength, now felt flabby and soft and slack. He needed some clothes, and if the station was under attack he needed a gun. He stood on trembling legs and took a few tentative steps towards the weapon's locker by the end of the room.

"There's a pistol in the locker on the other side of the room. Hurry!" the voice urged over the intercom as he made his way over to it, finding a spare uniform in the bottom of the locker that seemed to be based off the Alliance Navy fatigues but blue and black changed to white, black and orange. He knew that colour scheme, as well as that symbol on the collar of the uniform t-shirt that was too small for his wide shoulders, but his mind was all a jumble and he didn't have time to sort it out. Pulling on the trousers and the uniform shoes he reached for the firearm and picked it up, examining it.

He could almost hear his old drill sergeant shout at him as he showed them a gun just like it. "This, maggots, is the M-3 Predator! Manufactured by those Turian shit-birds in the ERCS! Reliable, accurate sidearm for your limpy wanker wrists! Effective against armor; weak against shields and biotic barriers! So don't go shooting at some Squid-head Asari bitch with this thing, you goldbricking shitheads, unless you want to have your butt-ugly faces torn off and repurposed as a doyleys!"

Ah, Alliance Navy drill sergeants. The most volatile and inventive torturers in the entire galaxy. Good times, good times. That gun seemed to have been modified for a slot for some sort of heat sink. He had seen designs like these, but they weren't overly popular in his region of space. Or maybe they were now. For how long had he been out of commission?

"Shepard, you're in a med-bay, so there are no thermal clips around" said the voice over the loudspeaker. "You need to find some, and soon, if you don't want that pistol to overheat. I'm detecting several hacked mechs moving towards your position. They mean to kill you. You're still in an unstable condition, so refrain from using your biotics-"

Shepard tried to say something akin to "Not likely" or something snarky like that, but he couldn't get the words out. Nothing but grumbly noises and gargles made it out of his mouth, as if vocal cords had fallen asleep. How long had he been out of it? Days? A week?

No matter. He heard clanging and shuffling beyond the door of the surgery room, and so ducked in behind the slap on which he had awoken to take cover when the entrance slid open. LOKI mechs shuffled in, five of them with guns drawn, bipedal humanoid security robots designed for security detail and guard duty in locations where manpower was scarce or round-the-clock security was not an option. They too were painted orange, white and black, and that logo again – where had he seen it before? He had memories associated with that symbol, and they were all bad but hazy.

The machines seemed to have been programmed to kill him, for they opened fire as soon as they saw him moving, shuffling towards him in a loose standing formation. Rudimentary security robots like those often lacked advanced tactics protocols when employed in the civilian sector, and programming new combat doctrines into their brains often required a programmer with great battle experience. They seemed to lack that. Shepard could feel himself smirking as he watched them march towards him, the shots they fired missing him or bouncing off the surface of the slab. Question: What was the best thing when you went back into active service after shore leave?

Answer: Target practice.

He popped out of cover and fired thrice, his first two shot missing wide and striking the wall behind the machines while the third simply grazed one of their shins. No kinetic barriers or biotic shields, then? He could have taken them out with no trouble if his aim didn't waver so much. And damn it, he was starting to become aware of the fact that he was hungry. Gut-wrenchingly starving, to be precise.

He rose and fired five more times, managing to down one droid but only grazing the other four that slowly made their way towards him. He fired again, but the gun hissed and overload and he popped back into cover with a snarl of disgust as a projectile whistled over his head. If only he had a grenade or a – he slapped his forehead in frustration at his own thickness. He was a biotic. Why was he cowering like some combat engineer?

He shoved the gun, in its compacted form, into his pocket so that it jutted out of it but wasn't in the way while it cooled down and then hunkered down, crouching at the edge of the cover, focusing just so like his BCR – Biotic Combat and Recognisance – instructor had taught him at boot camp over Juipiter's moon Titan. Dark energy gathered around his hands, though it was different from before: it seemed less stable now, but much more powerful. It was draining though, and with him being as weak as he already was he had to finish this quickly.

Gathering energy around his arms and legs he leapt out of cover and sprinted at the mechs, his speed augmented by that biotic energy to a greater extent than ever before, slamming into the two droids in the front of the formation and knocking them backwards before he struck at a third before it could fire.

His fists surrounded by swirling blue he hit it square in the plated chest, the barrier energy keeping his hand from shattering like the robot's breastplate before it was slammed into the far wall, exploding in a delayed suicide explosion protocol. He was nearly hit by a shot from the last one before he went low, dodging it's shots before he ripped the gun out of its metal hand and then hurled it by its feet into some no doubt incredibly expensive medical equipment with a mighty crash.

Using that stolen gun, and the heat-sink thermal clips within, he finished off the last two with three shots to the visor from a safe distance before he left out the door through which they had attacked him, leaving the operations' room in flames and shattered chaos. He discarded that overheated gun with a contemptuous scoff and a careless throw as he made it into the next room – a prep room with observation deck dominating one upper wall of it. If he have had the time and an Omni-tool he could've overloaded the firing battery and energy source of that pistol and made it into a makeshift grenade. But he had neither. He just had to rely on thermal clipped guns, his biotics and cover to keep himself from getting killed. He had neither armour, heavy weaponry, kinetic barriers, a squad, support or even a damn shirt.

But he was only facing droids, so that was quite alright.

"Someone's hacking station security – trying to kill you" the voice of that woman came over the intercom as he took down another three mechs with their sights trained on him, taking out the rearmost one with a shot through the visor that made it explode and launch the other two within range of his biotic charge. "You obviously care nothing for my medical advice" she seemed a little peeved despite the static that made some of her words intelligible. "But try to k – Biotics to a minim – ".

"Ugh" he had to say that having a gentle Australian voice guide him through this hell as he smashed through the mechs on their way through him in the next room did reduce the shock of waking up in the middle of a droid uprising with no idea of where he was or what he was doing there. But the tutorialising she seemed to indulge in as she directed him through the rooms using security cameras and intercom feeds was more than a little patronising. He was an N7 operative. More than that, he was one of the best hand-to-hand fighters alive in the Alliance Navy right now-

Unless he had been out of it for a hundred years or something. Who knew what might have happened since the Normandy blew up. And thinking of that made him grip the stock of his gun tighter as he stumbled past a small open office occupied only by one ornery dead man and two crippled mechs. The dead man had gun in his hand and a hole through his head that had splattered blood all over his computer terminal, but the terminal itself was whole and undamaged and active to boot. Shepard made his way over to it, looking for answers.

He looked through the files on that orange screen, looking for anything to shed light on these recent events. But it seems it had gone through an automatic wipe and only a few files of little consequence remained, and with that voice over the intercom urging him on he only had time to glance through a single document before he was forced to hurry on as not to get horrendously killed. It was a locale assessment, but one of many files in a folder marked "Lazarus – resources".

Lazarus Station, previously called Edge of Horizon, is perfect for our purposes. As the project's scope expands with the reconstruction and recruitment of former Alliance resources and personal for Project Lazarus Minuteman Station has become quite crowded. Lazarus Station is much more obscure, much smaller, and much, much harder to find. On Cell Director Lawson's orders we moved the Subject there along with any and all resources needed to bring him back to life. It's been a year into the project already, but no one seems to care that we've gone over budget as we are having results. We have done, are doing, the impossible. Lazarus is rising from the grave.

What the hell…?

Shepard shook his head to clear it as he went out of that office and continued to make his way down the corridors of the station at the directions of that Australian woman. He saw one living person once, on the other side of a heavy sheet of bulletproof glass that blocked out his screaming as a slough of LOKI mechs reduced him to mincemeat by the shots of their pistols before firing impotently at the glass on the other side of which Shepard was standing. He cursed at the sight of that dying man before he went on. He couldn't save the dead, and revenge was needless for those he did not know. The only thing he could do was find someone in charge – maybe that woman speaking over the intercom – and try to get everyone else off the station.

Now, if he could just find some damn armour or maybe a shotgun –

A hiss of static and a garbled message from that woman over the station loudspeakers made it sort of sound like she was heading to meet him, but then nothing. No more. He was lost in the middle of that lonely station with a whole mass of security drones closing in on him and with no idea of where to go. But he wasn't one to lay down and give up. He survived. He carried on.

He was a soldier, and it was what he did.

Through one room, pressing on blindly, he went, the two droids in it dispatched swiftly with a strategic biotic charge and a subsequent hail of shots. He seemed to have new implants, as his biotics moved differently… if that made any sort of sense. Things beyond his control, lifts and pulls and throws, didn't seem to work as well as they used to, a lot more strain from him required to form any sort of biotic fields even as much as half a yard from his body. But that seemed to be countered by the raw strength provided by them, especially at close range, especially when he channelled his biotics around his limbs to augment his speed and strength and his physical barriers. That biotic charge technique had been almost impossible to pull off with his old implants, but with his new ones he could do one every odd minute with little adverse effect and no more than normal cool-down measures. And, quite frankly, he had never been good with pushing and pulling and throwing with his powers, or erecting barriers off his body to make stasis attacks or expanded shields. This suited him a lot better.

High risk, high reward, and keep on charging while your squad picks up the pieces after you: that was his combat doctrine. And with these new implants he was nothing short of devastating in it.

Through one door he came into a large empty mess hall, but unfortunately for him there were no food in the bins or even energy bars in the cupboards he rifled through. Cursing at his growling stomach and the metabloistic requirements of biotics he went the only way left to him: forwards. He pressed on through the doors at the far side of the mess hall and –

Finally he saw an actual living human being.

A gallery lay before him, a central atrium that went through all the five levels of the station, and on the top level they occupied a walkway connected their level to the other side across a five story drop. On the middle of the walkway, taking cover from some mechs shooting up from the level just below, crouched a man in a slick black jumpsuit uniform, his body trained to physical perfection that was leaner than Shepard's had ever been. He looked up when the opposing door slid open, gun at the ready, but his dark eyes widened when he saw that it wasn't more droids coming for his proverbial bacon. "Shepard? What the hell-!" he was interrupted and crouched down behind a row of ornamental benches when the mechs below opened fire in massed force. "Dammit!"

Shepard dashed to his side, sliding in behind the same cover as the man. "Sitrep" he barked at the stranger man as they ducked under the fire of the machines. "Stat!"

"What are you doing here?" the other man answered, more surprised than anything, not answering that military order. "I thought you were still a work in progress!"

"Are you with the Aussie woman who keeps bossing me around over the com?" Shepard barked back, not wanting to be kept in the dark a second longer than he had to.

"Miranda? Yeah! Sorry, I forgot this is all pretty new to you-" a piece of the cover protecting them was blasted off with a stray shot, making both of them curse. "I'm Jacob Taylor. I've been stationed here since-" another piece of the ornamental metal benches crumbled and hit him over the shaved head, making him curse. "Hold on a sec!" he urged, stood, shot one mech through the visor from across the chasm and then lifting it up with a biotic flash, holding it close to the others when its self-destruct protocols kicked in.

"There!" he panted as the LOKI mechs scattered, knocked down, and picked themselves up off the floor in shuffling struggle. "Things must be worse than I thought if Miranda's got you running around! I'll fill you in, but we better get you to a shuttle first!"

"I know this isn't the best time" his words came out roughly but they did come out as if Shepard was getting used to talking again "but I'm sick of stumbling around without knowing what's going on!" He held the man down with a steely grip before he could pop back out of cover to shoot.

"Fair enough" said the other fellow through teeth clenched shut. "I'll give you the quick version: you and your ship were attacked and destroyed. You were killed. Dead as dead can be when they brought you here. Our scientists spent the last two years putting you back together. You've been comatose, or worse, that whole time. Welcome back to your life, Commander".

Shit. So that was what was going on. Some assholes with the money – and the technology – to remake him had brought him back from the dead and now someone wanted them to stop being such dicks… or whatever. Who were these idiots? "This doesn't look like an Alliance facility".

"It isn't" he gruffed back, to which Shepard scowled. "I can't say much more than that for now. The Alliance officially declared you killed in action. The whole galaxy thinks you're dead. If we don't get to those evac shuttles-"

"Were there any other survivors besides me from the Normandy?" he pressed, interrupting the man.

"I'll tell you what: you help me finish off these mechs, and I'll play twenty questions with you all day once we're out of here! Deal?!" came the snap back at him, to which Shepard smirked. Well, that seemed fair. And the man seemed to be a biotic of the standard Alliance persuasion; that is, not very imaginative with his techniques. Maybe it was time to put him through school.

"Watch and learn, soldier!" he spoke before he leapt out of cover and charged the railing of the walkway, barechested and dazed from his rude awakening, screaming bloody murder.

"Commander!" the security officer cried after him, but it was too late. In a blaze of blue biotic fury Shepard leapt from the walkway and descended on the mechs on the balcony below, shots grazing his shins and his upper arm but offering little pain to slow him down. He slammed into the floor and exploded his barriers outwards at the same time as he rolled and drew his pistol, coming up close to the remaining three mechs, sending one into the others with a might kick to the chest piece and blasting the heads off the other two. "Holy shit!" the man cried excitably as he leant over the railing, looking at the dazed and exhausted Shepard below who was struggling to remain standing.

"Ever seen a Krogan airdrop?" he called back up him before his legs gave out and he sank to the floor and promptly fell asleep, unconscious, exhausted.

"Shepard" Wrex rumbled from where he was hunkering down side by side with Shepard as they took cover from Geth forces firing volley after volley at them amongst the ruins of Ilos. They had pushed through from the landing site from the MAKO in among the crumbling spires of the Prothean civilisation that had come aeons before theirs, Shepard and Wrex leading the charge, Liara, Ashley and Tali taking the centre and Garrus in the rear with his sniper rifle and itchy trigger finger. Once Ashley would have kept the rear guard of the formation with him, the two delivering death from a distance while Kaidan would have kept guard over the two most fragile combatants in their squad, but… Lieutenant Kaidan Alenko was dead in the smoking ruins of Virmire.

And they had followed Saren to Ilos to make him pay for the death of their comrade.

"Wrex" Shepard replied testily, speaking through his teeth as he hunkered down. They were posed on a balcony overlooking a large open area that Liara, from the middle of the formation some fifty yards back alongside Ash and Tali insisted was an old plaza or mercantile area or something. She was very enthusiastic about fighting through the ruins of Ilos, much to the appreciation of the energetic Tali and the annoyance of the cynical Ashley. "Garrus!" he snapped over the com. "Can you please take some of these blinky flashlights out?! We're sitting with our asses hanging out here!"

"It's a bad angle, Shepard!" came the shout back, and Shepard cursed again. They had stumbled onto a massed formation of Geth, and as their squad had next to no stealth capabilities – he really needed to get that fixed for when this mission was over – every single Geth in the closest square mile were alerted to their presence. Now, from that ruined plaza below they fired constantly, supressing their movements and essentially locking them down. "You've got more flashlights coming in! Three o'clock!" And now they were charging up the ramp to his right, too, the direction from which he had no cover. Great. Absolutely fantastic.

"Shepard" Wrex insisted again as the same man kept cursing and surveying the field of battle as best he could from his narrow vantage point. If they charged down the ramp, maybe – "Shepard".

"Wrex" he snapped back, trying to think strategically. If they went down the ramp he and Wrex could clear the way for the others… but then all the fire would be on Tali and Liara, the ones with the least armour and least offensive capabilities in the entire squad. If only he or Wrex did they wouldn't have that problem, but the one sent down would get pasteurised by the charging Geth. And if they stayed where they were they'd be attacked from the flank, and then all of them would be joining Kaidan for a drink or five at the celestial titty bar under the approving eye of God. "Anyone got any grenades?!"

"No, Commander!" Tali called back, tending to a big hole in Liara's midriff suffered when a stray plasma bolt went through her when her barriers were down. "Neither Liara nor I have any left!"

"Shepard" Wrex insisted from the side, but Shepard knew that the Krogan didn't have any explosives on him.

"Wrex" he warned and turned back to his squad.

"Copy what the rust-bucket said, Skipper!" Ash called from her perch behind Tali and Liara, managing a little suppressive fire from time to time but mostly not as the Geth bombardment was too heavy.

"Shepard" Wrex probed again, and now he was actually starting to get on the Commander's nerves.

"Wrex" he snapped back again before he kept running down the situation. "Garrus?" The Turian agent answered in the negative, having used all his up when they disembarked from the MAKO almost half an hour earlier. "How're you hanging in there, Liara?" Could they move her? Fall back? He was the only one with any Medi-gel and the one with any skill with medicine over her and Tali. If they couldn't fall back –

"The architectural symmetry here is fascinating" the Asari scientist spoke back, feverish and rambling and very much high as a kite from the painkillers Tali had flooded her body with. "The foundations are clearly from the Mastaban period of Prothean development, but the main structure up ahead is significantly newer. The city must have been inhabited for almost five thousand years! Fascinating!" Well, that was a 'no' on moving Liara anytime soon.

"Shepard" Wrex pressed from the side again as the Commander tried to figure out what they hell they were supposed to do now. "Shepard". Maybe if they radioed Joker and had him rain down some suppressive artillery on the rear of the Geth formation, or if they could get Garrus to go back to the MAKO and – "Shepard!"

"What?!" he roared at Wrex, staring the millennia old Krogan right in the eye. "What the hell do you want, Wrex?!"

To which the Krogan began to chuckle. "Ever seen a Krogan airdrop, Shepard?"

Oh, no. That was the same tone of voice the Krogan had used that time on Feros before he had Kaidan set fire to him and then charged straight into a massed throng of Thorian creepers, burning and screaming bloody murder. "Wrex" he cursed – well, he said that name like a curse – as the Krogan battlemaster stood from out of cover and began to mass his biotics while firing blindly into the Geth formation below. "Wrex! Don't do anything stupid-!"

"Korbal!" Wrex roared and charged, leaping over the railing of the overpass and down onto the plaza below, landing smack dap in the middle of a Geth platoon, laughing like a madman all the while.

"By the Goddess, did he just-?" Liara asked.

"What the-?" Ashley wondered breathlessly.

"Pedica mea!" Garrus cursed.

"Keelah, you mad fool!" Tali shouted after Wrex.

"Oh, shit" Shepard cursed and stood, firing after Wrex, honestly not caring very much if he hit the Krogan or not. But things were as they were, and with the Geth below shocked and in complete disarray under the mad charge of the crazy Krogan he was not one to let a chance like this go. "Garrus! You and Liara take this perch, give Wrex some suppressive fire! Ash, Tali – you two, with me!"

"Aye aye, Skipper!" Ashley affirmed as she and Tali formed up beside Shepard, the human woman with an assault rifle and the Commander and the Quarian mechanic with their trusty custom shotguns aimed at the Geth that were charging up the ramp towards them. "Are we-?"

"Yes, we are, Ash!" Shepard barked back and pressed the butt of his shotgun to his shoulder, biotics swirling fiercely around his legs. "Come on!" he took a deep breath and roared with all his might. "Charge!"

"Bloody bosh'tet!" Tali cursed almost like a human now as she followed along the two that came thundering down the ramp towards the approaching Geth formation. "Oh well" she gave in to the general mood and brought up the explosive function on her Omni-tool. "Keelah se'lai, you stinky flashlights!"

Meanwhile, down on the plaza, fighting off a horde of Geth, Urdnot Wrex was having the time of his life. "Rann Tuchankna!" he roared and smashed one battle platform apart with a single swing of his mighty arm as Shepard, Ash and Tali fought their way down the ramp to join him in what he considered to be the festivities. "Come on, you pieces of future scrap-metal!"

"Does Tali even know what a 'flashlight' really is?" Liara wondered as she supported the endeavours of the Krogan with a few well-placed Biotic explosions and singularities, holding one hand to her midriff at all times.

"Do you?" Garrus asked as he took aim at one enemy in the far rear of the formation. "Because I have no idea. I just heard it from the human xenophobe after Virmire".

"Bite me, Garrus!" Ashley cursed as she laid low a Geth rocket trooper with a few well aimed shots as they stepped off onto a ledge in the ramp as it curved down towards the plaza.

"Does it matter?" Tali said as she made one Geth do an impression of Quarian line dancing while another kept shooting at its feet using nothing but her hacking skills. "As long as I get to kick the bosh'tet in the quad-"

"It's all the same, yes?" Liara commented in a daze as she lifted another Geth – a prime, one of the biggest bipedal combat platforms there were, one of four that had thundered into plaza to help the lesser platforms deal with the sudden influx of Krogan they had experienced – using her considerable biotic skill as Tali's medical ministrations began to have an effect. Suspending it in the air she then used a throw ability on it, sending it crashing into a ruined wall and no doubt breaking some priceless historic artefact as both wall and Geth were shattered in a rise of dust. "Tali'Zorah, I've a question about Quarian linguistics-"

"Can it wait for another time?!" Shepard barked as his cleared the ramp of smaller Geth platforms with a strategic biotic strike and push along with his shotgun that raged and threatened to overheat in his hands. "Just focus on staying alive first!"

"You call this a challenge?!" a battered and bleeding Wrex roared as he charged a Geth prime head on, barrelling into the massive red robotic combat platform and pulling its legs out from under it before he jumped on its neck and ripped its head clean off. "Hah! Come on, Geth! Who's your daddy?" He used that Geth prime's head to crush two infantry platforms against a ruin wall as he shouted. "Who's your daddy?! Tell them, Turian!"

"I'm your daddy" the Turian spoke smugly and downed another Prime with a shot that went perfectly through its flashlight optics, through its flash-drive datacore and out the back of its head after having sabotaged its shields with an overloading protocol.

"I'm surrounded by mad people!" Ashley complained in a mocking tone as she grinningly kicked down a particularly persistent Geth and placed one foot on its chest, emptying her entire thermal clip's heat-sink capacity into its optics. Despite her grumblings to the contrary she was having the time of her life.

Despite the hardships they all were.

Shepard blinked, dazed and confused, as a limping man in black pulled him to his feet, his dark skin glistening with sweat in a way the commander had to admit was nearly hypnotising. He was back on that station, Lazarus station, but there didn't seem to be any mechs around just now – possibly because he had crushed a small platoon of them in a mad biotic charge. Was he insane as well as dead? His judgement seemed impaired… "You are completely crazy, commander" the soldier supported him by shouldering his weight as they moved further into the station.

"Sorry" Shepard muttered back, and the man seemed surprised that he was coherent enough to form proper words. "I'm not… as durable… as I used… to be. Are you hurt…?"

"Just sprained my ankle jumping after you onto level four" came the ready but indignantly vexed response as they made their way down a hallway on level four. "The name's Jacob Taylor-"

"Yeah, you said that, didn't you?" Shepard wondered back as they snuck around a corner, supporting each other with each of them with a pistol in one hand in case of them running into any more kill-crazy machines. "Sorry. Kind of flew over my head with everything going on…"

"Figured as much" Jacob confirmed with a nod. "You've just woken up from whatever coma you were in, and then you push your biotics to the max. You haven't even eaten in two years!"

"Yeah, about that" Shepard tried to stand on his own, but his head swam and his neck hurt much too much, and he grunted and settled back into Jacob's support. "You said they spent two years rebuilding me. How bad were my injuries?"

"Dead as dead can be, sir" Jacob repeated as they went through another door, only to find two mechs advancing on them which the two took out in tandem with perfectly timed shots. "At least at first. Then… I'm no doctor, but it was bad. When I first saw you were almost nothing but meat and tubes. Anywhere else they would've put you back in the coffin – but project Lazarus was different. Cutting-edge technology".

"Whaddya mean ´cutting-edge´?" Shepard pushed, wondering with a chill in his heart if… no, not that, that would be like something out of one of the old Earth science fiction novels. He was himself… wasn't he? "Cloning? Cybernetics?"

"I don't know the details and I never asked, but I'm pretty sure you're not a clone" he replied, looking up and down the hallway before they went through another door. "You'd have to ask the scientists, but I'm pretty sure the whole point of the project was that you weren't a clone. They wanted to bring you back just like you were, and here you are. You might have a few extra bits and pieces, though".

"Were there other test subjects?" Shepard wondered, his concerns alleviated but certainly not forgotten.

"No. Project Lazarus only had one subject, sir – you. The whole point was to bring you back". They stopped before a hatch in the floor in one of the offices in the following hallway, Jacob rattling away at his Omni-tool and so opening the hatch, granting access to the service tunnels. "Just you. Even that was a challenge. Two years. All the top scientists. Best technology money could buy. More money than I have ever seen in my life".

"Where're we going?" Shepard wondered as they dropped down into the service tunnels, moving tenderly due to their injuries.

"Through the service tunnels, to climate control. Wilson, the chief medical tech, contacted me while you were out. Said he was in the network control room, keeping tabs on the mechs for us. We should be bypassing most of the damn things through here".

"What's your job here, Jacob?" Shepard wondered about this strange man, this obviously military man who was working for someone who was "definitely not Alliance".

"Technically I'm Miranda's top lieutenant and chief of security… but I'm just a soldier. I served five years in the Alliance before this. Now I'm running the station's security. Usually a lot more dull than this".

"Can you tell me anything about what's going on?" Shepard, figuring as the man was head of security, questioned then, knowing that he had no doubt had some idea of what was happening. "Why are we under attack? Why are the mechs trying to kill me?"

"I was trying to get some shut-eye, then – bam! Bunch of explosions! Next thing I know every damn mech in the place starts shooting, at us! I'm guessing it had to be an inside job. You need top security access to hack all the mechs". Jacob, as far as Shepard could tell, was a simple man with simple needs, though he sensed a hidden depth to him – otherwise he wouldn't have kept calling him 'sir'. He certainly wasn't 'unburdened by complexities of life', as Dr Chakwas once had described Ensign Jenkins before his death.

And then, when he ducked under a water pipe as they made their way through a low point in the tunnels, a thought occurred to him, the source of that nagging horror that had been burrowing at him. "The last thing I remember is the Normandy blowing up. Did anyone else make it?"

"Just about everybody survived" came the answer, accompanied by a heavy wave of relief so profound that it almost made Shepard want to cry. Thank whatever powers ruled the chaos of the universe, this was what he needed to head! But, of course, there was some sort of caveat, as fate had long since made him its bitch. "A few servicemen from the lower decks didn't get out. Navigator Presley was killed by an explosion. But everyone else, including the non-Alliance crew: the Asari, Liara, the Quarian, the Krogan… they all made it out alive".

"Do you know what anyone of them are doing now?" eager to know Shepard pressed Jacob. "Do you know what happened to Gunnery Chief Ashley Williams?" He needed to know what had happened to Ash. He needed to know that she was safe.

"I don't know, sir. It's been two years. They've moved on, left the Alliance as far as I know. Could be anywhere". But despite that vagueness Shepard was glad. At least they were alive, and if they were alive he could bring them close to him again. If they knew he was alive they would come back. He was sure of it.

"When I first woke up someone named Miranda was talking to me over the radio" he then said, leading Jacob onto the trail of revealing more about his superior, the one who had been in charge of things as far as he could tell. "I lost contact with her just before I stumbled onto you".

"Miranda Lawson's the station's ranking officer. She lead the Lazarus" he stopped an instant, as if censoring his words "team. It was her job to bring you back to life, no matter what. Should've guessed she tried to save you. She's not about to give up on you now. You said you lost contact, sir – could you tell what was happening?"

"Some gunfire and explosions" Shepard shook his head as they went low under a jutting bar "and then a whole lot of static and nothing. Didn't sound too good".

"She knows how to take care of herself" Jacob went, sure of himself and the words he was espousing, but a tender hint came into his voice as he went on "but I hope she's okay". Was there a hint of intimacy in that tone? Fraternisation within the ranks – but this wasn't an Alliance outfit, so maybe that was alright with them. "It was a pretty crazy stunt you pulled back there, Commander" he then spoke, to which Shepard looked at him. "I've never seen anyone use biotics quite like that".

"A Krogan taught me" Shepard shrugged, neglecting to mention that the quick approach, known as the Rush technique, and the strength augmentation, known as Smash, were two techniques for advanced Biotic use taught to a select few in the Alliance Navy: more specifically, they were taught to 'Slayer' type operatives training in the ICT academy in Rio de Janeiro back on Earth. Shepard might have well been the first to combine the techniques into something he called the Biotic Charge, as it took a lot out of a person to perform it, but he doubted that he would be the last. A small subset of soldiers in the Alliance Navy had begun training almost exclusively in using their biotic powers to augment their physical strength and close quarter combat capabilities, and humans, as they said, are crafty creatures.

"Must have been one hell of a Krogan" Jacob whistled softly as they rounded a corner in the tunnels, the sound of whirring fans indicating that they were getting closer to their destination.

"Most of them are" was the only answer he gave to that. He admired the Krogan, always had since first meeting one who took issue with a Batarian slaver back when he was just a raw recruit going on patrols in the Skyllian Verge. And then working with Wrex… the lizard beast was mad as a hatter on peyote compared to the average human when in active combat, but when out of it he was reserved, mountainous, and old. Centuries old. Shepard had counted, and some of the things Wrex had seen and told about had occurred as early as in the equivalent of the Earth year 693 CE, which was meeting, and fighting, the first Spectre. That was the same year as when, on Earth, archbishop Sisebert of Toledo rebelled against king Ergica of the Visigoths in Spain, and the same year as Earconwald the saint had died and been entombed in London. To live such a span of time, unmatched even by the Asari, and to see so many things… Wrex was knowledgeable and wise beyond ken to most people. And his battlefield advice was impeccable.

"Can't argue with that, sir" Jacob confirmed, and Shepard's assessment of the man was confirmed a little more as they went, him remarking not, being a man of simple ambitions and direct ways. Of course, directness was good, but… one needed to be able to dream.

They came up onto the end of the tunnel and climbed up another hatch just beyond some fans that circulated citrus air all throughout the station, only to emerge into a small office on the edge of what Jacob referred to as the B-wing. Going through a door marked Network Control they expected to find a friendly face – but the room was littered with LOKI mechs and the bodies of dead researchers and station staff, the sight making Jacob's face harden. He sloughed off Shepard and proceeded to dispatch the murderous machines with extreme prejudice, urging the commander to stay in the corner. In the tight quarters and the poor lighting of the room his biotics trumped their aiming, and in short he turned to Shepard, another wound in his arm that hadn't been there before but still alive, limping over to him to pick him up off the floor – when a voice other than theirs could be heard groaning.

"Wilson!" Jacob cried and moved to bald, bearded, dubious-looking man who was leaning against a battered console clutching his leg, groaning with pain as he did. A pistol, recently fired, lay by his side, and it looked like he had been shot while in a last and desperate attempt for a final stand for survival.

"Jacob! Shepard!" the grunt came in return, the weasel-y but still gruff voice somehow familiar to Shepard's ears. "Bastards got me in the leg!"

"See if you can find some Medi gel for this scratch in that locker over there" Jacob, keeping his hands pressed over Wilson's thigh to stifle the bleeding, barked at Shepard, who nodded dazedly and then turned to stumble at the direction and the locker indicated. It contained three spherical Medi-gel canisters and single combat-standard stim-pack filled with distressingly azure liquid, and the locker beside it kept another black-orange-white uniform, this one actually in his size. He shrugged the shirt of it over his head to give himself at least a little more cover before he shot himself in the arm with the stim-pack and then pocketed the canisters, keeping one of them in his hand as he went back to Wilson.

Wilson was in the middle of arguing with Jacob as Shepard began to treat his wound, acting as if he and Jacob often did things such as these. "We have to find Miranda" Jacob said as he slattered some Medi-gel, handed to him by Shepard, over his ankle where it would stiffen into a makeshift cast and then reduce and stall any swelling. "We can't leave her behind!"

"Forget about Miranda!" Wilson shot back fiercely… a little too fiercely. He obviously didn't care for her or her leadership – was he the deviation from the norm, or was Jacob? "She was in D-wing. The mechs were all over that sector. No way she survived".

"A few shoddy mechs won't drop Miranda" Jacob spoke with conviction, as if from experience. Was she that skilled? Perhaps theirs was a meritocratic organisation… Shepard couldn't wait to see her and finally find out what all of this was about.

"Then where is she?" Wilson questioned as Shepard applied first aid using the Medi-gel he had collected, his fingers going about the familiar task with practiced ease despite the slackness of his muscles. "Why haven't we heard from her? There's only two possible explanations: either she's dead, or she's the traitor!"

A small man with a small mind, Shepard reflected as he laid the finishing touches to the treatment of Wilson's wounds. Things were rarely that clear-cut as one side or the other, all the way black or all the way white. Most of the galaxy was just one big haze of grey. "Then why did she wake me up?" he soundly poked holes in that reasoning with a level voice.

"Okay" Wilson admitted as Shepard helped him to his feet, leg treated and now at least not bleeding. "So maybe she's not the traitor. But that doesn't chance the facts: we're here and she's not! We need to save ourselves! The shuttle bay is only a few-"

The door by the far end of the room slid open with a hiss and in poured a group of mechs, as if summoned by fate itself just as things were starting to look better for them. Wilson vaulted into cover and howled in pain when supporting himself on his wounded leg while Shepard rolled back and Jacob took the front position, trying to hold the mechs back while the Commander waited for his meagre strength to return-

Under the fire of the mechs Shepard surveyed the room, spotting the fact that one of the downed people that had been one of Jacob's friends had a whole and functional Omni-tool strapped to her forearm in the form of an integrated metal vambrace. He dashed for it, the stimpack he had taken kicking in and making his thoughts and body race at a kickstarted speed while a distant nausea filled him, every detail of the room growing sharper to his darting eyes. He peeled that Omni-tool of the dead woman's arm, hating the fact that he was disgracing the dead but knowing that in a situation such as this he needed to seize every advantage offered and ride them for as long as he could.

With the Omni-tool strapped to his arm and his biotics blazing bright with renewed energy Shepard cocked his pistol fiercely and rushed out of cover, slamming one mech aside with biotic force and shooting three others, putting Jacob out of a tight spot before he noticed that the last droid was standing over Wilson, its gun pointed at his head. Shepard didn't even know the man – but that didn't matter. He rushed the machine and impaled it with his arm, making it crumble to the side before he, panting all the while, relaxed his biotics and offered Wilson his hand.

"Damn, Shepard" Wilson grumbled as Shepard once again helped him to his feet. "Never thought that you would save my life. Guess that makes us even!" Was he one of the scientists that had brought him back to life? Shepard wondered about it as they separated and looked to the chief of security.

"Okay" Jacob panted and holstered his pistol while Shepard prodded at the ill-fitting vambrace and the Omni-tool integrated into it. "We took them down" he looked to Wilson before his eyes fixed gravely at Shepard "but this is getting tense. If I tell you who we work for, Shepard – will you trust me?"

"This really isn't the time, Jacob" Wilson protested, and Shepard's dislike for the man grew even more. That scientist seemed to act like one of those types who would never lay on the barbed wire for another person, or maybe do so only after he had been offered a million credits. No, he hated working with people like that – and Jacob seemed like a good sort.

"We won't make it if he's expecting a shot in the back!" he snapped at Wilson, who seemed to want to protest further but then withdrew his objections, no matter what they may have been.

"If you wanna piss off the boss, it's your ass – Jacob" Wilson grumbled back and settled back at that stack of crates that had been his cover before. That wound in his leg… it was on the inside of his thigh, angled as to only give a superficial mark that looked very dangerous and near-fatal but actually was anything but. It really was very strange, all of it…

"The Lazarus project, the Lazarus Cell" Jacob turned to Shepard with a hesitant but serious tone. "It's funded and controlled by Cerberus".

At first Shepard thought that he was mishearing. Cerberus… that was where the logo was from that was everywhere on that damn station. But he hadn't misheard, and he had seen that logo before. While on the hunt for Saren he had been contacted by Admiral Hackett, his technical commander-in-chief, and sent to investigate a situation on Luna, Earth's moon. And there: a rouge outfit of terrorist scientists had given rise to an AI meant to control the Geth, but it had failed spectacularly and gone insane, slaughtering the lot of them. Another time he had stumbled over a station on some nameless backwater of a planet, far into the depths of the Voyager Cluster, while chasing after body of Rear-Admiral Kohaku, where he had found Husks, Throian Creepers, Rachni drones – all experiments to create disposable ground troops. The bodies piled up outside of that facility was more than enough to show Shepard the true colours of that organisation – no matter the face Jacob put up.

"Told you" Wilson drawled when the two men beheld Shepard's expression of mixed horror, anger and disgust. "Shepard, Cerberus has spent a fortune putting you back together. At least-"

"After we get to the shuttle, I'm off and out" Shepard nearly snarled at them, hostility burning in his eyes. "I don't care what you say or do – I'm not working with terrorists!"

"I'll take you to our boss" Jacob said as Shepard turned away. "You can tell that to him… but after you've saved our butts from the mechs. Come on" he pushed past Shepard and made for the door. "The shuttle bay's through here. I'll show you the way".

"You're taking him to the Illusive Man?" Wilson questioned almost indignantly as they went out that door, following Jacob's sure stride. "If the bitch's alive – if! – she won't be happy about that. No sir'ee".

"I'll take my chances" Jacob shot back. "Miranda and I go way back". Shepard picked up on the doubt in his voice, as if he didn't fully trust his own kept beliefs. Who the hell was this woman?

Down two corridors and facing only little resistance they went, blasting their way free and making their way quickly towards the loading bay. Despite the company, despite the fact that they were Cerberus, Shepard had to admit that it was good to have some people at his back at last, and though he couldn't count on them… it was still good to have reinforcements. Jacob motioned them inside smaller chamber on their way, deviating slightly from their objective.

The Cerberus armoury was all but empty, no armour at all in its shelves and only spare pieces of pistols and firearms lining the walls. No doubt many of the other people on the station had been through there and pillaged it already, leaving it all but empty, but tossing aside a crate full of thermal clips he uncovered something that made him smile.

"Finally" he muttered, picking up the hidden and perhaps even cast-aside grenade launcher. "A proper weapon at last".

"Most of the arsenal and armoury we've prepared for you is on the other Lazarus facility, Minuteman Station" Jacob commented as they exited the armoury, him leading the way towards the shuttle bay that lay beyond the loading bay in the A-wing of Lazarus Station. He and Wilson conversed in angry and hushed tones as they went, bickering as if to assign blame upon one or the other, until Shepard barked that he trusted neither of them and that they could assign blame when their asses were out of the fire.

They made it to the large air-locked doors of to the laoding bay just in time, having fought their way past another group of murderous machine mechs with Shepard hanging back in order to spare use of the grenade launcher's use in case they needed to take down something big or especially problematic. And, as they often were, his instincts proved to be right on the money.

As they dashed into the loading bay, the grenade launcher heavy in Shepard's hands, they came across a dreadful sight – about a dozen LOKI mechs standing about the central hub of the termination protocol that had made them want to slaughter everything in sight, protecting their rouge programming. It just so happened to be that the central directive of that programming was emitted via local frequencies by nothing less than an YMIR mech.

In the ancient days of old Scandinavia, when the winter winds would howl beyond the doors of the longhalls of the Viking chiefs, the people who lived in those harsh times would gather and trade stories with each other – about the world, about fortune and plunder and wonders yet unseen, and about their gods. Loki, Odin, Thor, Freyr – these were the ones most well-known, the ones worshiped the farthest. But Loki was naught but a trickster in most stories, Freyr a randy sod of a boar, Thor rageful and intemperate, and Odin as dark, looming and all-judging like death. And so one god now forgotten in the later days of spaceflight was the primordial one, the ancient titan, the great giant from whose flesh the world itself had been built – Ymir, the old one, the first of the giants and their dark Allfather.

Likewise the Ymir mechs towered over all, even battle tanks and MAKOs, standing close to twenty feet high and built to withstand immense punishment. One arm of it was a dual mass accelerator cannon, a great advancement but maintained the same function over the more primitive Gatling guns, the other was a rocket-launcher of such force the entire contraption had to stop moving in order to fire it, and its self-destruct protocols had been upgraded to provide a blast with the force of 0.012 metric tonnes of TNT. It loomed in the cargo bay, vast and imposing over the other mechs, and Shepard cursed upon seeing it, as did Jacob. Great minds seemed to think alike. Wilson, in comparison, did nothing but stop and stare and whimper helplessly.

"Jacob, you HO certified?" Shepard snapped to his intrepid companion, who nodded. Not all military personal that went through the Alliance recruitment system were ever given training with heavy ordinance, but luckily enough Jacob had trained in the Utopia system relay boot camp and so nodded. "Grab this!" Shepard then urged and tossed him the grenade launcher, pulling himself and the terrified Wilson forwards and into cover while Jacob limped back and took a position. Soon the machines began to open fire on the nearest targets, who happened to be –

"They're shooting at us!" Wilson whined as the selfsame machines opened fire and bombarded the crates they were cowering behind with bolts of raging light and matter.

"Comes with the job" Shepard went, noting that the YMIR mech seemed to do little. Doubtlessly it had been programmed to stand back and only attack when it needed to defend itself, supporting his hypothesis that the machine was broadcasting the termination command to the other mechs on the station. It had a lot more processing power than the LOKI mechs, that was granted – but if they killed it then they took out the other mechs. He cracked his head to the side, the stimpack he had taken before making everything edgy and jagged as his blood burned with artificial adrenalin. It was time to make some scrap-metal. "Jacob, on my mark you pepper that fat dick with grenades. Wilson, you and I wear down its shields. Got it?"

"Aye aye, sir" Jacob was falling back into the life of the marine that he had given up a little more than two years earlier, and he was enjoying it immensely despite the danger to life and limb.

"Are you crazy?!" Wilson protested, and Shepard's jaw muscles played beneath his skin as he bit his teeth hard together. He could not afford to be second-guessed by his own men, regardless of their quality. If the soldiers started talking back then all of them would be dead come morning – that's how it usually went.

"If you want to get out of here alive, you'll do as I say, Wilson" Shepard grunted at the man, who promptly shut up and settled back down, clenching his pistol in his shaking hands. "I need you to be brave, Wilson. I need you to draw the YMIR's fire and overload its shields while I make sure we don't get stomped into paste. I need you to transfer an overload protocol to my Omni-tool and put it on immediate use on touch. Can you do all that?"

"I- I think so" the man nodded and licked his lips, to which Shepard laid a heavy but supporting hand upon his shoulder.

"Good man. Run that protocol" Shepard wasn't a techie or any good with hacking beyond the terminal interface stuff, despite having been bypassing terminals and the like in the hundreds while chasing after Saren. He seemed to lack the patience needed of a combat engineer, but most of the time that suited him just fine. But it was good to use whatever you had on hand, and after Wilson programmed his Omni-tool to overload shields on kinetic contact Shepard nodded. "Now" he thought back to major Kirrahe on Virmire and wondered where that Salarian was at now "hold the line, got it?"

"Got it" Wilson nodded as Shepard gathered his biotic powers about him, hoping his new amps could take the strain. If this was to work he needed to execute two charges in quick succession, and he wasn't sure if he could do it. The stimpack was wearing off and the adrenalin rush would soon be over, and by then he'd have one hell of a headache and possibly fall unconscious again. He needed to get this done fast. It was kill or be killed, and he had only one shot at pulling this off.

He had certainly been in worse situations.

"Over here, you incontinent tin-cans!" he shouted and jumped out of cover, dashing across the loading bay with biotic enhanced speed, the machines firing at him as he drew their attention away from Wilson and Jacob. "Wilson!"

"Take this!" the man shouted as his Omni-tool blinked alive and he began to hack into the functions of the main mech, its kinetic barriers crackling as he began to gain access to its protective systems. As one the LOKI mechs turned and opened fire along with the YMIR at him, but he crouched down behind cover and was not hit, keeping it up. Shepard, in the meanwhile, now forgotten by the murderous machines, charged again, smacking aside a few humanoid combat platforms before he slammed into the side of the machine Omni-tool first. The overload protocol short-circuited the wrist mounted computer and made his arm numb as it was inadecuately shielded, but it did its work, and in a crackle the YMIR twitched as its shields were overloaded and then failed.

"Jacob!" Shepard cried as he darted away, all of the mechs now focusing their fire on him. "Now!"

"Aye aye, sir!" came the immediate response as the Cerberus operative popped out of cover and began to empty the barrel of the grenade launcher right into the body of that mech, his teeth bared and sweat pouring down his brow as he fired, again and again. As the explosive canisters rammed into the midriff of the great robot, knocking it backwards but not quite off its mechanical feet, Shepard threw himself behind cover, shrapnel flying over his head as he did. The machine staggered and was battered and broken, the explosions crippling its guns and rendering one of its legs unusable, but… it still stood, whirring furiously, and the grenade launcher in Jacob's hands clicked almost spitefully. "Out of canisters, sir!"

"Damn it!" Shepard hissed as he rose from out of cover as the LOKI mechs began to fire on Wilson and Jacob once again, assessing the situation. A little gunfire from M-3 pistols wasn't going to take that damn thing down, and it could still clomp over to them and stomp them into mush or maybe even activate its self-destruct protocol, blowing them all to bits. It was damaged enough to supersede its broadcasting protocol, after all. Damn it, there wasn't-

Who's your daddy?!, Wrex roared in his memories, causing Shepard to grin. When all else failed and you were out of options the best thing one could do was charge. It threw the enemy off balance and made you regain the high ground and the option of deciding the outcome of the battle. Often such a final charge was suicidal, but…

Everyone had to die sometime.

And according to Jacob he had already died.

"Korbal!" he shouted as he did his best impression of the Krogan battlemaster and leapt over the crates behind which he had cowered, hitting the floor in a biotically enhanced stride, his vision blurring over and his stomach heaving as his head burned under the strain of using so much, so soon. But if Wrex had done it then so could he.

In a running leap he struck the leg of the YMIR mech and jumped, using it as a springboard to launch him high into the air. Soaring high above the mech he raised his fist and struck down as he fell, the giant robot barely having time to react before his hand went through its head as the blow landed. Opening his barriered fingers he instantly ripped out its central processor and tore it clean from its head, cutting short all protocols as he held it into the air of the hangar with a victorious shout. Soon the other, smaller mechs deactivated, standing stock still as the YMIR's corpse sloughed to the ground and hit the floor with a mighty crashing thud.

"Damn, Commander!" Jacob said while he and Wilson approached the stumbling Commander who was reeling from the shock of his own attack as he stepped off the now scrap-metal husk. "Wearing down its shields with electric shocks, shattering its armour and its offensive capabilities with heavy ordinance before taking it down with biotics – remind me not to piss you off!"

"Glad you appreciate it, Jacob" he answered in a pant, hoping all of this was over soon. "Let's get out of this damn place-"

"Come on!" Wilson said and dashed for the door leading to the evac shuttles, hurriedly fiddling with the door locks to make it open. "We're almost at the-" and then the door slid open, and a great many things happened all at once. Wilson took a harsh intake of breath, as if to scream, before a gun was drawn and flashed dangerously in the gloom of the hallway. A single shot was fired, going straight to his head, and Shepard only had time to pull out his own gun by the time Wilson's body slumped limply to the floor, blood pooling by their feet. Shepard looked into that doorway –

And a pair of icy blue eyes narrowed as they stared back at him.

---

And scene!

A/N: Shepard in story is Male, Earthborn, a War Hero and Vanguard, Paragon focused and, if didn't catch it, romanced Ashley in Mass Effect. Thought unrealistic for him to pick up armour and weapons seconds after he woke up. Had him stumble around Lazarus Station in his pants before getting his bearings. Hope you lot don't mind. Doing best Mordin Solus impression in preparation for writing said Salarian's dialogue. Doing very poorly.

Haros: the name of the ship that carries Commander Shepard's corpse to Miranda's care. The modern Greek name of Charon. Ferryman of the dead. In classical Greek mythology ferries people past Cerberus. Also, in love with line "Behold the Cerberus!" Need to work into the story, somehow.

Karin Chakwas, M. D., from Buckinghamshire, England – like her voice actress from the games. Got to love that Buckingham Mercian accent. Such refinery, much civility, many awesome. Gives massive dialectal stiffy. Funny thing: the Buckinghamshire motto is Vestigia nulla retorsum, which translates to We do not retreat… sort of. Or No turning back. Awesome, yes?

Garrus curses in Latin. Turian society was conceptualised off of ancient Rome by Bioware. Seemed appropriate. He says something… this fic is rated T, so can't say. The cry Wrex spouts is Rann Tuchankna. Imagine means something like "For Tuchanka" or "Blood for Tuchanka" or "Death to Tuchanka" or even "F*** Tuchanka". The guy doesn't like his homeworld very much in the original Mass Effect. Exploration of Krogan language and culture, acceptable?

Lastly, in normal writing: I don't see why Bioware named the YMIR mechs what they did. I mean, Ymir does nothing but get killed and drink milk in the old myths. Maybe it's because I was raised on those old stories, but I would have gone with Tyr, god of tactics, or Vidar, god of vengeance, or even Forseti, god of judges and justice. Guess they didn't think those names were as catchy. Oh, well.

Next chapter, An Illusive Man, will be out as soon as I can write it. The college semester is starting, so I might not have as much time as during the summer to write. Anyway:

Read and Review, and DFTBA!

UPDATE: Since the fic is now M-rated, I can tell you what Garrus says in Latin: Literally, he says "Fuck me up the ass!", but it should rather be used as the expression of dismay that is the "Fuck me!" one expresses at a point of panic.