It's been nearly thirteen years since the end of our conflict with the machines, while others say pockets of synthetic resistance are still being found. "Reaper" is still a sensitive term, and as such the Council still refers to the galaxy's enemy as "Sentients" or "Synthetics" or simply "The Machines".

It is also true there are many different names for our battle.

"The Synthetic Campaigns," "The Black Years," and "The Sentient Conflict". These are the more official ones, the ones many on the Citadel prefer to use, while there are much more 'new-wave' and sensationalist titles such was "World War R" or the "Black Crusade". To me, it will always be the "The Reaper War", simply because that's what it was. A war with a race so powerful, it was almost able to reap every known species, attempting to throw them past the brink of extinction. Sadly, some of those species, while fighting valiantly, did fall into the precipice of oblivion.

It was no doubt our bleakest of days, when the sunrise that waited just beyond the horizon, but no one believed it would come. I was one of those people.

But as you read these pages, a majority, if not all, of the information you're about to consume came from a report delivered to the Council's Postwar Committee. A committee I was the head of at one point. It was nothing short of near insanity that I traveled to nearly every known star system that, spent years going from colony to space station to home world to military base collecting every bit of data I thought was necessary complete said report.

Most of the data I gathered were from the people who had witnessed what everyone believed to be the end of times firsthand, only to forge through it. I loved what I did, wearing out data-pad after data-pad and breaking my omni-tool on several occasions. Many sleepless nights were spent editing and revising, correcting and adding, only for me to redo it all over again when I woke up the next morning or late afternoon.

You may not be surprised that I found it completely devastating when the Council stripped down my report to the bones, leaving behind only numbers, troop reports, statistics, and the like. I'll admit it, right now, that I cried up on that podium when the Council read off my report. I was furious, and that was putting it lightly.

I cornered Councilor Tevos, a lovely looking asari, whose annoyingly calm demeanor tried to dismiss me.

"Too personal" the Councilor would dismiss. "We need to be detached from the personal feelings and opinions. A report like this calls for facts and facts alone."

I claimed that these stories shouldn't be forgotten, that we shouldn't bury the people who experienced all this with statistics and reports. To this day, I will never forget her reply. All she did was simply place a hand on my shoulder, stare at me straight in the eyes and say; "Then write your own damn report. You sit here, petitioning us every day, when you could have just easily dipped into the databases and resources that are already at your disposal. You have everything you need, so use it."

And that's what I did. I wrote my own damn report. Hopefully, as you read, my presence will be nothing more than that of a mere guide and not of a distraction.

- - Echoes - -

Bloomsbury, England

[Sitting in a small courtyard within the English neighborhood of Bloomsbury, Sigmund Accurd quickly taps away on his omni-tool. His red hair has large brushstrokes of gray in it, his forehead deep wrinkles, but his age cannot hide the fire that hides behind his bright orange eyes. He looks up as I approach, a confident grin creases his cheeks. Gripping my hand like a bear, he lets me take a seat next to him on the hard stone bench, where deep indentations cover it. Upon closer inspection, I discover these marks are bullet holes.]

Nobody believed it, those stories on the "big bad machines that were coming for us". Many dismissed it all as semi-religious babble. I personally, was too busy with what I was doing at the time to really notice or care about the news. I worked over at the British Library, not far from here. It was my job to restore documents to their former glory.

I worked on some big projects in my time, ranging from ancient papyrus scratchings to legal charters from the 1600's. At one point I even found myself on the same team charged with repairing the American Declaration of Independence.

[He chuckles.]

Can you believe that? The Yanks trusting the us bloody "Brits" to restore their most treasured document? The very same one that was designed as the proverbial middle finger to King George. But I did work with a fantastic team, many of them were American, all of them great at what they did. Needless to say, when the end of the day came, we'd all have a few "intelligent" debates down at pub. But…there was this one guy, from Canada I think, name was Peter. He always mumbled on and on and on about those bloody Squids, which, at the time, nobody in England took seriously. Just another fairy tale at the time, I suppose.

One day he'd come in dead silent, right until we got to work on the Declaration. Then he began to say something along the lines that they were going to "Come down on us all like a plague of locusts, blotting out the sun with their numbers."

We would all laugh at him and get back to work, me making sure John Hancock's massive signature remained pristine. But he kept rambling, and soon I was forced to order him to keep quiet. He would then just play some radio stations on his omni-tool. A lot of old stuff he was into, like real classical pieces. Mozart or Bach, maybe, but I never bothered to ask.

Did that bother any of you?

At the time? No. I simply found it annoying, but others seemed to really enjoy it. But Peter wouldn't stay on the music for very long, he'd always find some nut-head's signal, talking of the end of times by the "machine overlords". Again, he was told by me and now others on the staff, to turn that rubbish off and get back to work. He didn't respond, just freezing up right there. So I had him removed, told him to take the next few days off to get his head right and not to come back when he did.

Peter never came back. It didn't take until we were nearly finished with the Declaration that I really noticed him not being there. So I had my VI check for Peter at his hotel. When it reported back, it said he never checked out, but he wasn't in his room or anywhere on the premises.

I didn't think anything of it at the time, I rarely spent time at hotels that I checked into myself, either too busy with work or occupying myself with the nightlife.

A day later, still no Peter, the Alliance found it's way into the news as they always did. Some big admiral said they were receiving what he called "ghosts of echoes" on the edge of the system, he claimed they had massive radar signatures or something, but when a patrol was sent, nothing was found. I'm sure that sent chills down Peter's spine, if he was alive when that broadcast went out.

You believe he's dead?

I don't know. [Throws both hands into the air, then shrugs.] At work we all had our theories, some said he just gone up and quit, others, like me, thought that he probably took his life. Kid had obvious signs of depression. [Clucks his tongue.] If he is, I'm glad he wasn't around a week later, when everything went dark for the first time. If not, he was probably shitting his pants like the rest of us.

The same day we finished with the Declaration, radios stopped working, electronics went dark, and the sky turned black.

They say that Ground Zero was Vancouver, the first city to get hit by the Squids… But Ground Zero might as well have been Bloomsbury.

Ward 34-C,Omega

[Hiding within the innards of the infamous space station, there are certain places hidden from the throbbing music and flood of vorcha and crime. This tiny, soundproofed haven holds a table and two stools. Across from me, Ulgard Gord sits. His four, black eyes stare me down with intent, trying to read me like a book. He's missing three of his five fingers on his left hand, the batarian unwilling to tell me how exactly he parted with them.]

My job was to make sure communications with Aria's…Miss T'Loak's network went smoothly. Monitoring rivals on the station, tracking people who didn't pay their dues, negotiating with the outside world on…[He grimaces.]…certain business arrangements. I was a glorified comm guy, but I was well-compensated so I didn't question the woman about her business practices.

You'd be surprised at how far out I could reach just from my little room here on Omega, I could talk weapon shipments with contacts on the Citadel and red sand trade on Illium at the same time, real time. Tech can go far these days, and it was vital that I kept my operation up and running at a hundred and fifty percent. One missed call or transmission, millions, sometimes billions of creds were lost. Aria… Miss T'Loak was never pleased when she lost a minor investment, let alone a major one. She was skilled at letting her…[Another pause as he seems to search for the right word, all the while tucking both hands underneath the table.]…displeasure known.

So when Earth, and eventually the whole Sol system went dark, I was worried. You could credit losing contact with a habitable planet to solar bodies interfering with superluminal communications or the like. But a whole system? That just didn't happen. Ever.

You had private comm operators, military, corporate, political. On top of that, you had every other planet in that system, along with deep space and orbital stations. Colonies on Mars, stations orbiting Venus and Jupiter, miners out in the asteroid belts.

So there was absolutely no way that a whole system could lose contact with you?

No. No damn way. Even if they had some sort of massive FTL relay failure emergency radio bands would still operate, it would take forever for me to get the signals, but I'd still get them eventually. This time though? Nothing, not a peep.

I take it that had you worried?

Worried? Worried doesn't begin to describe it. Earth alone was a ninety billion credit business to Miss T'Loak per month, but the entire Sol system? Easily worth upwards of a good trillion or two per year. And when I informed her of this, she flipped shit. Damn near broke my neck. Thankfully, she didn't, and instead took it out on a passing bartender, slamming the poor bastard against the wall with a wave of biotics.

The woman tried to send out a handful of scouts the next morning, to personally oversee a few of major ventures on Mercury. But the relay was jam packed with outgoing vessels. Thousands of them, all on full throttle once they broke the mass effect field. I rushed back to my station, trying to get in contact with any of them, just trying to find out what the hell was going on. First I tried military bands, nothing. Just static. Switched to open-access frequencies.

[Shakes his head.] Bad idea. Felt like thousands of voices shouting into my ears, all at once. I tried to single out some of them, isolate the junk signals and noisy ones, but there were too many. As soon as I filtered through a lot of the crap, more of it came through. All I could get out of it was partial shouts and what I guess were warnings. "Synthetics!" came out a lot, along with "Not geth! Not geth! Not geth!". I kept checking the military bands for any Alliance ships, but still I got squat. That's when my gut really did an about-face. The Alliance was always on the scene for this kind of crap, good PR and shit.

But they weren't there. Not one ship from their navy. That's when I knew something was really wrong. So I pulled up a live video feed from the Sol System Relay. Wish I hadn't.

Why?

'Cuz that's where they started crawling out of the relay, dozens of them. Damn leviathans, bigger than any dreadnought I had ever seen. And then the video feed and radio chatter cuts out…[Snaps his fingers.]…just like that. And all it filled with was the horrible, mechanical voice. It just shattered my eardrums and ripped into my forehead like a hot blade, 'least that's what it felt like.

[He clears his throat, preparing to do his best to imitate what he heard. His voice comes out deep, almost menacing.]

"We are the Harbingers of your destruction."

More to come.

If you couldn't tell, I was inspired by Max Brooks, author of World War Z. A fantastic book. I wanted to go for his style of writing for this kind of project.

Hope you enjoyed.